CHAPTER XIII.

Visit to the Slave-market.--Horrors of Slavery.--Departure from Stamboul.--The stormy Euxine.--Odessa.--The Lazaretto.--Russian Civility.--Returning Good for Evil.

THE day before I left Constantinople I went, in company with Dr. N. and his son, and attended by Paul, to visit the slave-market; crossing over to Stamboul, we picked up a Jew in the bazars, who conducted us through a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets to a quarter of the city from which it would have been utterly impossible for me to extricate myself alone. I only know that it was situated on high ground, and that we passed through a gateway into a hollow square of about a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet on each side. It was with no small degree of emotion that I entered this celebrated place, where so many Christian hearts have trembled; and, before crossing the threshold, I ran over in my mind all the romantic stories and all the horrible realities that I could remember connected with its history: the tears of beauty, the pangs of brave men, and so down to the unsentimental exclamation of Johnson to his new friend Don Juan:

"Yon black eunuch seems to eye us; I wish to God that somebody would buy us."

The bazar forms a hollow square, with little chambers about fifteen feet each way around it, in which the slaves belonging to the different dealers are kept. A large shed or portico projects in front, under which, and in front of each chamber, is a raised platform, with a low railing around it, where the slave-merchant sits and gossips, and dozes over his coffee and pipes. I had heard so little of this place, and it was so little known among Europeans, taking into consideration, moreover, that in a season of universal peace the market must be without a supply of captives gained in war, that I expected to see but a remnant of the ancient traffic, supposing that I should find but few slaves, and those only black; but, to my surprise, I found there twenty or thirty white women. Bad, horrible as this traffic is under any circumstances, to my habits and feelings it loses a shade of its horrors when confined to blacks; but here whites and blacks were exposed together in the same bazar. The women were from Circassia and the regions of the Caucasus, that country so renowned for beauty; they were dressed in the Turkish costume, with the white shawl wrapped around the mouth and chin, and over the forehead, shading the eyes, so that it was difficult to judge with certainty as to their personal appearance. Europeans are not permitted to purchase, and their visits to this bazar are looked upon with suspicion. If we stopped long opposite a door, it was closed upon us; but I was not easily shaken off, and returned so often at odd times, that I succeeded in seeing pretty distinctly all that was to be seen. In general, the best slaves are not exposed in the bazars, but are kept at the houses of the dealers; but there was one among them not more than seventeen, with a regular Circassian face, a brilliantly fair complexion, a mild and cheerful expression; and in the slave-market, under the partial disguise of the Turkish shawl, it required no great effort of the imagination to make her decidedly beautiful. Paul stopped, and with a burst of enthusiasm, the first I had discovered in him, exclaimed "Quelle beauté!" She noticed my repeatedly stopping before her bazar; and, when I was myself really disposed to be sentimental, instead of drooping her head with the air of a distressed heroine, to my great surprise she laughed and nodded, and beckoned me to come to her. Paul was very much struck; and repeating his warm expression of admiration at her beauty, told me that she wanted me to buy her. Without waiting for a reply, he went off and inquired the price, which was two hundred and fifty dollars; and added that he could easily get some Turk to let me buy her in his name, and then I could put her on board a vessel, and carry her where I pleased. I told him it was hardly worth while at present; and he, thinking my objection was merely to the person, in all honesty and earnestness told me he had been there frequently, and never saw anything half so handsome; adding that, if I let slip this opportunity, I would scarcely have another as good, and wound up very significantly by declaring that, if he was a gentleman, he would not hesitate a moment. A gentleman, in the sense in which Paul understood the word, is apt to fall into irregular ways in the East. Removed from the restraints which operate upon men in civilized countries, if he once breaks through the trammels of education, he goes all lengths; and it is said to be a matter of general remark, that slaves are always worse treated by Europeans than by the Turks. The slave-dealers are principally Jews, who buy children when young, and, if they have beauty train up the girls in such accomplishments as may fascinate the Turks. Our guide told us that, since the Greek revolution, the slave-market had been comparatively deserted; but, during the whole of that dreadful struggle, every day presented new horrors; new captives were brought in, the men raving and struggling, and vainly swearing eternal vengeance against the Turks, and the women shrieking distractedly in the agony of a separation. After the massacre at Scio, in particular, hundreds of young girls, with tears streaming down their cheeks, and bursting hearts, were sold to the unhallowed embraces of the Turks for a few dollars a head. We saw nothing of the horrors and atrocities of this celebrated slave-market. Indeed, except prisoners of war and persons captured by Turkish corsairs, the condition of those who now fill the slave-market is not the horrible lot that a warm imagination might suppose. They are mostly persons in a semibarbarous state; blacks from Sennaar and Abyssinia, or whites from the regions of the Caucasus, bought from their parents for a string of beads or a shawl; and, in all probability, the really beautiful girl whom I saw had been sold by parents who could not feed or clothe her, who considered themselves rid of an encumbrance, and whom she left without regret; and she, having left poverty and misery behind her, looked to the slave-market as the sole means of advancing her fortune; and, in becoming the favoured inmate of a harem, expected to attain a degree of happiness she could never have enjoyed at home.

