XXVI.—SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE.

DURING the day steamers leave the Galata bridge every halfhour for the villages and palaces along the Bosphorus; there is a large fleet of them, probably thirty, but they are always crowded, like the ferry-boats that ply the waters of New York Bay.

We took our first sail on the Bosphorus one afternoon toward sunset, ascending as far as Bebek, where we had been invited to spend the night by Dr. Washburne, the President of Roberts College. I shall not soon forget the animation of the harbor, crowded with shipping, amid which the steamers and ca飍ues were darting about like shuttles, the first impression made by the palaces and ravishingly lovely shores of this winding artery between two seas. Seven promontories from Asia and seven promontories from Europe project into the stream, creating as many corresponding bays; but the villages are more numerous than bays and promontories together, for there are over forty in the fourteen miles from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea; on the shores is an almost unbroken line of buildings, many of them palaces of marble; the heights are crowned with cottages and luxurious villas, and abodes of taste and wealth peep out along the slopes. If you say that we seem to be sailing in the street of a city, I can only answer that it is not so; nature is still supreme here, and the visible doweress of the scene. These lovely hills rising on both sides, these gracious curves are hers, as are these groves and gardens of fruits and flowers, these vines and the abundant green that sometimes conceals and always softens the work of man.

Before we reached the Sultan's palace at Beshiktash, our steamer made a d閠our to the east bank, outside of the grim ironclads that lie before the imperial residence. No steamers are permitted to approach nearer, lest the smoke should soil the sparkling white marble of the palace, or their clamor and dangerous freight of men should disturb the serenity of the harem. The palace, which is a beautiful building, stretches for some distance along the water, with its gardens and conservatories, and seems to be a very comfortable home for a man who has no more ready money than the Sultan.

We landed at Bebek and climbed the steep hill, on whose slope nightingales were singing in the forest, just in time to see the sunset. Roberts College occupies the most commanding situation on the strait, and I do not know any view that surpasses in varied beauty that to be enjoyed from it. I shall make myself comprehended by many when I say that it strongly reminded me of the Hudson at West Point; if nature could be suspected of copying herself, I should say that she had the one in mind when she made the other. At that point the Hudson resembles the Bosphorus, but it wants the palaces, the Yale of the Heavenly Water into which we looked from this height, and some charming mediaeval towers, walls, and castles.

The towers and walls belong to the fortress built in 1451 by Mohammed II., and are now fallen into that decrepitude in which I like best to see all fortresses. But this was interesting before it was a ruin. It stands just above the college, at Roomeli Hissar, where the Bosphorus is narrowest,—not more than half a mile broad,—and with the opposite fortress of Anatolia could perfectly close the stream. Two years before the capture of the city, Mohammed built this fort, and gave it the most peculiar form of any fortress existing. His idea was that the towers and the circuit of the walls should spell the name of the Prophet, and consequently his own. As we looked down upon it, my friend read for me this singular piece of caligraphy, but I could understand it no further than the tower which stands for the Arabic ring in the first letter. It was at this place that Darius threw a bridge across the Bosphorus, and there is a tradition of a stone seat which he occupied here while his Asiatics passed into Europe.

So far as I know, there is no other stream in the world upon which the wealth of palaces and the beauty of gardens may be so advantageously displayed. So far as I know, there is no other place where nature and art have so combined to produce an enchanting prospect. As the situation and appearance of Constantinople are unequalled, so the Bosphorus is unique.

Whatever may be the political changes of the Turkish Empire, I do not believe that this pleasing picture will be destroyed; rather let us expect to see it more lovely in the rapidly developing taste of a new era of letters and refinement. It was a wise forethought that planted the American College just here. It is just where it should be to mould the new order of things. I saw among its two hundred pupils scholars of all creeds and races, who will carry from here living ideas to every part of the empire, and I learned to respect that thirst for knowledge and ability to acquire it which exist in the neighboring European provinces. If impatient men could wait the process of education, the growth of schools, and the development of capacity now already most promising, the Eastern question might be solved by the appearance on the scene in less than a score of years, of a stalwart and intelligent people, who would not only be able to grasp Constantinople, but to administer upon the decaying Turkish Empire as the Osmanli administered upon the Greek.

On Friday the great business of everybody is to see the Sultan go to pray; and the eagerness with which foreigners crowd to the spectacle must convince the Turks that we enjoy few religious privileges at home. It is not known beforehand, even to the inmates of the palace, to what mosque the Sultan will go, nor whether he will make a street progress on horseback, or embark upon the water, for the chosen place of prayer. Before twelve o'clock we took carriage and drove down the hill, past the parade-ground and the artillery barracks to the rear of the palace of Beshiktash; crowds on foot and in carriages were streaming in that direction; regiments of troops were drifting down the slopes and emptying into the avenue that leads between the palace and the plantation of gardens; colors were unfurled, drums beaten, trumpets called from barrack and guard-house; gorgeous officers on caparisoned horses, with equally gaudy attendants, cantered to the rendezvous; and all the air was full of the expectation of a great event. At the great square of the palace we waited amid an intense throng; four or five lines of carriages stretched for a mile along; troops were in marching rank along the avenue and disposed in hollow square on the place; the palace gates were closed, and everybody looked anxiously toward the high and gilded portal from which it was said the announcement of the Sultan's intention would be made. From time to time our curiosity was fed by the arrival of a splendid pasha, who dismounted and walked about; and at intervals a gilded personage emerged from the palace court and raised our expectation on tiptoe. We send our dragoman to interrogate the most awful dignities, especially some superb beings in yellow silk and gold, but they know nothing of the Sultan's mind. At the last moment he might, on horseback, issue from the gate with a brilliant throng, or he might depart in his ca飍ue by the water front. In either case there would be a rush and a scramble to see and to accompany him. More regiments were arriving, bands were playing, superb officers galloping up and down; carriages, gilded with the arms of foreign embassies, or filled with Turkish ladies, pressed forward to the great gate, which still gave no sign. I have never seen such a religious excitement. For myself, I found some compensation in the usual Oriental crowd and unconscious picturesqueness; swart Africans in garments of yellow, sellers of sherbet clinking their glasses, venders of faint sweetmeats walking about with trays and tripods, and the shifting kaleidoscope of races, colors, and graceful attitudes.

