Part 9

Stamboul is the old part of the city, where many different peoples have dwelt--first Greeks, then Romans, now Turks, and you can still see by a bit of a house or an old wall how these people lived. Galata is where English, French, Italians, and Germans carry on their business in Turkey, and where the big boats unload their cargoes. Between Galata and Stamboul is one of the most famous and most crowded bridges in the world. Pera is where most of the Europeans live.

Constantinople is indeed like the fairy city in the Arabian Nights to which the poor brothers are whisked away on a carpet--a dream city on the edge of the water--a city of lavender-blue domes, and minarets that seem to reach to the sky. We are just aware of the little houses straggling up the hill or dipping their feet in the water. The maze of houses and the mosques are veiled in a light blue haze, just as if the city, like the women, had to wear the _yachmak_, or head-covering. Off beyond is the glistening Sea of Marmora, and near by, the dazzling blue waters of the Bosporus dotted with little black boats. The city stretches on farther up the shore, and just beyond are the wooded hills. At the foot of one of them, on the very edge of the water, is the long low white marble palace of the sultan--Dolmah Bagtché it is called, which means "walled-in garden."

Everybody who is young must love Constantinople. It is so full of color and soft musical sounds that one is sure something unexpected and wonderful will happen any moment. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, can be seen so many different types of people as on Galata Bridge. Let us pay ten paras--a little over one cent--and go on the bridge; we shall see and hear more than a dollar's worth. There go modern Turkish gentlemen dressed like our fathers, but wearing fezzes instead of hats. A fez is made of soft red felt and has no brim; from the top hangs a black silk tassel. Here come old-fashioned Turkish gentlemen with bent shoulders and flowing beards. They wear soft padded overcoats of many colors, and each is sure to have on a ring set with a beautiful stone that he keeps turned toward the inside of his hand. There are some priests with white scarfs round their fezzes; here are others with green ones, because they have been to Mecca, where every pious Turk wants to go before he dies. There are whirling dervishes in brown overcoats, and tall brown hats shaped like chicken croquettes. Have you ever heard of dervishes? They are priests who perform a peculiar ceremony in their religious houses. They take off their brown overcoats and dance in green or white costumes that have full pleated skirts. They spin round and round on their tiptoes, accompanied by strange music, while the chiefs of the order sit cross-legged on the floor and watch them.

Then there may pass a Tartar pilgrim all in white from the interior of Asiatic Turkey, or a Persian in gray with a Persian-lamb fez, or a fierce Kurd. The last is a soldier, and wears a brown hood with a long end knotted round his head. Since the Balkan War, when many Kurds were in Constantinople on their way to the army, the little Turkish girls have worn the same sort of hood of soft colors and fabrics. On the bridge, too, may be seen the shrouded Turkish ladies, who move silently along like black ghosts. They wear the _tcharchaf_--the modern Turkish dress which includes a veil over the face; old-fashioned women of the poorer class still wear the soft white yachmak that covers the head but not the face. And then, too, there are the _hamals_--wild peasants from the interior--who do the fetching and carrying. They wear little caps and bright sashes, and have on their backs a kind of saddle on which they put anything from a bag of flour to a piano. They walk faster than the rest and sing "_Dustur_, _dustur_," which means "Get out of the road." If we are very lucky, we shall see a string of camels with their noses in the air, and on their humps lovely faded blue and red saddle-bags. They are usually led by a donkey, and with them is a camel-driver of most fetching appearance. The camels are so big and shaggy and out of place that we pinch ourselves to see if we are really awake.

Now let us go wandering about the old city. The narrow, silent streets are paved with cobblestones, and lined with houses that have never been painted, but have been colored by the sun, the rain, and the wind. Some of them are overgrown with wistaria vines that cross from one side of the street to the other and frame the big shut front door.

One fine day I lifted the knocker on one of these doors when calling on a Turkish family I knew. The door was opened silently, and I found myself in a tiny garden full of flowers. No matter how small his house, the Turk always has a bit of a garden. If he is rich, he has it on a hill from which he can see the Bosporus. The garden I visited opened from a bricked hall. We went up the stairs and were greeted by the ladies of the family more courteously and gracefully than I ever have been greeted anywhere else. I wish I could describe for you the Turkish salutation. It is as hard to acquire as a foreign accent. As she bows, a lady makes a downward sweep with her arm, then raises her hand, palm upward, to her heart and lips. This means, "I am at your service; my heart is yours; the words that I speak are in your favor."

