CHAPTER XII.

Mr. Churchill.--Commodore Porter.--Castle of the Seven Towers.--The Sultan's Naval Architect.--Launch of the Great Ship.--Sultan Mahmoud.--Jubilate.--A National Grievance.--Visit to a Mosque.--The Burial-grounds.

THERE is a good chance for an enterprising Connecticut man to set up a hotel in Constantinople. The reader will see that I have travelled with my eyes open, and I trust this shrewd observation on entering the city of the Cæsars will be considered characteristic and American. Paul was at home in Pera, and conducted us to the Hotel d'Italia, which was so full that we could not get admission, and so vile a place that we were not sorry for it. We then went to Madame Josephine's, a sort of private boarding-house, but excellent of its kind. We found there a collection of travellers, English, French, German, and Russian, and the dinner was particularly social; but Dr. N. was so disgusted with the clatter of foreign tongues, that he left the table with the first course, and swore he would not stay there another day. We tried to persuade him. I reminded him that there was an Englishman among them, but this only made him worse; he hated an Englishman, and wondered how I, as an American, could talk with one as I had with him. In short, he was resolved, and had Paul running about every street in Pera looking for rooms. Notwithstanding his impracticabilities as a traveller, I liked the doctor, and determined to follow him, and before breakfast the next morning we were installed in a suite of rooms in the third story of a house opposite the old palace of the British ambassador.

For two or three days I was _hors du combat_, and put myself under the hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian, educated at Edinburgh, whom I cordially recommend both for his kindness and medical skill. On going out, one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill, a gentleman whose name has since rung throughout Europe, and who at one time seemed likely to be the cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war. He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient Chalcedon, in Asia; and I have seldom been more shocked than by reading in a newspaper, while in the lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally shot a Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized by the Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, _bastinadoed_ till he was almost dead. I had seen the infliction of that horrible punishment; and, besides the physical pain, there was a sense of the indignity that roused every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious spirit with which the Turks would stand around and see a Christian scourged. The civilized world owes a deep debt of gratitude to the English government for the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the sultan, and the firmness with which it insisted on, and obtained, the most ample redress for Mr. Churchill, and atonement for the insult offered to all Christendom in his person.

My companions and myself had received several invitations from Commodore Porter, and, accompanied by Mr. Dwight, one of our American missionaries, to whom I am under particular obligations for his kindness, early in the morning we took a caique with three athletic Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio point to the Seven Towers, a distance of five miles, being close under the walls of the city, in two hours reached the commodore's residence at St. Stephano, twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders of the Sea of Marmora. The situation is beautiful, abounding in fruit-trees, among which are some fig trees of the largest size; and the commodore was then engaged in building a large addition to his house. It will be remembered that Commodore Porter was the first envoy ever sent by the United States' government to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, with the other members of the diplomatic corps; but his salary as chargé being inadequate to sustain a becoming style, he had withdrawn to this place. I had never seen Commodore Porter before. I afterward passed a month with him in the lazaretto at Malta, and I trust he will not consider me presuming when I say that our acquaintance ripened into friendship. He is entirely different from the idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten, much broken in health, and remarkably mild and quiet in his manners. His eye is his best feature, though even that does not indicate the desperate hardihood of character which he has exhibited on so many occasions. Perhaps I ought not to say so, but he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I could not but think that he ought still to be standing in the front rank of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke with great bitterness of the Foxardo affair, and gave me an account of an interesting interview between General Jackson and himself on his recall from South America. General Jackson wished him to resume his rank in the navy, but he answered that he would never accept service with men who had suspended him for doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation, was done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."

At the primitive hour of one we sat down to a regular family dinner. We were all Americans. The commodore's sister, who was living with him, presided, and we looked out on the Sea of Marmora and talked of home. I cannot describe the satisfaction of these meetings of Americans so far from their own country. I have often experienced it most powerfully in the houses of the missionaries in the East. Besides having, in many instances, the same acquaintances, we had all the same habits and ways of thinking; their articles of furniture were familiar to me, and there was scarcely a house in which I did not find an article unknown except among Americans, a Boston rocking-chair.

We talked over the subject of our difficulties with France, then under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, and I remember that Commodore Porter was strong in the opinion that the bill paying the debt would pass. Before rising from table, the commodore's janisary came down from Constantinople, with papers and letters just arrived by the courier from Paris. He told me that I should have the honour of breaking the seals, and I took out the paper so well known all over Europe, "Galignani's Messenger," and had the satisfaction of reading aloud, in confirmation of the commodore's opinion, that the bill for paying the American claims had passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority.