Suddenly, I do not know how, or from what quarter, the feeling—for I could not call it information—was diffused that the successor of the Prophet would pray at the mosque in Ortakeui, and that he would go by ca飍ue; and we all scampered up the road, a mile or two, racing carriages, troops and foot men, in eager outset, in order to arrive before the pious man. The mosque stands upon the Bosphorus, where its broad marble steps and pillared front and dome occupy as conspicuous a position as the Dogana at Venice. We secured a standing-place on the dock close to the landing, but outside the iron railing, and waited. A cordon of troops in blue regimentals with red facings was drawn around the streets in the rear of the mosque, and two companies of soldiers in white had stacked their guns on the marble landing, and were lounging about in front of the building.

The scene on the Bosphorus was as gay as a flower-garden. The water was covered with graceful caiques and painted barges and every sort of craft, mean and splendid, that could be propelled by oars or sails. A dozen men-of-war were decked with flags from keel to maintop; on every yard, and from bowsprit to stern, stood a line of sailors sharply defined against the blue sky. At one o'clock a cannon announced that the superior devotee had entered his caique, and then from every vessel of war in the harbor salute answered salute in thunder that awoke the echoes of two continents; until on all the broad water lay a thick battle-smoke, through which we could distinguish only the tops of the masts, and the dim hulks spouting fire.

In the midst of this earthquake of piety, there was a cry, "He comes, he comes!" The soldiers grasped their arms and drew a line each side of the landing, and the officials of the mosque arranged themselves on the steps. Upon the water, advancing with the speed of race-horses, we saw two splendid gilded ca飍ues, the one containing the Sultan, the other his attendants. At the moment, a light carriage with two bay horses, unattended, dashed up to the side door, and there descended from it and entered the mosque the imperial heir, the son of the late Sultan and the nephew of the present, a slender, pale youth of apparently twenty-five or thirty years. We turn (not knowing how soon he is to become Sultan Murad V.) our eyes to him only for a moment, for the Sultan's caique comes with imperious haste, with the rush as it were of victory,—an hundred feet long, narrow, rising at the stern like the Venetian Bucentaur, carved and gilded like the golden chariot in which Alexander entered Babylon,—propelled by fifty-two long sweeps, rising and falling in unison with the bending backs of twenty-six black rowers, clad in white and with naked feet. The Sultan is throned in the high stern, hung with silk, on silken cushions, under a splendid canopy on the top of which glisten his arms and a blazing sun. The Sultan, who is clad in the uniform of a general, steps quickly out, walks up the steps over a carpet spread for his royal feet,—the soldiers saluting, everybody with arms crossed bending the body,—and disappears in the mosque. The second caique lands immediately, and the imperial ministers step from it and follow their master.

At the side entrance an immense closed baggage-wagon, drawn by four horses and said to contain the sacred wardrobe, was then unlocked and unloaded, and out of it came trunks, boxes, carpetbags, as if the imperial visitor had come to stay a week. After a half-hour of prayer he came out, his uniform concealed under his overcoat, got quickly into a plain carriage, drawn by four magnificent gray horses, and drove rapidly away, attended by a dozen outriders. His heir followed in the carriage in which he came. We had a good view of the chief of Islam. He was a tall, stout man, with a full gray beard, and on the whole a good face and figure. All this parade is weekly enacted over one man going to pray. It is, after all, more simple than the pageantry that often attends the public devotion of the vicegerent of Christ in St. Peter's.

Upon our return we stopped at the tekkeb, in Pera, to see the performance of the Turning Darwishes. I do not know that I have anything to add to the many animated descriptions which have been written of it. It is not far from the Little Field of the Dead, and all about the building are tombs of the faithful, in which were crowds of people enjoying that peculiar Oriental pleasure, graveyard festivity. The mosque is pleasant, and has a polished dancing-floor, surrounded by a gallery supported on columns. I thought it would be a good place for a "hop." Everybody has seen a picture of the darwishes, with closed eyes, outstretched arms, and long gowns inflated at the bottom like an old-fashioned churn, turning smoothly round upon their toes, a dozen or twenty of them revolving without collision. The motion is certainly poetic and pleasing, and the plaintive fluting of the Arab nay adds I know not what of pathos to the exercise. I think this dance might advantageously be substituted in Western salons for the German, for it is graceful and perfectly moral.

Constantinople is a city of the dead as much as of the living, and one encounters everywhere tombs and cemeteries sentinelled by the mournful dark-green cypress. On our way to take boat for the Sweet Waters of Europe we descended through the neglected Little Field of the Dead. It is on a steep acclivity, and the stones stand and lean thickly there, each surmounted by a turban in fashion at the period of the occupant's death, and with inscription neatly carved. That "every man has his date" strikes Abd-el-Atti as a remarkable fact. The ground is netted by haphazard paths, and the careless living tread the graves with thoughtless feet, as if the rights of the dead to their scanty bit of soil were no longer respected. We said to the boatman that this did not seem well. There was a weary touch of philosophy in his reply: "Ah, master, the world grows old!"