I was taken into a room all windows. The Turk loves windows as he loves gardens--windows that look over the water. All around the room were bright-colored _sedias_,--low hard couches,--which are, however, very comfortable to sit or lie upon. In the middle of the room on a brass tray was a big brazier containing live coals, on which the daughter of the house soon made Turkish coffee. Besides gardens and windows, the Turk loves coffee--his own peculiar kind that you must taste some day along with the other goodies. This is the way it was made for me: Into a brass coffee-maker, which looks like a pitcher with a long handle, were put one sugar lump and one coffee-cupful of water. When this had boiled, one teaspoonful of finely powdered Turkish coffee, taken from a china egg on the tray, was put into the water. This mixture was allowed to come to a boil three times and then poured, the pitcher being held a foot from the cup so that there would be foam on the coffee. I tried to drink it in the really Turkish way, holding the saucer with the cup to my lips. If you try it, you will see how _hard_ it is to do this _easily_!

A little sister showed us her drawing-book, in which she had begun at the back and worked toward the front. The Turkish children recite their lessons all together in the old-fashioned schools, and if you could hear them, you would think that you had gone into _Wonderland_ with _Alice_ where "things wouldn't come straight." The little girls go to school in groups, and with them is always an old servant who carries all their books on what looks for all the world like a small clothes-tree. The boys go and come in two long lines, attended by their teacher. They carry their own books and wear long trousers and fezzes exactly like those of their fathers. Some of the tiny girls carry their own little tables and drawing-boards. In the gipsy village in Scutari the children learn their lessons by songs in the street. They stand in a circle with a big girl in the middle, and they grow noisier and noisier the more interested they become. These little girls wear _shelvars_, which look like little trousers gathered in at the ankle. I tried to take a picture of a little girl in an orange-colored pair and of a boy in a wrapper and fez, but they were frightened and ran away crying.

Now I must tell you about the Turkish shops--the really Turkish ones. Most of them are about the size of a spider's parlor and have no front wall, so you see the wares can be temptingly displayed to the passer-by. You see in one of our pictures a shop where all kinds of blankets and scarfs are sold. The scarfs are especially useful: if you are a man, you can wind one around your fez or your waist; if you are a lady, you can wear it indoors as a shawl, sash, or scarf; or, if it is the right kind, a little girl can wear it to school on her head. You don't know which one to choose when they are tossed down in front of you--a riotous mingling of reds, browns, oranges, golds, and yellows. Another fascinating shop is a bead-shop. Most of them are together on the bead street. There you may see displayed all kinds of strings of beads--long and short, large and small beads, red, yellow, and blue, of amber, meerschaum, and olive-wood. The Turkish gentlemen carry the short strings, and, when they chat, they play with the beads, unconsciously, but always in the same way. They move them forward with the thumb and first finger, two at a time, one from each side of the string. When all have been moved, they turn the string about and move the beads in the opposite direction.

Then there is the rug-shop. The Turkish rug-merchant offers you tea or coffee and cigarettes, as he hopes you will spend much money. And while you drink, he throws down before you rugs, rugs, rugs, soft, rich, alluring, from Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Persia.

But you, I am sure, would prefer a candy-shop. Even if you have tasted our Turkish paste, you have only a remote idea of how succulent a goody the real _loukoumi_ is. Then there is _halva_, full of nuts and all sorts of other good things which you can never guess. It is sticky, and, when you bite it, it nearly pulls your teeth out. Then there are _courabiés_ and _smits_, both of which are cakes which you must buy on a ferry-boat to get the real flavor. A man comes in, carrying a basket in one hand and waving a sheet of paper in the other. The _courabiés_ are stuck to this paper and you pull them off yourself. The _smits_ are on a stick which protrudes from the top of the basket. For you must know that a _smit_ is shaped like a doughnut. (Only the hole has grown larger without affecting the size of the eatable part. This part is not sweet and is covered with aniseed.)

It would make your mouth water if I should tell you of all the delectable dishes you might have in the cafés all over the city. The Turk loves to eat, he loves to sit, and he loves to stare at his garden, at his beloved Bosporus, or at space. They never say in Turkey, "Where do you live?" but always, "Where do you sit?" In spring and autumn the hills about Constantinople are dotted with spots of color. They are the Turkish men and women sitting on the grass. And what a wonderful view they look at! There they sit for hours and hours, usually silent, occasionally chatting, sometimes grunting "_Uh, uh, uh, uh_," in descending tones.

The chief other thing a Turk does in times of peace is to pray. From the gallery of a minaret the muezzin calls him to prayer five times a day. Do you know what a minaret is? It is the tower of the Turkish church, or mosque. Mosques built by royalty may have two minarets, others only one. These minarets are slender, very tall, with a gracefully pointed top that draws the eye right up to the sky. There is a Turkish proverb that says, "Never steal a minaret unless you have a place to hide it in." Two thirds of the way up, there is a carved gallery, very light and beautiful, where the priest stands and chants down through the air the call to prayer, which in English prose is this: "There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is His Prophet; let us go and pray; let us go save our souls; God is great; there is no god but God." A pious Turk either goes to the mosque, or prays wherever he may happen to be. I once saw a soldier praying on a ferry-boat. Inside the mosques the cooing of many pigeons adds to the rhythmic murmur of the prayers. There are pigeons inside and outside of all the mosques; one, of which a picture is here shown, is called the Pigeon Mosque.