About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return to Constantinople. In an hour Mr. D. and I landed at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few things in this ancient city interested me more than my walk around its walls. We followed them the whole extent on the land side, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five gates, the principal of which is the Cannon Gate, through which Mohammed II. made his triumphal entry into the Christian city. They have not been repaired since the city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the same walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended city;" to a great extent, they are the same walls which the first Constantine built and the last Constantine died in defending. Time has laid his ruining hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of modern war. The moat and fossé have alike lost their warlike character, and bloom and blossom with the vine and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than the venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can reach, is one continued burying-ground, with thousands and tens of thousands of turbaned headstones, shaded by thick groves of the mourning cypress. Opposite the Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected from all around, containing five headstones in a row, over the bodies of Ali Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina, and his four sons. The fatal mark of death by the bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of the Porte. It was toward the sunset of a beautiful evening, and all Stamboul was out among the tombs. At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in a caique, and in a few minutes were in Pera.

The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went up to the shipyards at the head of the Golden Horn to visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter from a friend in Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is a native of Long Island, but from his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great pleasure in saying that he is an honour to our state and country. The reader will remember that, some years ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens, under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left his native city. He sailed from New-York in a beautiful corvette, its destination unknown, and came to anchor under the walls of the seraglio in the harbour of Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life" on the waters of the Golden Horn, a model of beauty.

The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great nation if she could spare from her service such a man. Had he lived, even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant pecuniary reward. Mr. Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of completing his employer's work devolved on him. It could not have fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman shipbuilder, all at once Mr. Rhodes found himself brought into close relations with the seraskier pacha, the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself; but his good sense never deserted him. He was then preparing for the launch of the great ship; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions of every ship that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the ship and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the sultan. He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without whiskers or mustache, and, except that he wore the tarbouch, was thorough American in his appearance and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by his side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached Turks, and in the same breath he was talking with me of shipbuilders in New-York, and people and things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes knows and cares but little for things that do not immediately concern him; his whole thoughts are of his business, and in that he possesses an ambition and industry worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion, particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic government, I may mention that, while standing near the ship and remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her name, and he told me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern, and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not be able to answer when asked. I have seldom met a countryman abroad with whom I was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a pinnacle in my estimation by telling me that, if I came to the yard the next day at one, I would see the sultan! There was no man living whom I had a greater curiosity to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but the sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness had come two hours before the time; had accompanied Mr. Rhodes over the ship, and left the yard less than five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still lying at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays of refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and two black eunuchs belonging to the seraglio, handsomely dressed in long black cloaks of fine pelisse cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers, were still lingering about the ship, their effeminate faces and musical voices at once betraying their neutral character.