I intended to go from Constantinople to Egypt, but the plague was raging there so violently that it would have been foolhardy to attempt it; and while making arrangements with a Tartar to return to Europe on horseback across the Balkan, striking the Danube at Semlin and Belgrade, a Russian government steamer was advertised for Odessa; and as this mode of travelling at that moment suited my health better, I altered my whole plan, and determined to leave the ruined countries of the Old World for a land just emerging from a state of barbarism, and growing into gigantic greatness. With great regret I took leave of Dr. N. and his son, who sailed the same day for Smyrna, and I have never seen them since. Paul was the last man to whom I said farewell. At the moment of starting my shirts were brought in dripping wet, and Paul bestowed a malediction upon the Greek while he wrung them out and tumbled them into my carpet-bag. I afterward found him at Malta, whence he accompanied me on my tour in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land, by which he is, perhaps, already known to some of my readers.

With my carpet-bag on the shoulders of a Turk, I walked for the last time to Tophana. A hundred caiquemen gathered around me, but I pushed them all back, and kept guard over my carpet-bag, looking out for one whom I had been in the habit of employing ever since my arrival in Constantinople. He soon spied me; and when he took my luggage and myself into his caique, manifested that he knew it was for the last time. Having an hour to spare, I directed him to row once more under the walls of the seraglio; and still loath to leave, I went on shore and walked around the point, until I was stopped by a Turkish bayonet. The Turk growled, and his mustache curled fiercely as he pointed it at me. I had been stopped by Frenchmen, Italians, and by a mountain Greek, but found nothing that brings a man to such a dead stand as the Turkish bayonet.

I returned to my caique, and went on board the steamer. She was a Russian government vessel, more classically called a pyroscaphe, a miserable old thing; and yet as much form and circumstance were observed in sending her off as in fitting out an _exploring expedition_. Consuls' and ambassadors' boats were passing and repassing, and after an enormous fuss and preparation, we started under a salute of cannon, which was answered from one of the sultan's frigates. We had the usual scene of parting with friends, waving of handkerchiefs, and so on; and feeling a little lonely at the idea of leaving a city containing a million inhabitants without a single friend to bid me Godspeed, I took my place on the quarter-deck, and waved my handkerchief to my caiqueman, who, I have no doubt, independent of the loss of a few piasters per day, was very sorry to lose me; for we had been so long together, that, in spite of our ignorance of each other's language, we understood each other perfectly.

I found on board two Englishmen whom I had met at Corfu, and a third, who had joined them at Smyrna, going to travel in the Crimea; our other cabin-passengers were Mr. Luoff, a Russian officer, an aiddecamp of the emperor, just returned from travels in Egypt and Syria, Mr. Perseani, secretary to the Russian legation in Greece; a Greek merchant, with a Russian protection, on his way to the Sea of Azoff; and a French merchant of Odessa. The tub of a steamboat dashed up the Bosphorus at the rate of three miles an hour; while the classic waters, as if indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, blustering monster upon their surface, seemed to laugh at her unwieldy and ineffectual efforts. Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, lined on the European side almost with one continued range of houses, exhibiting in every beautiful nook a palace of the sultan, and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces of the foreign ambassadors; passed the Giant's Mountain, and about an hour before dark were entering a new sea, the dark and stormy Euxine.