The most famous mosque of all is Santa Sophia, once a Christian church as you can tell by its name, built by the Byzantine Greeks about 300 A. D. It is yellow, weathered by time, is very big and on top of a hill. Inside, it is a dark golden-brown, and the pigeons flying around under the roof seem to be far, far above you. The rugs on the floor are all on a slant because the church was built originally with the altar toward the east; later the Moslems made it face toward Mecca, southeast of Constantinople. No Turk ever walks on those rugs with his shoes on,--he leaves them at the door or carries them in his hand,--and before he comes in to pray, he washes his feet and hands at the fountain outside, no matter how cold the water or the weather. Fountains are everywhere in Constantinople, made of white marble and exquisitely carved.

Constantinople has been famous in history ever since the legend that Leander died in swimming the Hellespont, the old name of the Dardanelles. Nations have quarreled over it, because it is one of the most wonderfully situated cities in the world, and Constantine the Great made it the capital of his huge empire. You will study all that in Roman history if you have not studied it already, and will read also of its capture by the Turks, under Mohammed the Conqueror, nearly five hundred years ago.

The history of the Ottoman Empire makes the most exciting fairy tale seem colorless. Perhaps you do not know that, when Henry the Eighth of England and Francis the First of France were forming a mutual-admiration society of their two kingdoms on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, there was another king, as great as either of them, in the southeast of Europe, carving great pieces out of other countries for his empire. This sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a great lawgiver. His reign was the height of Turkey's power. Soon after its close the rest of Europe became interested in Turkey, especially Russia and England. Recently, German influence has been stronger than any other at the Turkish court. That is why Turkey fought on the side of Germany, and why England and France determined to storm the forts and brave the mines in the water entrances to Constantinople and so open up a way to the Mediterranean for their great ally, Russia.

THE GIANT AND THE GENIE

BY GEORGE FREDERIC STRATTON

Far up on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, in Washington, is a waterfall which, according to the legend, was inhabited by a giant of enormous strength--Menuhkesen by name. From out of the East there came a genie possessed of such courage and audacity that when he was warned against the terrible powers of Menuhkesen he laughed lustily and said that he would call forth the surly giant and make him do his bidding. Summoning his afrits, he gave them orders, and they immediately surrounded the falls, some of them peering through strange instruments and making mysterious signs with their hands, while others measured distances and drove stakes, bearing weird symbols, into the river banks.

Then the genie stood on the bank overlooking the falls and shouted: "Ho, afrits! Dig me here a deep hole!" And immediately they went to work with great activity. When they had dug down a hundred feet, the genie commanded them to tunnel under the falls. "We will unearth this giant and prove his strength!" he cried defiantly.

So they dug a tunnel until they reached a great mass of rock underneath the brink of the falls; and here they hewed out a huge cavern, and carried into it strange machines and many wheels, fastening them all strongly. And they hung wires from those machines, stringing them a long distance through dense woods and across ghostly ravines to where many men lived and worked. When all was ready the genie grasped a great lever and shouted, "Ho, Menuhkesen! Come forth now, and get busy!"

Then he pressed down the lever, and instantly the spirit sprang out of the falls, and leaping upon a wire, rushed along it with such swiftness that no one could see him. The next moment he was many miles away, performing marvelous feats of strength--pushing great street-cars at incredible speed, turning the wheels in mills and factories, and lighting stores and dwellings. In fact, he did whatever the genie ordered him to do, without an instant's delay or any demur.

All over these big, resourceful United States, Menuhkesen is found, but the modern captains of industry call him "Electricity." The genii also are with us, graduates of technical colleges or of engineering departments of great factories, who, donning khaki clothes and high-laced leather boots, camp out in the wild mountain fastnesses, or on the weird deserts, or in the dense forests, and invoke the giants they meet everywhere in this wonderful country.

But it is the western mountain regions which chiefly hold the romance, the tragedy, and the gigantic power of the mythical old giant. All up and down the Rockies and the Sierras, and in the network of stupendous mountains which cross the five or six hundred miles between, are mountain torrents tearing down from summits perhaps two or three thousand feet high to the valleys below. Some of them are very small in appearance, but possessed of tremendous force.