The next was the day of the launch; and early in the morning, in the suite of Commodore Porter, I went on board an old steamer provided by the sultan expressly for the use of Mr. Rhodes's American friends. The waters of the Golden Horn were already covered; thousands of caiques, with their high sharp points, were cutting through it, or resting like gulls upon its surface; and there were ships with the still proud banner of the crescent, and strangers with the flags of every nation in Christendom, and sailboats, longboats, and rowboats, ambassadors' barges, and caiques of effendis, beys, and pachas, with red silk flags streaming in the wind, while countless thousands were assembled on the banks to behold the extraordinary spectacle of an American ship, the largest in the world, launched in the harbour of old Stamboul. The sultan was then living at his beautiful palace at Sweet Waters, and was obliged to pass by our boat; he had made a great affair of the launch; had invited all the diplomatic corps, and, through the reis effendi, particularly requested the presence of Commodore Porter; had stationed his harem on the opposite side of the river; and as I saw prepared for himself near the ship a tent of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, I expected to see him appear in all the pomp and splendour of the greatest potentate on earth. I had already seen enough to convince me that the days of Eastern magnificence had gone by, or that the gorgeous scenes which my imagination had always connected with the East had never existed; but still I could not divest myself of the lingering idea of the power and splendour of the sultan. His commanding style to his own subjects: "I command you, ----, my slave, that you bring the head of ----, my slave, and lay it at my feet;" and then his lofty tone with foreign powers: "I, who am, by the infinite grace of the great, just, and all-powerful Creator, and the abundance of the miracles of the chief of his prophets, emperor of powerful emperors; refuge of sovereigns; distributor of crowns to the kings of the earth; keeper of the two very holy cities (Mecca and Medina); governor of the holy city of Jerusalem; master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, conquered with our victorious sword and our terrible lance; lord of two seas (Black and White); of Damascus, the odour of Paradise; of Bagdad, the seat of the califs; of the fortresses of Belgrade, Agra, and a multitude of countries, isles, straits, people, generations, and of so many victorious armies who repose under the shade of our Sublime Porte; I, in short, who am the shadow of God upon earth;" I was rolling these things through my mind when a murmur, "the sultan is coming," turned me to the side of the boat, and one view dispelled all my gorgeous fancies. There was no style, no state, a citizen king, a republican president, or a democratic governor, could not have made a more unpretending appearance than did this "shadow of God upon earth." He was seated in the bottom of a large caique, dressed in the military frockcoat and red tarbouch, with his long black beard, the only mark of a Turk about him, and he moved slowly along the vacant space cleared for his passage, boats with the flags of every nation, and thousands of caiques falling back, and the eyes of the immense multitude earnestly fixed upon him, but without any shouts or acclamations; and when he landed at the little dock, and his great officers bowed to the dust before him, he looked the plainest, mildest, kindest man among them. I had wished to see him as a wholesale murderer, who had more blood upon his hands than any man living; who had slaughtered the janisaries, drenched the plains of Greece, to say nothing of bastinadoes, impalements, cutting off heads, and tying up in sacks, which are taking place every moment; but I will not believe that Sultan Mahmoud finds any pleasure in shedding blood. Dire necessity, or, as he himself would say, fate, has ever been driving him on. I look upon him as one of the most interesting characters upon earth; as the creature of circumstances, made bloody and cruel by the necessities of his position. I look at his past life and at that which is yet in store for him, through all the stormy scenes he is to pass until he completes his unhappy destiny, the last of a powerful and once-dreaded race, bearded by those who once crouched at the footstool of his ancestors, goaded by rebellious vassals, conscious that he is going a downward road, and yet unable to resist the impulse that drives him on. Like the strong man encompassed with a net, he finds no avenue of escape, and cannot break through it.

The seraskier pacha and other principal officers escorted him to his tent, and now all the interest which I had taken in the sultan was transferred to Mr. Rhodes. He had great anxiety about the launch, and many difficulties to contend with: first, in the Turks' jealousy of a stranger, which obliged him to keep constantly on the watch lest some of his ropes should be cut or fastenings knocked away; and he had another Turkish prejudice to struggle against: the day had been fixed twice before, but the astronomers found an unfortunate conjunction of the stars, and it was postponed, and even then the stars were unpropitious; but Mr. Rhodes had insisted that the work had gone so far that it could not be stopped. And, besides these, he had another great difficulty in his ignorance of their language. With more than a thousand men under him, all his orders had to pass through interpreters, and often, too, the most prompt action was necessary, and the least mistake might prove fatal. Fortunately, he was protected from treachery by the kindness of Mr. Churchill and Dr. Zohrab, one of whom stood on the bow and the other in the stern of the ship, and through whom every order was transmitted in Turkish. Probably none there felt the same interest that we did; for the flags of the barbarian and every nation in Christendom were waving around us, and at that distance from home the enterprise of a single citizen enlisted the warmest feelings of every American. We watched the ship with as keen an interest as if our own honour and success in life depended upon her movements. For a long time she remained perfectly quiet. At length she moved, slowly and almost imperceptibly; and then, as if conscious that the eyes of an immense multitude were on her, and that the honour of a distant nation was in some measure at stake, she marched proudly to the water, plunged in with a force that almost buried her, and, rising like a huge leviathan, parted the foaming waves with her bow, and rode triumphantly upon them. Even Mussulman indifference was disturbed; all petty jealousies were hushed; the whole immense mass was roused into admiration; loud and long-continued shouts of applause rose with one accord from Turks and Christians, and the sultan was so transported that he jumped up and clapped his hands like a schoolboy.