It is the fashion for the world to go on Friday to the Sweet Waters of Europe, the inlet of the Golden Horn, flowing down between two ranges of hills. This vale, which is almost as celebrated in poetry as that of the Heavenly Water on the Asiatic shore, is resorted to by thousands, in hundreds of carriages from Fera, in thousands of ca飍ues and barges. On the water, the excursion is a festival of the people, of strangers, of adventurers of both sexes; the more fashionable though not moral part of society, who have equipages to display, go by land. We chose the water, and selected a large four-oared ca飍ue, in the bottom of which we seated ourselves, after a dozen narrow escapes from upsetting the tottlish craft, and rowed away, with the grave Abd-el-Atti balanced behind and under bonds to preserve his exact equilibrium.

All the city seems to be upon the water; the stream is alive with the slender, swift ca飍ues; family parties, rollicking midshipmen from some foreign vessel, solitary beauties reclining in selfish loveliness, grave fat Turks, in stupid enjoyment. No voyage could be gayer than this through the shipping, with the multitudinous houses of the city rising on either hand. As we advance, the shore is lined with people, mostly ladies in gay holiday apparel, squatting along the stream; as on a spring day in Paris, those who cannot afford carriages line the avenues to the Bois de Boulogne to watch the passing pageant. The stream grows more narrow, at length winds in graceful turns, and finally is only a few yards wide, and the banks are retained by masonry. The vale narrows also, and the hills draw near. The water-way is choked with gayly painted caiques, full of laughing beauties and reckless pleasure-seekers, and the reader of Egyptian history might think himself in a saturnalia of the revel-makers in the ancient f阾e of Bubastis on the Nile. The women are clad in soft silks,—blue, red, pink, yellow, and gray,—some of them with their faces tied up as if they were victims of toothache, others wearing the gauze veils, which enhance without concealing charms; and the color and beauty that nature has denied to many are imitated by paint and enamel.

We land and walk on. Singers and players on curious instruments sit along the bank and in groups under the trees, and fill the festive air with the plaintive and untrained Oriental music. The variety of costumes is infinite; here we meet all that is gay and fantastic in Europe and Asia. The navigation ends at the white marble palace and mosque which we now see shining amid the trees, fresh with May foliage. Booths and tents, green and white, are erected everywhere, and there are many groups of gypsies and fortune-tellers. The olive-complexioned, black-eyed, long-haired women, who trade in the secrets of the Orient and the vices of the Occident, do a thriving business with those curious of the future, or fascinated by the mysterious beauty of the soothsayers. Besides the bands of music, there are solitary bagpipers whose instrument is a skin, with a pipe for a mouthpiece and another at the opposite end having graduated holes for fingering; and I noticed with pleasure that the fingering and the music continued long after the musician had ceased to blow into the inflated skin. Nothing was wanting to the most brilliant scene; ladies in bright groups on gay rugs and mats, children weaving head-dresses from leaves and rushes, crowds of carriages, fine horses and gallant horsemen, sellers of refreshments balancing great trays on their heads, and bearing tripod stools, and all degrees of the most cosmopolitan capital enjoying the charming spring holiday.

In the palace grounds dozens of peacocks were sunning themselves, and the Judas-trees were in full pink bloom. Above the palace the river flows in walled banks, and before it reaches it tumbles over an artificial fall of rocks, and sweeps round the garden in a graceful curve. Beyond the palace, also on the bank of the stream, is a grove of superb trees and a greensward; here a military band plays, and this is the fashionable meeting-place of carriages, where hundreds were circling round and round in the imitated etiquette of Hyde Park.

We came down at sunset, racing swiftly among the returning ca飍ues, passing and passed by laughing boatsful, whose gay hangings trailed in the stream, as in a pageant on the Grand Canal of Venice, and watching with the interest of the philosopher only, the light boat of beauty and frailty pursued by the youthful caique of inexperience and desire. The hour contributed to make the scene one of magical beauty. To our right lay the dark cypresses of the vast cemetery of Eyoub (or Ayub) and the shining mosque where, at their inauguration, the Osmanli Sultans are still girt with the sword of their founder. At this spot, in the first siege of Constantinople by the Arabs, fell, amid thirty thousand Moslems, slain outside the Golden Gate, the Aboo Ayub, or Job, one of the last companions of the Prophet. He was one of the immortal auxiliaries; he had fought at Beder and Obud side by side with Abubeker, and he had the honor to be one of the first assailants of the Christian capital, which Mohammed had predicted that his followers should one day possess. The site of his grave, forgotten for seven centuries, was revealed to the conqueror of the city by a fortunate vision, and the spot was commemorated by a mosque, and a gathering congregation of the dead.

Clouds had collected in the west, and the heavy smoke of innumerable steamers lay dark upon the Bosphorus. But as we came down, the sun broke out and gave us one of those effects of which nature is sparing. On the heights of Stamboul, a dozen minarets, only half distinct, were touched by the gold rays; the windows of both cities, piled above each other, blazed in it; the smooth river and the swift caiques were gilded by it; and behind us, domes and spires, and the tapering shafts of the Muezzin, the bases hid by the mist, rose into the heaven of the golden sunset and appeared like mansions, and most unsubstantial ones, in the sky. And ever the light caiques flew over the rosy water in a chase of pleasure, in a motion that satisfied the utmost longing for repose, while the enchantment of heaven seemed to have dropped upon the earth.


"The world has lost its gloss for us,

Since we went boating on the Bosphorus."