Let us trace one of these and discover the giant. We hike, or ride a sure-footed horse, six miles up one of the somber gashes in the mountains, called cañons, arriving at the origin of a stream we have seen growing smaller as we ascended. We find a little spring gushing from beneath a huge boulder and trickling down through the ferns and brush. Soon it is joined by other little streams on the right or left. Presently, as we stumble along down the rocky trail, we see on one side a wide, deep gulch, with walls of sandstone or granite rising almost perpendicularly on either side. And that gulch has snow lying in it, perhaps forty feet deep--the drifts of last winter or slides from the slopes above it.

The snow may then have been sixty or a hundred feet deep, but now, in midsummer, it is dwindling fast, and its water doubles or triples the size of our little stream. Suddenly we see that the wild, rocky, torrent bed has been cleaned out, and that the banks are lined up with rock. The genie has been giving orders.

A few rods farther that torrent bed gives place to a timber flume; and the next moment that flume, instead of keeping on the sharply sloping floor of the cañon, rises on trestles, holding an almost level position. The trestle increases in height as the ground beneath them slopes downward, and cross a deep gulch, still holding the little torrent running between the wooden walls of the flume.

From our trail beneath we see the flume now skirting round the waist of some stupendous mountain, then crossing other gulches, and soon appearing on the summit of a peak, eight hundred feet above where we are standing. Below, at the foot of that peak, is a small, plain, stone building, and, wriggling down from the summit, is, apparently, a huge black snake, poking its nose into the basement of that house.

The house holds the generators for turning the force of that torrent into electricity. The snake is the penstock--a great black steel pipe, twisting and turning to avoid the huge boulders in its path as it conducts that water from the summit into the turbines in the house.

The turbine is an enclosed water-wheel in which every particle of force in the rushing water is used to turn a great steel shaft. On the other end of that shaft is geared the generator--the wonderful machine with wire-wound arms which makes the electric current. At this particular power-house the little torrent which reaches the summit in a flume thirty inches wide and two feet deep turns out 800 horse-power.

It is the force, not the size, of the stream which gives that power, for water has a pressure of about fifty pounds per square inch for every hundred feet of the height of its source. So this water has a pressure at the turbine of four hundred pounds per square inch--a far greater pressure than that in the cylinders of a great Mogul mountain locomotive.

The little stream, freed from the turbines, whirls furiously round a small basin and rollicks off on a wild, headlong dash through an open sluiceway for a short distance. Then another flume arrests it; and as we hike along down the trail, that flume rises above us, straddling gulches on high trestles, and at two points tunneling through a great mountain.

We get back to the mouth of the cañon, and there see, on the level we have then reached, another power-house, larger than the first. Behind it is another huge, bare mountain of rock; and coming down that, another gigantic black snake, also poking its head into the power-house. This snake--or penstock--is 1600 feet long, and the same stream which developed 800 horse-power at the upper house is now--with the addition of a little water picked up on the way--reeling off 2600 horse-power at this house.

This imprisoned, raging torrent is now released, and flows in a subdued, gentle stream down a natural stream-bed. It is less than eight feet wide and not deep enough to wet our horses' knees as we ford across. But we gaze upon it with the awe and amazement it deserves when we remember that, but a few moments before, it has sent its great power over eleven miles of wire to a small town, is operating several factories, and will, at night, light all the streets and the houses.

And that is only half its work! Before us is a great stretch of orchards and fields, vividly green, although they have not had one drop of water from the heavens for three or four months. All their health and vigor and wonderful productivity is due to that little stream, which irrigates over three thousand acres of the land.

Within twenty miles of where this is written, at the foot of the great Wasatch Mountains, in Utah, are five such cañons with power-houses--two of them with two houses in each cañon. All over this mountain country, from the middle of Utah to the Canadian line, are hundreds of such mountain torrents, only a small proportion of which are yet harnessed for work.

Some of them are very much larger than the one we have visited. Come with me to one of these larger houses.

It is in a cañon of awful sublimity, so deep and so nearly unapproachable that the construction teams had to haul over eight miles of zigzag trail to make the descent of less than half a mile to the torrent. We scramble down over the rocks and brush; and although the roar of the water reaches us for ten or fifteen minutes before we see it, we are by no means prepared for the astounding scene when it at last comes into view.

Out from the depths of the great ugly building belch forth four gleaming, horizontal columns of water, big as barrels, with a force, speed, and roar as though the discharge were from giant cannon. Straight across the tail-race they gleam and quiver for a hundred feet, impinging upon a solid ledge of granite, in which they have worn huge caverns. The spray dashes up the face of the ledge for sixty or seventy feet. Up and down the stream, swirling and writhing in a thousand rushing, crowding whirlpools, the water, just freed from its maddening confinement, is seeking to make good its escape. But it is jammed back into the upper race, and for fifty yards you will see it hanging, ledge upon ledge, fighting, snarling, surging, and struggling for its chance to slip beneath those terrific outlet volleys and gain the lower stream and liberty and peace.