Advancing, the hills became more lofty and ragged, terminating on the Thracian side in high rocky precipices. The shores of this extremity of the Bosphorus were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples, monuments of the fears or gratitude of mariners who were about to leave, or who had escaped, the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine; and the remains of these antiquities were so great that a traveller almost in our own day describes the coasts as "covered by their ruins." The castles on the European and the Asiatic side of the strait are supposed to occupy the sites where stood, in ancient days, the great temples of Jupiter Serapis and Jupiter Urius. The Bosphorus opens abruptly, without any enlargement at its mouth, between two mountains. The parting view of the strait, or, rather, of the coast on each side, was indescribably grand, presenting a stupendous wall opposed to the great bed of waters, as if torn asunder by an earthquake, leaving a narrow rent for their escape. On each side, a miserable lantern on the top of a tower, hardly visible at the distance of a few miles, is the only light to guide the mariner at night; and as there is another opening called the false Bosphorus, the entrance is difficult and dangerous, and many vessels are lost here annually.

As the narrow opening closed before me, I felt myself entering a new world; I was fairly embarked upon that wide expanse of water which once, according to ancient legends, mingled with the Caspian, and covered the great oriental plain of Tartary, and upon which Jason, with his adventurous Argonauts, having killed the dragon and carried off the golden fleece from Colchis, if those same legends be true (which some doubt), sailed across to the great ocean. I might and should have speculated upon the great changes in the face of nature and the great deluge recorded by Grecian historians and poets, which burst the narrow passage of the Thracian Bosphorus for the outlet of the mighty waters; but who could philosophize in a steamboat on the Euxine? Oh Fulton! much as thou hast done for mechanics and the useful arts, thy hand has fallen rudely upon all cherished associations. We boast of thee; I have myself been proud of thee as an American; but as I sat at evening on the stern of the steamer, and listened to the clatter of the engine, and watched the sparks rushing out of the high pipes, and remembered that this was on the dark and inhospitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had begun after mine was ended. I trust I did his memory no wrong; but if I had borne him malice, I could not have wished him worse than to have all his dreams of the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own engines.

I turned away from storied associations to a new country grown up in our own day. We escaped, and, I am obliged to say, without noticing them, the Cyaneæ, "the blue Symplegades," or "wandering islands," which, lying on the European and Asiatic side, floated about, or, according to Pliny, "were alive, and moved to and fro more swiftly than the blast," and in passing through which the good ship Argo had a narrow escape, and lost the extremity of her stern. History and poetry have invested this sea with extraordinary and ideal terrors; but my experience both of the Mediterranean and Black Sea was unfortunate for realizing historical and poetical accounts. I had known the beautiful Mediterranean a sea of storm and sunshine, in which the storm greatly predominated. I found the stormy Euxine calm as an untroubled lake; in fact, the Black Sea is in reality nothing more than a lake, not as large as many of our own, receiving the waters of the great rivers of the north: the Don, the Cuban, the Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube, and pouring their collected streams through the narrow passage of the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean. Still, if the number of shipwrecks be any evidence of its character, it is indeed entitled to its ancient reputation of a dangerous sea, though probably these accidents proceed, in a great measure, from the ignorance and unskilfulness of mariners, and the want of proper charts and of suitable lighthouses at the opening of the Bosphorus. At all events, we outblustered the winds and waves with our steamboat; passed the Serpent Isles, the ancient Leuce, with a roaring that must have astonished the departed heroes whose souls, according to the ancient poets, were sent there to enjoy perpetual paradise, and scared the aquatic birds which every morning dipped their wings in the sea, and sprinkled the Temple of Achilles, and swept with their plumage its sacred pavement.

On the third day we made the low coast of Moldavia or Bess Arabia, within a short distance of Odessa, the great seaport of Southern Russia. Here, too, there was nothing to realize preconceived notions; for, instead of finding a rugged region of eternal snows, we were suffering under an intensely hot sun when we cast anchor in the harbour of Odessa. The whole line of the coast is low and destitute of trees; but Odessa is situated on a high bank; and, with its beautiful theatre, the exchange, the palace of the governor, &c., did not look like a city which, thirty years ago, consisted only of a few fishermen's huts.