Constantinople enjoys or suffers the changeable weather appropriate to its cosmopolitan inhabitants and situation, and we waited for a day suitable to cross to Scutari and obtain the view from Boolgoorloo. We finally accepted one of alternate clouds and sunshine. The connection between the European city and its great suburb is maintained by frequent ferry-steamers, and I believe that no other mile-passage in the world can offer the traveller a scene more animated or views so varied and magnificent. Near the landing at Scutari stands a beacon-tower ninety' feet high, erected upon a rock; it has the name of the Maiden's Tower, but I do not know why, unless by courtesy to one of the mistresses of Sultan Mohammed, who is said to have been shut up in it. Scutari,—pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, a corruption of the Turkish name Uskudar,—the site of the old Greek and Persian Chrysopolis, is a town sprawling over seven hills, has plenty of mosques, baths, and cemeteries,—the three Oriental luxuries,—but little to detain the traveller, already familiar with Eastern towns of the sort. The spot has been in all ages an arriving and starting point for Asiatic couriers, caravans, and armies; here the earliest Greek sea-robbers hauled up their venturous barks; here Xenophon rested after his campaign against Cyrus; here the Roman and then the Byzantine emperors had their hunting-palaces; here for a long time the Persians menaced and wrung tribute from the city they could not capture.

We took a carriage and ascended through the city to the mountain of Boolgoorloo. On the slopes above the town are orchards and vineyards and pretty villas. The last ten minutes of the climb was accomplished on foot, and when we stood upon the summit the world was at our feet. I do not know any other view that embraces so much and such variety. The swelling top was carpeted with grass, sprinkled with spring flowers, and here and there a spreading pine offered a place of shade and repose. Behind us continued range on range the hills of the peninsula; to the south the eye explored Asia Minor, the ancient Bithynia and Mysia, until it rested on the monstrous snowy summits of Olympus, which rears itself beyond Broussa, city famed for its gauzy silk and the first capital of the Osman dynasty. There stretches the blue Sea of Marmora, bearing lightly on the surface the nine enchanting Princes' Islands, whose equable climate and fertile soil have obtained for them the epithet of the Isles of the Blest. Opposite, Stamboul rises out of the water on every side; in the distance a city of domes and pinnacles and glass, the dark-green spires of cypress tempering its brilliant lustre; there the Golden Horn and its thronged bridges and its countless masts and steamers' funnels; Galata and Pera, also lifted up into nobility, and all their shabby details lost, and the Bosphorus, its hills, marble palaces, mosques, and gardens, on either side. I do not know any scene that approaches this in beauty except the Bay of Naples, and the charm of that is so different from this that no comparison is forced upon the mind. The Bay of New York has many of the elements of this charming prospect, on the map. But Constantinople and its environs can be seen from many points in one view, while one would need to ascend a balloon to comprehend in like manner the capital of the Western world. It is the situation of Constantinople, lifted up into a conspicuousness that permits no one of its single splendors to be lost in the general view, that makes it in appearance the unrivalled empress of cities.

In the foreground lay Scutari, and in a broad sweep the heavy mass of cypress forest that covers the great cemetery of the Turks, which they are said to prefer to Eyoub, under the prophetic impression that they will one day be driven out of Europe. The precaution seems idle. If in the loss of Constantinople the Osmanli sultans still maintain the supremacy of Islam, the Moslem capital could not he on these shores, and the caliphate in its migrations might again he established on the Nile, on the Euphrates, or in the plains of Guta on the Abana. The iron-clads that lie in the Bosphorus, the long guns of a dozen fortresses that command every foot of the city and shore, forbid that these contiguous coasts should fly hostile flags.

We drove down to and through this famous cemetery in one direction and another. In its beauty I was disappointed. It is a dense and gloomy cypress forest; as a place of sepulture, without the architectural pretensions of P鑢e-la-Chaise, and only less attractive than that. Its dark recesses are crowded with gravestones, slender at the bottom and swelling at the top, painted in lively colors,—green, red, and gray, a necessary relief to the sombre woods,—having inscriptions in gilt and red letters, and leaning at all angles, as if they had fallen out in a quarrel over night. The graves of the men are distinguished by stones crowned with turbans, or with tarbooshes painted red,—an imitation, in short, of whatever head-dress the owner wore when alive, so that perhaps his acquaintances can recognize his tomb without reading his name. Some of the more ancient have the form of a mould of Charlotte Busse. I saw more than one set jauntily on one side, which gave the monument a rakish air, singularly d閎onnaire for a tombstone.

In contrast to this vast assembly of the faithful is the pretty English cemetery, dedicated to the fallen in the Crimean war,—a well-kept flower-garden, which lies close to the Bosphorus on a point opposite the old Seraglio. We sat down on the sea-wall in this quiet spot, where the sun falls lovingly and the undisturbed birds sing, and looked long at the shifting, busy panorama of a world that does not disturb this repose; and then walked about the garden, noting the headstones of soldiers,—this one killed at Alma, that at Inkermann, another at Balaklava, and the tall, graceless granite monument to eight thousand nameless dead; nameless here, but not in many a home and many a heart, any more than the undistinguished thousands who sleep at Gettysburg or on a hundred other patriot fields.

Near by is the great hospital which Florence Nightingale controlled, and in her memory we asked permission to enter its wards and visit its garden. After some delay this was granted, but the Turkish official said that the hospital was for men, that there was no woman there, and as for Miss Nightingale, he had never heard of her. But we persevered and finally found an officer who led us to the room she occupied,—a large apartment now filled with the beds of the sick, and, like every other part of the establishment, neat and orderly. But our curiosity to see where the philanthropist had labored was an enigma to the Turkish officials to the last. They insisted at first that we must be relations of Miss Nightingale,—a supposition which I saw that Abd-el-Atti, who always seeks the advantage of distinction, was inclined to favor. But we said no. Well, perhaps it was natural that Englishmen should indulge in the sentiment that moved us. But we were not Englishmen, we were Americans,—they gave it up entirely. The superintendent of the hospital, a courtly and elderly bey, who had fought in the Crimean war, and whom our dragoman, dipping his hand to the ground, saluted with the most profound Egyptian obeisance, insisted upon serving us coffee in the garden by the fountain of gold-fish, and we spent an hour of quiet there.