Mr. Rhodes's triumph was complete; the sultan called him to his tent, and with his own hands fixed on the lappel of his coat a gold medal set in diamonds, representing the launching of a ship. Mr. Rhodes has attained among strangers the mark of every honourable man's ambition, the head of his profession. He has put upon the water what Commodore Porter calls the finest ship that ever floated, and has a right to be proud of his position and prospects under the "shade of the Sublime Porte." The sultan wishes to confer upon him the title of chief naval constructor, and to furnish him with a house and a caique with four oars. In compliment to his highness, who detests a hat, Mr. Rhodes wears the tarbouch; but he declines all offices and honours, and anything that may tend to fix him as a Turkish subject, and looks to return and enjoy in his own country and among his own people the fruits of his honourable labours. If the good wishes of a friend can avail him, he will soon return to our city rich with the profits of untiring industry, and an honourable testimony to his countrymen of the success of American skill and enterprise abroad.

To go back a moment. All day the great ship lay in the middle of the Golden Horn, while perhaps more than a hundred thousand Turks shot round her in their little caiques, looking up from the surface of the water to her lofty deck: and in Pera, wherever I went, perhaps because I was an American, the only thing I heard of was the American ship. Proud of the admiration excited so far from home by this noble specimen of the skill of an American citizen, I unburden myself of a long-smothered subject of complaint against my country. I cry out with a loud voice for _reform_, not in the hackneyed sense of petty politicians, but by a liberal and enlarged expenditure of public money; by increasing the outfits and salaries of our foreign ambassadors and ministers. We claim to be rich, free from debt, and abundant in resources, and yet every American abroad is struck with a feeling of mortification at the inability of his representative to take that position in social life to which the character of his country entitles him. We may talk of republican simplicity as we will, but there are certain usages of society and certain appendages of rank which, though they may be unmeaning and worthless, are sanctioned, if not by the wisdom, at least by the practice of all civilized countries. We have committed a fatal error since the time when Franklin appeared at the court of France in a plain citizen's dress; everywhere our representative conforms to the etiquette of the court to which he is accredited, and it is too late to go back and begin anew; and now, unless our representative is rich and willing to expend his own fortune for the honour of the nation, he is obliged to withdraw from the circles and position in which he has a right and ought to move, or to move in them on an inferior footing, under an acknowledgment of inability to appear as an equal.

And again: our whole consular system is radically wrong, disreputable, and injurious to our character and interests. While other nations consider the support of their consuls a part of the expenses of their government, we suffer ourselves to be represented by merchants, whose pecuniary interests are mixed up with all the local and political questions that affect the place and who are under a strong inducement to make their office subservient to their commercial relations. I make no imputations against any of them. I could not if I would, for I do not know an American merchant holding the office who is not a respectable man; but the representative of our country ought to be the representative of our country only; removed from any distracting or conflicting interests, standing like a watchman to protect the honour of his nation and the rights of her citizens. And more than this, all over the Mediterranean there are ports where commerce presents no inducements to the American merchant, and there the office falls into the hands of the natives; and at this day the American arms are blazoned on the doors, and the American flag is waving over the houses, of Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Arabs, and all the mongrel population of that inland sea; and in the ports under the dominion of Turkey particularly, the office is coveted as a means of protecting the holder against the liabilities to his own government, and of revenue by selling that protection to others. I will not mention them by name, for I bear them no ill will personally, and I have received kindness from most of the petty vagabonds who live under the folds of the American flag; but the consuls at Gendoa and Algiers are a disgrace to the American name. Congress has lately turned its attention to this subject, and will, before long, I hope, effect a complete change in the character of our consular department, and give it the respectability which it wants; the only remedy is by following the example of other nations, in fixing salaries to the office, and forbidding the holders to engage in trade. Besides the leading inducements to this change, there is a secondary consideration, which, in my eyes, is not without its value, in that it would furnish a valuable school of instruction for our young men. The offices would be sought by such. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a year would maintain them respectably, in most of the ports of the Mediterranean, and young men resident in those places, living upon salaries, and not obliged to engage in commerce, would employ their leisure hours in acquiring the language of the country, in communicating with the interior, and among them would return upon us an accumulation of knowledge far more than repaying us for all the expense of supporting them abroad.

Doubtless the reader expects other things in Constantinople; but all things are changing. The day has gone by when the Christian could not cross the threshold of a mosque and live. Even the sacred mosque of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, so long closed against the Christians' feet, now, upon great occasions, again opens its doors to the descendants of its Christian builders. One of these great occasions happened while I was there. The sultan gave a firman to the French ambassador, under which all the European residents and travellers visited it. Unfortunately, I was unwell, and could not go out that day, and was obliged afterward to content myself with walking around its walls, with uplifted eyes and a heavy heart, admiring the glittering crescent and thinking of the prostrate cross.