The harbour of Odessa is very much exposed to the north and east winds, which often cause great damage to the shipping. Many hundred anchors cover the bottom, which cut the rope cables; and, the water being shallow, vessels are often injured by striking on them. An Austrian brig going out, having struck one, sank in ten minutes. There are two moles, the quarantine mole, in which we came to anchor, being the principal. Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour, the yellow indicating those undergoing purification, and the red the fatal presence of the plague. We were prepared to undergo a vexatious process. At Constantinople I had heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment of lazaretto subjects, and the rough, barbarous manners of the Russians to travellers, and we had a foretaste of the light in which we were to be regarded, in the conduct of the health-officer who came alongside. He offered to take charge of any letters for the town, purify them that night, and deliver them in the morning; and, according to his directions, we laid them down on the deck, where he took them up with a pair of long iron tongs, and putting them into an iron box, shut it up and rowed off.

In the morning, having received notice that the proper officers were ready to attend us, we went ashore. We landed in separate boats at the end of a long pier, and, forgetting our supposed pestiferous influence, were walking up toward a crowd of men whom we saw there, when their retrograde movements, their gestures, and unintelligible shouts reminded us of our situation. One of our party, in a sort of ecstasy at being on shore, ran capering up the docks, putting to flight a group of idlers, and, single-handed, might have depopulated the city of Odessa, if an ugly soldier with a bayonet had not met him in full career and put a stop to his gambols. The soldier conducted us to a large building at the upper end of the pier; and carefully opening the door, and falling back so as to avoid even the wind that might blow from us in his direction, told us to go in. At the other end of a large room, divided by two parallel railings, sat officers and clerks to examine our passports and take a general account of us. We were at once struck with the military aspect of things, every person connected with the establishment wearing a military uniform; and now commenced a long process. The first operation was to examine our passports, take down our names, and make a memorandum of the purposes for which we severally entered the dominions of the emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. We were all called up, one after the other, captain, cook, and cabin-boy, cabin and deck passengers; and never, perhaps, did steamboat pour forth a more motley assemblage than we presented. We were Jews, Turks, and Christians; Russians, Poles, and Germans; English, French, and Italians; Austrians, Greeks, and Illyrians; Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians; Armenians, Georgians, and Africans; and one American. I had before remarked the happy facility of the Russians in acquiring languages, and I saw a striking instance in the officer who conducted the examination, and who addressed every man in his own language with apparently as much facility as though it had been his native tongue. After the oral commenced a corporeal examination. We were ordered one by one into an adjoining room, where, on the other side of a railing, stood a doctor, who directed us to open our shirt bosoms, and slap our hands smartly under our arms and upon our groins, these being the places where the fatal plague-marks first exhibit themselves.

This over, we were forthwith marched to the lazaretto, escorted by guards and soldiers, who behaved very civilly and kept at a respectful distance from us. Among our deck passengers were forty or fifty Jews, dirty and disgusting objects, just returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. An old man, who seemed to be, in a manner, the head of the party, and exceeded them all in rags and filthiness, but was said to be rich, in going up to the lazaretto amused us and vexed the officers by sitting down on the way, paying no regard to them when they urged him on, being perfectly assured that they would not dare to touch him. Once he resolutely refused to move; they threatened and swore at him, but he kept his place until one got a long pole and punched him on ahead.

In this way we entered the lazaretto; but if it had not been called by that name, and if we had not looked upon it as a place where we were compelled to stay for a certain time, nolens volens, we should have considered it a beautiful spot. It is situated on high ground, within an enclosure of some fifteen or twenty acres, overlooking the Black Sea, laid out in lawn and gravel walks, and ornamented with rows of acacia-trees. Fronting the sea was a long range of buildings divided into separate apartments, each with a little courtyard in front containing two or three acacias. The director, a fine, military-looking man, with a decoration on his lapel, met us on horseback within the enclosure, and with great suavity of manner said that he could not bid us welcome to a prison, but that we should have the privilege of walking at will over the grounds, and visiting each other, subject only to the attendance of a guardiano; and that all that could contribute to our comfort should be done for us.

