CHAPTER XI.

An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.

ON my return from Ephesus I heard of the arrival in Smyrna of two American travellers, father and son, from Egypt; and the same day, at Mr. Langdon's, I met the father, Dr. N. of Mississippi. The doctor had made a long and interesting tour in Egypt and the Holy Land, interrupted, however, by a severe attack of ophthalmia on the Nile, from which he had not yet recovered, and a narrow escape from the plague at Cairo. He was about fifty-five, of a strong, active, and inquiring mind; and the circumstances which had brought him to that distant country were so peculiar, that I cannot help mentioning them. He had passed all his life on the banks of the Mississippi, and for many years had busied himself with speculations in regard to the creation of the world. Year after year he had watched the deposites and the formation of soil on the banks of the Mississippi, had visited every mound and mountain indicating any peculiar geological formation, and, unable to find any data to satisfy him, he started from his plantation directly for the banks of the Nile. He possessed all the warm, high-toned feelings of the Southerner, but a thorough contempt for the usages of society and everything like polish of manners. He came to New-York and embarked for Havre. He had never been even to New-York before; was utterly ignorant of any language but his own; despised all foreigners, and detested their "jabber." He worked his way to Marseilles with the intention of embarking for Alexandria, but was taken sick, and retraced his steps directly to his plantation on the Mississippi. Recovering, he again set out for the Nile the next year, accompanied by his son, a young man of about twenty-three, acquainted with foreign languages, and competent to profit by foreign travel. This time he was more successful, and, when I saw him, he had rambled over the Pyramids and explored the ruined temples of Egypt. The result of his observations had been to fortify his preconceived notions, that the age of this world far exceeds six thousand years. Indeed, he was firmly persuaded that some of the temples of the Nile were built more than six thousand years ago. He had sent on to Smyrna enormous boxes of earth and stones, to be shipped to America, and was particularly curious on the subject of trees, having examined and satisfied himself as to the age of the olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and the cedars of Lebanon. I accompanied him to his hotel, where I was introduced to his son; and I must not forget another member of this party, who is, perhaps, already known to some of my readers by the name of Paolo Nuozzo, or, more familiarly, Paul. This worthy individual had been travelling on the Nile with two Hungarian counts, who discharged him, or whom he discharged (for they differed as to the fact), at Cairo. Dr. N. and his son were in want, and Paul entered their service as dragoman and superintendent of another man, who, they said, was worth a dozen of Paul. I have a very imperfect recollection of my first interview with this original. Indeed, I hardly remember him at all until my arrival at Constantinople, and have only an indistinct impression of a dark, surly-looking, mustached man following at the heels of Dr. N., and giving crusty answers in horrible English.

Before my visit to Ephesus I had talked with a Prussian baron of going up by land to Constantinople; but on my return I found myself attacked with a recurrence of an old malady, and determined to wait for the steamboat. The day before I left Smyrna, accompanied by Mr. O. Langdon, I went out to Boujac to dine with Mr. Styth. The great beauty of Smyrna is its surrounding country. Within a few miles there are three villages, Bournabat, Boujac, and Sediguey, occupied by Franks, of which Boujac is the favourite. The Franks are always looking to the time of going out to their country houses, and consider their residences in their villages the most agreeable part of their year; and, from what I saw of it, nothing can be more agreeable. Not more than half of them had yet moved out, but after dinner we went round and visited all who were there. They are all well acquainted, and, living in a strange and barbarous country, are drawn closer together than they would be in their own. Every evening there is a reunion at some of their houses, and there is among them an absence of all unnecessary form and ceremony, without which there can be no perfect enjoyment of the true pleasures of social intercourse. These villages, too, are endeared to them as places of refuge during the repeated and prolonged visitations of the plague, the merchant going into the city every morning and returning at night, and during the whole continuance of the disease avoiding to touch any member of his family. The whole region of country around their villages is beautiful in landscape and scenery, producing the choicest flowers and fruits; the fig tree particularly growing with a luxuriance unknown in any other part of the world. But the whole of this beautiful region lies waste and uncultivated, although, if the government could be relied on, holding out, by reason of its fertility, its climate, and its facility of access, particularly now by means of steamboats, far greater inducements to European emigration than any portion of our own country. I will not impose upon the reader my speculations on this subject; my notes are burdened with them; but, in my opinion, the Old World is in process of regeneration, and at this moment offers greater opportunities for enterprise than the New.

On Monday, accompanied by Dr. N. and his son and Paolo Nuozzo, I embarked on board the steamboat Maria Dorothea for Constantinople; and here follows another letter, and the last, dated from the capital of the Eastern empire.

Constantinople, May ----, 1835.