But no traveller can leave Constantinople without having seen the interior of a mosque; and accordingly, under the guidance of Mustapha, the janisary of the British consul, I visited the mosque of Sultan Suliman, next in point of beauty to that of St. Sophia, though far inferior in historical interest. At an early hour we crossed the Golden Horn to old Stamboul; threaded our way through its narrow and intricate streets to an eminence near the seraskier pacha's tower; entered by a fine gateway into a large courtyard, more than a thousand feet square, handsomely paved and ornamented with noble trees, and enclosed by a high wall; passed a marble fountain of clear and abundant water, where, one after another, the faithful stopped to make their ablutions; entered a large colonnade, consisting of granite and marble pillars of every form and style, the plunder of ancient temples, worked in without much regard to architectural fitness, yet, on the whole, producing a fine effect; pulled off our shoes at the door, and, with naked feet and noiseless step, crossed the sacred threshold of the mosque. Silently we moved among the kneeling figures of the faithful scattered about in different parts of the mosque and engaged in prayer; paused for a moment under the beautiful dome sustained by four columns from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; leaned against a marble pillar which may have supported, two thousand years ago, the praying figure of a worshipper of the great goddess; gazed at the thousand small lamps suspended from the lofty ceiling, each by a separate cord, and with a devout feeling left the mosque.

In the rear, almost concealed from view by a thick grove of trees, shrubs, and flowers, is a circular building about forty feet in diameter, containing the tomb of Suliman, the founder of the mosque, his brother, his favourite wife Roxala, and two other wives. The monuments are in the form of sarcophagi, with pyramidal tops, covered with rich Cashmere shawls, having each at the head a large white turban, and enclosed by a railing covered with mother-of-pearl. The great beauty of the sepulchral chamber is its dome, which is highly ornamented, and sparkles with brilliants. In one corner is a plan of Mecca, the holy temple, and tomb of the Prophet.

In the afternoon I went for the last time to the Armenian burying-ground. In the East the graveyards are the general promenades, the places of rendezvous, and the lounging-places; and in Constantinople the Armenian burying-ground is the most beautiful, and the favourite. Situated in the suburbs of Pera, overlooking the Bosphorus, shaded by noble palm-trees, almost regularly toward evening I found myself sitting upon the same tombstone, looking upon the silvery water at my feet, studded with palaces, flashing and glittering with caiques from the golden palace of the sultan to the seraglio point, and then turned to the animated groups thronging the burying-ground; the Armenian in his flowing robes, the dashing Greek, the stiff and out-of-place-looking Frank; Turks in their gay and bright costume, glittering arms, and solemn beards, enjoying the superlative of existence in dozing over their pipe; and women in long white veils, apart under some delightful shade, in little picnic parties, eating ices and confectionary. Here and there, toward the outskirts, was the araba, the only wheeled carriage known among the Turks, with a long low body, highly carved and gilded, drawn by oxen fancifully trimmed with ribands, and filled with soft cushions, on which the Turkish and Armenian ladies almost buried themselves. Instead of the cypress, the burying-ground is shaded by noble plane-trees; and the tombstones, instead of being upright, are all flat, having at the head a couple of little niches scooped out to hold water, with the beautiful idea to induce birds to come there and drink and sing among the trees. Their tombstones, too, have another mark, which, in a country where men are apt to forget who their fathers were, would exclude them even from that place where all mortal distinctions are laid low, viz., a mark indicating the profession or occupation of the deceased; as, a pair of shears to mark the grave of a tailor; a razor that of a barber; and on many of them was another mark indicating the manner of death, the bowstring, or some other mark, showing that the stone covered a victim of Turkish cruelty. But all these things are well known; nothing has escaped the prying eyes of curious travellers; and I merely state, for my own credit's sake, that I followed the steps of those who had gone before me, visited the Sweet Waters, Scutary, and Belgrade, the reservoirs, aqueducts, and ruins of the palace of Constantine, and saw the dancing dervishes; rowed up the Bosphorus to Buyukdere, lunched under the tree where Godfrey encamped with his gallant crusaders, and looked out upon the Black Sea from the top of the Giant's Mountain.