On Sunday at about the hour that the good people in America were beginning to think what they should wear to church, we walked down to the service in the English Memorial Church, on the brow of the hill in Pera, a pointed Gothic building of a rich and pleasing interior. Only once or twice in many months had we been in a Christian church, and it was, at least, interesting to contrast its simple forms with the elaborate Greek ritual and the endless repetitions of the Moslem prayers. A choir of boys intoned or chanted a portion of the service, with marked ability, and wholly relieved the audience of the necessity of making responses. The clergymen executed the reading so successfully that we could only now and then catch a word. The service, so far as we were concerned, might as well have been in Turkish; and yet it was not altogether lost on us. We could distinguish occasionally the Lord's Prayer, and the name of Queen Victoria, and we caught some of the Commandments as they whisked past us. We knew also when we were in the Litany, from the regular cadence of the boys' responses. But as the entertainment seemed to be for the benefit of the clergymen and boys, I did not feel like intruding beyond the office of a spectator, and I soon found myself reflecting whether a machine could not be invented that should produce the same effect of sound, which was all that the congregation enjoyed.

Rome has been until recently less tolerant of the Protestant faith than Constantinople; and it was an inspiration of reciprocity to build here a church in memory of the Christian soldiers who fell in the crusade to establish the Moslem rule in European Turkey.

Of the various views about Constantinople we always pronounced that best which we saw last, and at the time we said that those from Seraglio Point, from Boolgoorloo, and from Roberts College were crowned by that from Giant's Grave Mountain, a noble height on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus near the Black Sea.

One charming morning, we ascended the strait in a steamboat that calls at the landings on the eastern shore. The Bosphorus, if you will have it in a phrase, is a river of lapis lazuli lined with marble palaces. As we saw it that morning, its sloping gardens, terraces, trees, and vines in the tender bloom of spring, all the extravagance of the Oriental poets in praise of it was justified, and it was easy to believe the nature-romance with which the earliest adventurers had clothed it. There, at Beshiktash, Jason landed to rest his weary sailors on the voyage to Colchis; and above there at Koroo Ghesmeh stood a laurel-tree which Medea planted on the return of the Argonauts. Tradition has placed near it, on the point, the site of a less attractive object, the pillar upon which Simeon Stylites spent forty years of a life which was just forty years too long; but I do not know by what authority, for I believe that the perch of the Syrian hermit was near Antioch, where his noble position edified thousands of Christians, who enjoyed their piety in contemplating his, and took their pleasures in the groves of Daphne.

Our steamer was, at this moment, a craft more dangerous to mankind than an iron-clad; it was a sort of floating harem; we sat upon the awning-covered upper deck; the greater part of the lower deck was jealously curtained off and filled with Turkish ladies. Among them we recognized a little flock of a couple of dozen, the harem of Mustapha Pasha, the uncle of the Khedive of Egypt. They left the boat at his palace in Chenguel Keuy, and we saw them, in silk gowns of white, red, blue, and yellow, streaming across the flower-garden into the marble portal,—a pretty picture. The pasha was transferring his household to the country for the summer, and we imagined that the imprisoned troop entered these blooming May gardens with the elation of freedom, which might, however, be more perfect if eunuchs did not watch every gate and foot of the garden wall. I suppose, however, that few of them would be willing to exchange their lives of idle luxury for the misery and chance of their former condition, and it is said that the maids of the so-called Christian Georgia hear with envy of the good fortune of their sisters, who have brought good prices in the Turkish capital.

When the harem disappeared we found some consolation in a tall Croat, who strutted up and down the deck in front of us, that we might sicken with envy of his splendid costume. He wore tight trousers of blue cloth, baggy in the rear but fitting the legs like a glove, and terminating over the shoes in a quilled inverted funnel; a brilliant scarf of Syrian silk in loose folds about his loins; a vest stiff with gold-em broidery; a scarlet jacket decked with gold-lace, and on his head a red fez. This is the costly dress of a Croatian gardener, who displays all his wealth to make a holiday spectacle of himself.

We sailed close to the village of Kandili and the promontory under which and upon which it lies, a site which exhausts the capacity of the loveliness of nature and the skill of art. From the villas on its height one commands, by a shifted glance, the Euxine and the Marmora, and whatever is most lovely in the prospect of two continents; the purity of the air is said to equal the charm of the view. Above this promontory opens the valley down which flows the river Geuksoo (sky-water), and at the north of it stands a white marble kiosk of the Sultan, the most beautiful architectural creation on the strait. Near it, shaded by great trees, is a handsome fountain; beyond the green turf in the tree-decked vale which pierces the hill were groups of holiday-makers in gay attire. I do not know if this Valley of the Heavenly Water is the loveliest in the East, but it is said that its charms of meadow, shade, sweet water, and scented flowers are a substantial foretaste of the paradise of the true believer. But it is in vain to catalogue the charming villages, the fresh beauties of nature and art to which each revolution of the paddle-wheel carried us. We thought we should be content with a summer residence of the Khedive, on the European side below the lovely bay of Terapea, with its vast hillside of gardens and orchards and the long line of palaces on the water. Fanned by the invigorating breezes from the Black Sea, its summer climate must be perfect.

We landed at Beicos, and, in default of any conveyance, walked up through the straggling village, along the shore, to a verdant, shady meadow, sweet with clover and wild-flowers. This is in the valley of Hun-Kiar Iskelesi, a favorite residence of the sultans; here on a projecting rocky point is a reddish palace built and given to the Sultan by the Khedive. The meadow, in which we were, is behind a palace of old Mohammed Ali, and it is now used as a pasture for the Sultan's horses, dozens of which were tethered and feeding in the lush grass and clover. The tents of their attendants were pitched on the plain, and groups of Turkish ladies were picnicking under the large sycamores. It was a charming rural scene. I made the silent acquaintance of an old man, in a white turban and flowing robes, who sat in the grass knitting and watching his one white lamb feed; probably knitting the fleece of his lamb of the year before.