MY DEAR ****,

Oh you who hope one day to roam in Eastern lands, to bend your curious eyes upon the people warmed by the rising sun, come quickly, for all things are changing. You who have pored over the story of the Turk; who have dreamed of him as a gloomy enthusiast, hating, spurning, and slaying all who do not believe and call upon the Prophet;

"One of that saintly, murderous brood, To carnage and the Koran given, Who think through unbelievers' blood Lies their directest path to Heaven;"

come quickly, for that description of Turk is passing away. The day has gone by when the haughty Mussulman spurned and persecuted the "Christian dog." A few years since it would have been at peril of a man's life to appear in many parts of Turkey in a European dress; but now the European is looked upon, not only as a creature fit to live, but as a man to be respected. The sultan himself, the great head of the nation and the religion, the vicegerent of God upon earth, has taken off the turban, and all the officers of government have followed his example. The army wears a bastard European uniform, and the great study of the sultan is to introduce European customs. Thanks to the infirmities of human nature, many of these customs have begun to insinuate themselves. The pious follower of the Prophet has dared to raise the winecup to his lips; and in many instances, at the peril of losing his paradise of houris, has given himself up to strong drink. Time was when the word of a Turk was sacred as a precept of the Koran; now he can no more be relied upon than a Jew or a Christian. He has fallen with great facility into lying, cheating, and drinking, and if the earnest efforts to change him are attended with success, perhaps we may soon add stealing and having but one wife. And all this change, this mighty fall, is ascribed by the Europeans here to the destruction of the janisaries, a band of men dangerous to government, brave, turbulent, and bloody, but of indomitable pride; who were above doing little things, and who gave a high tone to the character of the whole people. If I was not bent upon a gallop, and could stop for the jogtrot of an argument, I would say that the destruction of the janisaries is a mere incidental circumstance, and that the true cause is--_steam navigation_. Do not laugh, but listen. The Turks have ever been a proud people, possessing a sort of peacock pride, an extravagantly good opinion of themselves, and a superlative contempt for all the rest of the world. Heretofore they have had comparatively little intercourse with Europeans, consequently but little opportunity of making comparisons, and consequently, again, but little means of discovering their own inferiority. But lately things have changed; the universal peace in Europe and the introduction of steamboats into the Mediterranean have brought the Europeans and the Turks comparatively close together. It seems to me that the effect of steamboats here has as yet hardly begun to be felt. There are but few of them, indifferent boats, constantly getting out of order, and running so irregularly that no reliance can be placed upon them. But still their effects are felt, their convenience is acknowledged; and, so far as my knowledge extends, they have never been introduced anywhere yet without multiplying in numbers, and driving all other vessels off the water. Now the Mediterranean is admirably suited to the use of steamboats; indeed, the whole of these inland waters, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azoff, offer every facility that can be desired for steam navigation; and when we consider that the most interesting cities in the world are on the shores of these waters, I cannot but believe that in a very few years they will be, to a certain extent, covered with steamboats. At all events, I have no doubt that in two or three years you will be able to go from Paris to Constantinople in fifteen or twenty days; and, when that time comes, it will throw such numbers of Europeans into the East as will have a sensible effect upon the manners and customs of the people. These eastern countries will be invaded by all classes of people, travellers, merchants, and mechanics, gentlemen of elegant leisure, and blacksmiths, shoemakers, tinkers, and tailors, nay, even mantuamakers, milliners, and bandboxes, the last being an incident to civilized life as yet unknown in Turkey. Indeed, wonderful as the effects of steamboats have been under our own eyes, we are yet to see them far more wonderful in bringing into close alliance, commercial and social, people from distant countries, of different languages and habits; in removing national prejudices, and in breaking down the great characteristic distinctions of nations. Nous verrons, twenty years hence, what steamboats will have done in this part of the world!

But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in doing justice to the grand seignior. His highness has not always slept upon a bed of roses. He had to thank the petticoats of a female slave for saving his life when a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne before he found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of the general prejudices of the people, he determined to organize an army according to European tactics. He staked his throne and his head upon the issue; and it was not until he had been pushed to the desperate expedient of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet, parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and calling upon all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in short, it was not until the dead bodies of thirty thousand janisaries were floating down the Bosphorus, that he found himself the master in his own dominions. Since that time, either because he is fond of new things, or because he really sees farther than those around him, he is constantly endeavouring to introduce European improvements. For this purpose he invites talent, particularly mechanical and military, from every country, and has now around him Europeans among his most prominent men, and directing nearly all his public works.

The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and cannot help feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably the immediate effect may be to make them prone rather to catch the faults and vices than the virtues of Europeans; but afterward better things will come; they will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that is almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace a better religion.