We then selected our rooms, and underwent another personal examination. This was the real touchstone; the first was a mere preliminary observation by a medical understrapper; but this was conducted by a more knowing doctor. We were obliged to strip naked; to give up the clothes we pulled off, and put on a flannel gown, drawers, and stockings, and a woollen cap provided by the government, until our own should be smoked and purified. In everything, however, the most scrupulous regard was paid to our wishes, and a disposition was manifested by all to make this rather vexatious proceeding as little annoying as possible. The bodily examination was as delicate as the nature of the case would admit; for the doctor merely opened the door, looked in, and went out without taking his hand from off the knob. It was none of my business, I know, and may be thought impertinent, but, as he closed the door, I could not help calling him back to ask him whether he held the same inquisition upon the fair sex; to which he replied with a melancholy upturning of the eyes that in the good old days of Russian barbarism this had been part of his duties, but that the march of improvement had invaded his rights, and given this portion of his professional duties to a _sage femme_.

All our effects were then taken to another chamber, and arranged on lines, each person superintending the disposition of his own, so as to prevent all confusion, and left there to be fumigated with sulphuric acid for twenty-four hours. So particular were they in fumigating everything susceptible of infection, that I was obliged to leave there a black riband which I wore round my neck as a guard to my watch. Toward evening the principal director, one of the most gentlemanly men I ever met, came round, and with many apologies and regrets for his inability to receive us better, requested us to call upon him freely for anything we might want. Not knowing any of us personally, he did me the honour to say that he understood there was an American in the party, who had been particularly recommended to him by a Russian officer and fellow-passenger. Afterward came the commissary, or chief of the department, and repeated the same compliments, and left us with an exalted opinion of Russian politeness. I had heard horrible accounts of the rough treatment of travellers in Russia, and I made a note at the time, lest after vexations should make me forget it, that I had received more politeness and civility from these northern barbarians, as they are called by the people of the south of Europe, than I ever found amid their boasted civilization.

Having still an hour before dark, I strolled out, followed by my guardiano, to take a more particular survey of our prison. In a gravel walk lined with acacias, immediately before the door of my little courtyard, I came suddenly upon a lady of about eighteen, whose dark hair and eyes I at once recognised as Grecian, leading by the hand a little child. I am sure my face brightened at the first glimpse of this vision which promised to shine upon us in our solitude; and perhaps my satisfaction was made too manifest by my involuntarily moving toward her. But my presumption received a severe and mortifying check; for though at first she merely crossed to the other side of the walk, she soon forgot all ceremony, and, fairly dragging the child after her, ran over the grass to another walk to avoid me; my mortification, however, was but temporary; for though, in the first impulse of delight and admiration, I had forgotten time, place, and circumstance, the repulse I had received made me turn to myself, and I was glad to find an excuse for the lady's flight in the flannel gown and long cap and slippers, which marked me as having just entered upon my season of purification.

I was soon initiated into the routine of lazaretto ceremonies and restrictions. By touching a quarantine patient, both parties are subjected to the longest term of either; so that if a person, on the last day of his term, should come in contact with another just entered, he would lose all the benefit of his days of purification, and be obliged to wait the full term of the latter. I have seen, in various situations in life, a system of operations called keeping people at a distance, but I never saw it so effectually practised as in quarantine. For this night, at least, I had full range. I walked where I pleased, and was very sure that every one would keep out of my way. During the whole time, however, I could not help treasuring up the precipitate flight of the young lady; and I afterward told her, and, I hope, with the true spirit of one ready to return good for evil, that if she had been in my place, and the days of my purification had been almost ended, in spite of plague and pestilence she might have rushed into my arms without my offering the least impediment.

In making the tour of the grounds, I had already an opportunity of observing the relation in which men stand to each other in Russia. When an officer spoke to a soldier, the latter stood motionless as a statue, with his head uncovered during the whole of the conference; and when a soldier on guard saw an officer, no matter at what distance, he presented arms, and remained in that position until the officer was out of sight. Returning, I passed a grating, through which I saw our deck passengers, forty or fifty in number, including the Jewish pilgrims, miserable, dirty-looking objects, turned in together for fourteen days, to eat, drink, and sleep as best they might, like brutes. With a high idea of the politeness of the Russians toward the rich and great, or those whom they believed to be so, and with a strong impression already received confirming the accounts of the degraded condition of the lower classes, I returned to my room, and, with a Frenchman and a Greek for my room-mates, my window opening upon the Black Sea, I spent my first night in quarantine.