We were in search of an araba and team to take us up the mountain; one stood in the meadow which we could hire, but oxen were wanting, and we despatched a Greek boy in search of the animals. The Turkish ladies of fashion delight in the araba when they ride into the country, greatly preferring it to the horse or donkey, or to any other carriage. It is a long cart of four wheels, without springs, but it is as stately in appearance as the band-wagon of a circus; its sloping side-boards and even the platform in front are elaborately carved and gilded. While we waited the motions of the boy, who joined to himself two others even more prone to go astray than himself, an officer of the royal stables invited us to take seats under the shade of his tent and served us with coffee. After an hour the boy returned with two lean steers. The rude, hooped top of the araba was spread with a purple cloth, a thick bedquilt covered the bottom, and by the aid of a ladder we climbed into the ark and sat or lay as we could best stow ourselves. A boy led the steers by a rope, another walked at the side gently goading them with a stick, and we rumbled along slowly through the brilliant meadows. It became evident after a time that we were not ascending the mountain, but going into the heart of the country; the cart was stopped and the wild driver was interrogated. I never saw a human being so totally devoid of a conscience. We had hired him to take us up to Giant's Grave Mountain. He was deliberately cheating us out of it. At first he insisted that he was going in the right direction, but upon the application of the dragoman's fingers to his ear, he pleaded that the mountain road was bad and that it was just as well for us to visit the Sultan's farm up the valley. We had come seven thousand miles to see the view from the mountain, but this boy had not the least scruple in depriving us of it. We turned about and entered a charming glen, thoroughly New England in its character, set with small trees and shrubs and carpeted with a turf of short sweet grass. One needs to be some months in the Orient to appreciate the delight experienced by the sight of genuine turf.

As we ascended, the road, gullied by the spring torrents, at last became impassable for wheels, and we were obliged to abandon the araba and perform the last half-mile of the journey on foot. The sightly summit of the mountain is nearly six hundred feet above the water. There, in a lovely grove, we found a coffeehouse and a mosque and the Giant's Grave, which the Moslems call the grave of Joshua. It is a flower-planted enclosure, seventy feet long and seven wide, ample for any hero; the railing about it is tagged with bits of cloth which pious devotees have tied there in the expectation that their diseases, perhaps their sins, will vanish with the airing of these shreds. From the minaret is a wonderful view,—the entire length of the Bosphorus, with all its windings and lovely bays enlivened with white sails, ships at anchor, and darting steamers, rich in villages, ancient castles, and forts; a great portion of Asia Minor, with the snow peaks of Olympus; on the south, the Islands of the Blest and the Sea of Marmora; on the north, the Cyanean rocks and the wide sweep of the Euxine, blue as heaven and dotted with a hundred white sails, overlooked by the ruin of a Genoese castle, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, built on the site of a temple of Jupiter, and the spot where the Argonauts halted before they ventured among the Symplegades; and immediately below, Terapea and the deep bay of Buyukdereh, the summer resort of the foreign residents of Constantinople, a paradise of palaces and gardens, of vales and stately plane-trees, and the entrance to the interior village of Belgrade, with its sacred forest unprofaned as yet by the axe.

The Cyanean rocks which Jason and his mariners regarded as floating islands, or sentient monsters, vanishing and reappearing, are harmlessly anchored now, and do not appear at all formidable, though they disappear now as of old when the fierce Euxine rolls in its storm waves. Por a long time and with insatiable curiosity we followed with the eye the line of the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, once as thickly set with towns as the Riviera of Italy,—cities of Ionian, Dorian, and Athenian colonies, who followed the Phoenicians and perhaps the Egyptians,—in the vain hope of extending our vision to Trebizond, to the sea fortress of Petra, renowned for its defence by the soldiers of Chosroes against the arms of Justinian, and, further, to the banks of the Pliasis, to Colchis, whose fabulous wealth tempted Jason and his sea-robbers. The waters of this land were so impregnated with particles of gold that fleeces of sheep were used to strain out the yellow metal. Its palaces shone with gold and silver, and you might expect in its gardens the fruit of the Hesperides. In the vales of the Caucasus, we are taught, our race has attained its most perfect form; in other days its men were as renowned for strength and valor as its women were for beauty,—the one could not be permanently subdued, the others conquered, even in their slavery. Early converts to the Christian faith, they never adopted its morals nor comprehended its metaphysics; and perhaps a more dissolute and venal society does not exist than that whose business for centuries has been the raising of maids for the Turkish harems. And the miserable, though willing, victims are said to possess not even beauty, until after a training in luxury by the slave-dealers.

We made our way, not without difficulty, down the rough, bush-grown hillside, invaded a new Turkish fortification, and at length found a place where we could descend the precipitous bank and summon a boat to ferry us across to Buyukdereh. This was not easy to obtain; but finally an aged Greek boatman appeared with a caique as aged and decayed as himself. The chances seemed to be that it could make the voyage, and we all packed ourselves into it, sitting on the bottom and filling it completely. There was little margin of boat above the water, and any sudden motion would have reduced that to nothing. We looked wise and sat still, while the old Greek pulled feebly and praised the excellence of his craft. On the opposite slope our attention was called to a pretty cottage, and a Constantinople lady, who was of the party, began to tell us the story of its occupant. So dramatic and exciting did it become that we forgot entirely the peril of our frail and overloaded boat. The story finished as we drew up to the landing, which we instantly comprehended we had not reached a moment too soon. Eor when we arose our clothes were soaked; we were sitting in water, which was rapidly filling the boat, and would have swamped it in five minutes. The landing-place of Buyukdereh, the bay, the hills and villas, reminded us of Lake Como, and the quay and streets were rather Italian than Oriental. The most soaked of the voyagers stood outside the railing of the pretty garden of the caf? to dry in the sun, while the others sat inside, under the vines, and passed out to the unfortunates, through the iron bars, tiny cups of coffee, and fed them with rahat-al-lacoom and other delicious sweetmeats, until the arrival of the steamer. The ride down was lovely; the sun made the barracks and palaces on the east shore a blaze of diamonds; and the minarets seen through the steamer's smoke which, transfused with the rosy light, overhung the city, had a phantasmagorical aspect.