But, however this may be, or whatever may be the cause, all ye who would see the Turk of Mohammed; the Turk who swept the plains of Asia, who leaned upon his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna, and threatened the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the Turk of the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come quickly, for he is becoming another man. A little longer, and the great characteristic distinctions will be broken down; the long pipe, the handsome pipe-bearer, and the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the seraglio are prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown open, the black eunuch and the veiled woman are no more seen, while the honest Turk trudges home from a quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones, with his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head drooping between his shoulders, taking a lecture from his better half for an involuntary sigh to the good old days that are gone. And oh you who turn up your aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages which time covers with its dim and twilight glories,

"When the world was fresh and young, And the great deluge still had left it green;"

you who come piping-hot from college, your brains teeming with recollections of the heroic ages; who would climb Mount Ida, to sit in council with the gods, come quickly, also, for all things are changing. A steamboat--shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon, forgive the sins of the day--an Austrian steamboat is now splashing the island-studded Ægean, and paddling the classic waters of the Hellespont. Oh ye princes and heroes who armed for the Trojan war, and covered these waters with your thousand ships, with what pious horror must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the impious modern monster of the deep, which strips the tall mast of its flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the propitiation of the gods, and flounders on its way in spite of wind and weather!

A new and unaccountable respect for the classics almost made me scorn the newfangled conveyance, though much to the comfort of wayfaring men; but sundry recollections of Greek caiques, and also an apprehension that there might be those yet living who had heard me in early days speak anything but respectfully of Homer, suggested to me that one man could not stem the current of the times, and that it was better for a humble individual like myself to float with the tide. This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think better of Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and smothering, as well as I could, my sense of shame, I sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for a race to Constantinople. Join me, now, in this race; and if your heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the most classic ground consecrated in history, mythology, or poetry, and in less time than ever the swiftfooted Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven o'clock on a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two hours passed the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine station, the yellow plague flag floating in the city and among the shipping; and toward dark, turning the point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance Foggi, the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on board, and, in the honesty of his heart, congratulated me upon being this time independent of the elements, without seeming to care a fig whether he profaned the memory of his ancestors in travelling by so unclassical a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the evening we were moving close to the Island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, the country of Sappho, Alcæus, and Terpander, famed for the excellence of its wine and the beauty of its women, and pre-eminently distinguished for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag now floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the abode of pestilence and death.

Early in the morning I found myself opposite the promontory of Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the ancient Troas from Æolia; a little to the right, but hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos, where the apostles stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the ruins of Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at some distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in the songs of the poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus, the island that received Vulcan after he was kicked out of heaven by Jupiter. A little farther, nearer the land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient Leucophrys, where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to have abandoned the siege of Troy. Still farther, on the mainland, is the promontory of Sigæum, where the Scamander empties into the sea, and near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles. A little farther--but hold, stop the engine! If there be a spot of classic ground on earth in which the historical, and the poetical, and the fabulous are so beautifully blended together that we would not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now. Extending for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed the earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and it is the plain of Troy, the battle-ground of heroes. Oh field of glory and of blood, little does he know, that surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough over thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war chariots, the crashing of armour, the swift flight, the hot pursuit, the shouts of victors, and the groans of the dying. Beyond it, towering to the heavens, is a lofty mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top Paris adjudged the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and paved the way for those calamities which brought on the ten years' siege, and laid in ruins the ancient city of Priam. Two small streams, taking their rise from the mountain of the gods, join each other in the middle of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters once washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus; and that small, confused, and shapeless mass of ruins, that beautiful sky and the songs of Homer, are all that remain to tell us that "Troy was." Close to the sea, and rising like mountains above the plain, are two immense mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax and Achilles. Shades of departed heroes, fain would we stop and pay the tribute which we justly owe, but we are hurried past by an engine of a hundred horse power.

Onward, still onward! We have reached the ancient Hellespont, the Dardanelles of the Turks, famed as the narrow water that divides Europe from Asia, for the beauties that adorn its banks, and for its great Turkish fortifications. Three miles wide at the mouth, it becomes gradually narrower, until, in the narrowest part, the natives of Europe and Asia can talk together from the opposite sides. For sixty miles (its whole length) it presents a continued succession of new beauties, and in the hands of Europeans, particularly English, improved as country seats, would make one of the loveliest countries in the world. I had just time to reflect that it was melancholy, and seemed inexplicable that this and other of the fairest portions of the earth should be in the hands of the Turks, who neither improve it themselves nor allow others to do so. At three o'clock we arrived at the Dardanelles, a little Turkish town in the narrowest and most beautiful part of the straits; a strong fort with enormous cannon stands frowning on each side. These are the terrible fortifications of Mohammed II., the keys of Constantinople. The guns are enormous; of one in particular, the muzzle is two feet three inches in diameter; but, with Turkish ingenuity, they are so placed as to be discharged when a ship is directly opposite. If the ship is not disabled by the first fire, and does not choose to go back and take another, she is safe. At every moment a new picture presents itself; a new fort, a new villa, or the ruins of an ancient city. A naked point on the European side, so ugly compared with all around it as to attract particular attention, projects into the strait, and here are the ruins of Sestos; here Xerxes built his bridge of boats to carry over his millions to the conquest of Greece; and here, when he returned with the wreck of his army, defeated and disgraced, found his bridge destroyed by a tempest, and, in his rage, ordered the chains to be thrown into the sea and the waves to be lashed with rods. From this point, too, Leander swam the Hellespont for love of Hero, and Lord Byron and Mr. Ekenhead for fun. Nearly opposite, close to a Turkish fort, are the ruins of Abydos. Here Xerxes, and Leander, and Lord Byron, and Mr. Ekenhead landed.

Our voyage is drawing to a close. At Gallipoli, a large Turkish town handsomely situated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, we took on board the Turkish governor, with his pipe-bearer and train of attendants, escorted by thirty or forty boats, containing three or four hundred people, his mightiness taking a deck passage. Toward evening we were entering the Sea of Marmora, the ancient Propontis, like one of our small lakes, and I again went to sleep lulled by the music of a high-pressure engine. At daylight we were approaching Constantinople; twelve miles this side, on the bank of the Sea of Marmora, is the village of St. Stephano, the residence of Commodore Porter. Here the domes and minarets of the ancient city, with their golden points and glittering crescents, began to appear in sight. High above the rest towered the mosque of Sultan Achmet and the beautiful dome of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, but now, for nearly four hundred years, closed against the Christians' feet. We approach the walls and pass a range of gloomy turrets; there are the Seven Towers, prisons, portals of the grave, whose mysteries few live to publish: the bowstring and the sea reveal no secrets. That palace, with its blinded windows and its superb garden, surrounded by a triple range of walls, is the far-famed seraglio; there beauty lingers in a splendid cage, and, lolling on her rich divan, sighs for the humblest lot and freedom. In front, that narrow water, a thousand caiques shooting through it like arrows, and its beautiful banks covered with high palaces and gardens in the oriental style, is the Thracian Bosphorus. We float around the walls of the seraglio, enter the Golden Horn, and before us, with its thousand mosques and its myriad of minarets, their golden points glittering in the sun, is the Roman city of Constantinople, the Thracian Byzantium, the Stamboul of the Turks; the city which, more than all others, excites the imagination and interests the feelings; once dividing with Rome the empire of the world; built by a Christian emperor and consecrated as a Christian city, a "burning and a shining light" in a season of universal darkness, all at once lost to the civilized world; falling into the hands of a strange and fanatic people, the gloomy followers of a successful soldier; a city which, for nearly four centuries, has sat with its gates closed in sullen distrust and haughty defiance of strangers; which once sent forth large and terrible armies, burning, slaying, and destroying, shaking the hearts of princes and people, now lying like a fallen giant, huge, unwieldy, and helpless, ready to fall into the hands of the first invader, and dragging out a precarious and ignoble existence but by the mercy or policy of the great Christian powers. The morning sun, now striking upon its domes and minarets, covers it, as it were, with burnished gold; a beautiful verdure surrounds it, and pure waters wash it on every side. Can this beautiful city, rich with the choicest gifts of Heaven, be pre-eminently the abode of pestilence and death? where a man carries about with him the seeds of disease to all whom he holds dear? if he extend the hand of welcome to a friend, if he embrace his child or rub against a stranger, the friend, and the child, and the stranger follow him to the grave? where, year after year, the angel of death stalks through the streets, and thousands and tens of thousands look him calmly in the face, and murmuring "Allah, Allah, God is merciful," with a fatal trust in the Prophet, lie down and die? We enter the city, and these questions are quickly answered. A lazy, lounging, and filthy population; beggars basking in the sun, and dogs licking their sores; streets never cleaned but by the winds and rains; immense burying-grounds all over the city; tombstones at the corners of the streets; graves gaping ready to throw out their half-buried dead, the whole approaching to one vast charnel-house, dispel all illusions and remove all doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves if it be possible that, in such a place, health can ever dwell. We wonder that it should ever, for the briefest moment, be free from that dreadful scourge which comes with every summer's sun and strews its streets with dead.

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