Constantinople shares with many other cities the reputation of being the most dissolute in the world. The traveller is not required to decide the rival claims of this sort of pre-eminence, which are eagerly put forward; he may better, in each city, acquiesce in the complaisant assumption of the inhabitants. But when he is required to see in the moral state of the Eastern capital signs of its speedy decay, and the near extinction of the Othman rule, he takes a leaf out of history and reflects. It is true, no doubt, that the Turks are enfeebled by luxury and sensuality, and have, to a great extent, lost those virile qualities which gave to their ancestors the dominion of so many kingdoms in Asia, Africa, and Europe; in short, that the race is sinking into an incapacity to propagate itself in the world. If one believes what he hears, the morals of society could not be worse. The women, so many of whom have been bought in the market, or are daughters of slaves, are educated only for pleasure; and a great proportion of the male population are adventurers from all lands, with few domestic ties. The very relaxation of the surveillance of the harem (the necessary prelude to the emancipation of woman) opens the door to opportunity, and gives freer play to feminine intrigue. One hears, indeed, that even the inmates of the royal harem find means of clandestine intercourse with the foreigners of Pera. The history of the Northern and Western occupation of the East has been, for fifteen centuries, only a repetition of yielding to the seductive influences of a luxurious climate and to soft and pleasing invitation.

But, heighten as we may the true and immoral picture of social life in Constantinople, I doubt if it is so loose and unrestrained as it was for centuries under the Greek Emperors; I doubt if the imbecility, the luxurious effeminacy of the Turks has sunk to the level of the Byzantine Empire; and when we are asked to expect in the decay of to-day a speedy dissolution, we remember that for a period of over a thousand years, from the partition of the Roman Empire between the two sons of Theodosius to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II., the empire subsisted in a state of premature and perpetual decay. These Oriental dynasties are a long time in dying, and we cannot measure their decrepitude by the standards of Occidental morality.

The trade and the commerce of the city are largely in the hands of foreigners; but it has nearly always been so, since the days of the merchants and manufacturers of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. We might draw an inference of Turkish insecurity from the implacable hatred of the so-called Greek subjects, if the latter were not in the discord of a thousand years of anarchy and servitude. The history of the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean has been a succession of Turkish avarice and rapacity, horrible Greek revenge and Turkish wholesale devastation and massacre, repeated over and over again; but there appears as yet no power able either to expel the Turks or unite the Greeks. That the leaven of change is working in the Levant is evident to the most superficial observation, and one sees everywhere the introduction of Western civilization, of business habits, and, above all, of schools. However indifferent the Osmanlis are to education, they are not insensible to European opinion; and in reckoning up their bad qualities, we ought not to forget that they have set some portions of Christendom a lesson of religious toleration,—both in Constantinople and Jerusalem the Christians were allowed a freedom of worship in their own churches which was not permitted to Protestants within the sacred walls of Pontifical Rome.

One who would paint the manners or the morals of Constantinople might adorn his theme with many anecdotes, characteristic of a condition of society which is foreign to our experience. I select one which has the merit of being literally true. You who believe that modern romance exists only in tales of fiction, listen to the story of a beauty of Constantinople, the vicissitudes of whose life equal in variety if not in importance those of Theodora and Athenais. For obvious reasons, I shall mention no names.

There lives now on the banks of the Bosphorus an English physician, who, at the entreaty of Lord Byron, went to Greece in 1824 as a volunteer surgeon in the war of independence; he arrived only in time to see the poet expire at Missolonghi. In the course of the war, he was taken prisoner by the Egyptian troops, who in their great need of surgeons kept him actively employed in his profession. He did not regain his freedom until after the war, and then only on condition that he should reside in Constantinople as one of the physicians of the Sultan, Mohammed II.

We may suppose that the Oriental life was not unpleasant, nor the position irksome to him, for he soon so far yielded to the temptations of the capital as to fall in love with a very pretty face which he saw daily in a bay-window of the street he traversed on the way to the Seraglio. Acquaintance, which sometimes precedes love, in this case followed it; the doctor declared his passion and was accepted by the willing maid. But an Oriental bay-window is the opportunity of the world, and the doctor, becoming convinced that his affianced was a desperate flirt, and yielding to the entreaties of his friends, broke off the engagement and left her free, in her eyry, to continue her observations upon mankind. This, however, did not suit the plans of the lovely and fickle girl. One morning, shortly after, he was summoned to see two Turkish ladies who awaited him in his office; when he appeared, the young girl (for it was she) and her mother threw aside their disguise, and declared that they would not leave the house until the doctor married the daughter, for the rupture of the engagement had rendered it impossible to procure any other husband. Whether her own beauty or the terrible aspect of the mother prevailed, I do not know, but the English chaplain was sent for; he refused to perform the ceremony, and a Greek priest was found who married them.

This marriage, which took the appearance of duress, might have been happy if the compelling party to it had left her fondness of adventure and variety at the wedding threshold; but her constancy was only assumed, like the Turkish veil, for an occasion; lovers were not wanting, and after the birth of three children, two sons and a daughter, she deserted her husband and went to live with a young Turk, who has since held high office in the government of the Sultan. It was in her character of Madame Mehemet Pasha that she wrote (or one of her sons wrote for her) a book well known in the West, entitled "Thirty Years in a Harem." But her intriguing spirit was not extinct even in a Turkish harem; she attempted to palm off upon the pasha, as her own, a child that she had bought; her device was detected by one of the palace eunuchs, and at the same time her amour with a Greek of the city came to light. The eunuch incurred her displeasure for his officiousness, and she had him strangled and thrown into the Bosphorus! Some say that the resolute woman even assisted with her own hands. For these breaches of decorum, however, she paid dear; the pasha banished her to Kutayah, with orders to the guard who attended her to poison her on the way; but she so won upon the affection of the officer that he let her escape at Broussa. There her beauty, if not her piety, recommended her to an Imam of one of the mosques, and she married him and seems for a time to have led a quiet life; at any rate, nothing further was heard of her until just before the famous cholera season, when news came of the death of her husband, the Moslem priest, and that she was living in extreme poverty, all her beauty gone forever, and consequently her ability to procure another husband.

The pasha, Mehemet, lived in a beautiful palace on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, near Kandili. During the great cholera epidemic of 1865, the pasha was taken ill. One day there appeared at the gate an unknown woman, who said that she had come to cure the pasha; no one knew her, but she spoke with authority, and was admitted. It was our adventuress. She nursed the pasha with the most tender care and watchful skill, so that he recovered; and, in gratitude for the preservation of his life, he permitted her and her daughter to remain in the palace. For some time they were contented with the luxury of such a home, but one day—it was the evening of Wednesday—neither mother nor daughter was to be found; and upon examination it was discovered that a large collection of precious stones and some ready money had disappeared with them. They had departed on the French steamer, in order to transfer their talents to the fields of Europe. The fate of the daughter I do not know; for some time she and her mother were conspicuous in the dissipation of Paris life; subsequently the mother lived with a son in London, and, since I heard her story in Constantinople, she has died in London in misery and want.

The further history of the doctor and his family may detain our curiosity for a moment. When his wife left him for the arms of the pasha, he experienced so much difficulty in finding any one in Constantinople to take care of his children that he determined to send them to Scotland to be educated, and intrusted them, for that purpose, to a friend who was returning to England. They went by way of Rome. It happened that the mother and sister of the doctor had some time before that come to Rome, for the sake of health, and had there warmly embraced the Roman Catholic faith. Of course the three children were taken to see their grandmother and aunt, and the latter, concerned for their eternal welfare, diverted them from their journey, and immured the boys in a monastery and the girl in a convent. The father, when he heard of this abduction, expressed indignation, but, having at that time only such religious faith as may be floating in the Oriental air and common to all, he made no vigorous effort to recover his children. Indeed, he consoled himself, in the fashion of the country, by marrying again; this time a Greek lady, who died, leaving two boys. The doctor was successful in transporting the offspring of his second marriage to Scotland, where they were educated; and they returned to do him honor,—one of them as the eloquent and devoted pastor of a Protestant church in Pera, and the other as a physician in the employment of the government.

After the death of his second wife, the doctor—I can but tell the story as I heard it—became a changed man, and—married again; this time a Swiss lady, of lovely Christian character. In his changed condition, he began to feel anxious to recover his children from the grasp of Rome. He wrote for information, but his sister refused to tell where they were, and his search could discover no trace of them. At length the father obtained leave of absence from the Seraglio, and armed with an autograph letter from Abdul Aziz to Pius IX., he went to Rome. The Pope gave him an order for the restoration of his children. He drove first to the convent to see his daughter. In place of the little girl whom he had years ago parted with, he found a young lady of extraordinary beauty, and a devoted Romanist. At first she refused to go with him, and it was only upon his promise to allow her perfect liberty of conscience, and never to interfere with any of the observances of her church, that she consented. Not daring to lose sight of her, he waited for her to pack her trunk, and then, putting her into a carriage, drove to the monastery where he heard, after many inquiries, that his boys were confined. The monk who admitted him denied that they were there, and endeavored to lock him into the waiting-room while he went to call the Superior. But the doctor anticipated his movements, and as soon as the monk was out of sight, started to explore the house. By good luck the first door he opened led into a chamber where a sick boy was lying on a bed. The doctor believed that he recognized one of his sons; a few questions satisfied him that he was right. "I am your father," he said to the astonished lad, "run quickly and call your brother and come with me." Monastic discipline had not so many attractions for the boys as convent life for the girl, and the child ran with alacrity and brought his brother, just as the abbot and a score of monks appeared upon the scene. As the celerity of the doctor had given no opportunity to conceal the boys, opposition to the order of the Pope was useless, and the father hastened to the gate where he had left the carriage. Meantime the aunt had heard of the rescue, and followed the girl from the convent; she implored her, by tears and prayers, to reverse her decision. The doctor cut short the scene by shoving his sons into the carriage and driving rapidly away. Nor did he trust them long in Rome.

The subsequent career of the boys is not dwelt on with pleasure. One of them enlisted in the Turkish army, married a Turkish wife, and, after some years, deserted her, and ran away to England. His wife was taken into a pasha's family, who offered to adopt her only child, a boy of four years; but the mother preferred to bring him to his grandfather. None of the family had seen her, but she established her identity, and begged that her child might be adopted by a good man, which she knew his grandfather to be, and receive a Christian training. The doctor, therefore, adopted the grandchild, which had come to him in such a strange way, and the mother shortly after died.

The daughter, whose acquired accomplishments matched her inherited beauty, married, in time, a Venetian Count of wealth; and the idler in Venice may see on the Grand Canal, among those mouldy edifices that could reveal so many romances, their sumptuous palace, and learn, if he cares to learn, that it is the home of a family happy in the enjoyment of most felicitous fortune. In the gossip with which the best Italian society sometimes amuses itself, he might hear that the Countess was the daughter of a slave of the Sultan's harem. I have given, however, the true version of the romantic story; but I am ignorant of the social condition or the race of the mother of the heroine of so many adventures. She may have been born in the Caucasus.