Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland Volume I Part 8

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

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

Notwithstanding his impracticabilities as a traveller, I liked the doctor, and determined to follow him, and before breakfast the next morning we were installed in a suite of rooms in the third story of a house opposite the old palace of the British amba.s.sador.

For two or three days I was _hors du combat_, and put myself under the hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian, educated at Edinburgh, whom I cordially recommend both for his kindness and medical skill. On going out, one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill, a gentleman whose name has since rung throughout Europe, and who at one time seemed likely to be the cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war.

He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient Chalcedon, in Asia; and I have seldom been more shocked than by reading in a newspaper, while in the lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally shot a Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized by the Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, _bastinadoed_ till he was almost dead. I had seen the infliction of that horrible punishment; and, besides the physical pain, there was a sense of the indignity that roused every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious spirit with which the Turks would stand around and see a Christian scourged. The civilized world owes a deep debt of grat.i.tude to the English government for the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the sultan, and the firmness with which it insisted on, and obtained, the most ample redress for Mr. Churchill, and atonement for the insult offered to all Christendom in his person.

My companions and myself had received several invitations from Commodore Porter, and, accompanied by Mr. Dwight, one of our American missionaries, to whom I am under particular obligations for his kindness, early in the morning we took a caique with three athletic Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio point to the Seven Towers, a distance of five miles, being close under the walls of the city, in two hours reached the commodore's residence at St.

Stephano, twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders of the Sea of Marmora. The situation is beautiful, abounding in fruit-trees, among which are some fig trees of the largest size; and the commodore was then engaged in building a large addition to his house. It will be remembered that Commodore Porter was the first envoy ever sent by the United States' government to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, with the other members of the diplomatic corps; but his salary as charge being inadequate to sustain a becoming style, he had withdrawn to this place. I had never seen Commodore Porter before. I afterward pa.s.sed a month with him in the lazaretto at Malta, and I trust he will not consider me presuming when I say that our acquaintance ripened into friends.h.i.+p. He is entirely different from the idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten, much broken in health, and remarkably mild and quiet in his manners. His eye is his best feature, though even that does not indicate the desperate hardihood of character which he has exhibited on so many occasions. Perhaps I ought not to say so, but he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I could not but think that he ought still to be standing in the front rank of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke with great bitterness of the Foxardo affair, and gave me an account of an interesting interview between General Jackson and himself on his recall from South America.

General Jackson wished him to resume his rank in the navy, but he answered that he would never accept service with men who had suspended him for doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation, was done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Castle of the Seven Towers.]

About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return to Constantinople.

In an hour Mr. D. and I landed at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few things in this ancient city interested me more than my walk around its walls. We followed them the whole extent on the land side, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five gates, the princ.i.p.al of which is the Cannon Gate, through which Mohammed II. made his triumphal entry into the Christian city. They have not been repaired since the city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the same walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended city;" to a great extent, they are the same walls which the first Constantine built and the last Constantine died in defending. Time has laid his ruining hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of modern war. The moat and fosse have alike lost their warlike character, and bloom and blossom with the vine and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than the venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can reach, is one continued burying-ground, with thousands and tens of thousands of turbaned headstones, shaded by thick groves of the mourning cypress.

Opposite the Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected from all around, containing five headstones in a row, over the bodies of Ali Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina, and his four sons. The fatal mark of death by the bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of the Porte. It was toward the sunset of a beautiful evening, and all Stamboul was out among the tombs. At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in a caique, and in a few minutes were in Pera.

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

The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great nation if she could spare from her service such a man. Had he lived, even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant pecuniary reward. Mr.

Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of completing his employer's work devolved on him. It could not have fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman s.h.i.+pbuilder, all at once Mr.

Rhodes found himself brought into close relations with the seraskier pacha, the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself; but his good sense never deserted him. He was then preparing for the launch of the great s.h.i.+p; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions of every s.h.i.+p that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the s.h.i.+p and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the sultan. He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without whiskers or mustache, and, except that he wore the tarbouch, was thorough American in his appearance and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by his side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached Turks, and in the same breath he was talking with me of s.h.i.+pbuilders in New-York, and people and things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes knows and cares but little for things that do not immediately concern him; his whole thoughts are of his business, and in that he possesses an ambition and industry worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion, particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic government, I may mention that, while standing near the s.h.i.+p and remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her name, and he told me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern, and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not be able to answer when asked. I have seldom met a countryman abroad with whom I was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a pinnacle in my estimation by telling me that, if I came to the yard the next day at one, I would see the sultan! There was no man living whom I had a greater curiosity to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but the sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness had come two hours before the time; had accompanied Mr. Rhodes over the s.h.i.+p, and left the yard less than five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still lying at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays of refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and two black eunuchs belonging to the seraglio, handsomely dressed in long black cloaks of fine pelisse cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers, were still lingering about the s.h.i.+p, their effeminate faces and musical voices at once betraying their neutral character.

The next was the day of the launch; and early in the morning, in the suite of Commodore Porter, I went on board an old steamer provided by the sultan expressly for the use of Mr. Rhodes's American friends. The waters of the Golden Horn were already covered; thousands of caiques, with their high sharp points, were cutting through it, or resting like gulls upon its surface; and there were s.h.i.+ps with the still proud banner of the crescent, and strangers with the flags of every nation in Christendom, and sailboats, longboats, and rowboats, amba.s.sadors'

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

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

Mr. Rhodes's triumph was complete; the sultan called him to his tent, and with his own hands fixed on the lappel of his coat a gold medal set in diamonds, representing the launching of a s.h.i.+p. Mr. Rhodes has attained among strangers the mark of every honourable man's ambition, the head of his profession. He has put upon the water what Commodore Porter calls the finest s.h.i.+p that ever floated, and has a right to be proud of his position and prospects under the "shade of the Sublime Porte." The sultan wishes to confer upon him the t.i.tle of chief naval constructor, and to furnish him with a house and a caique with four oars. In compliment to his highness, who detests a hat, Mr. Rhodes wears the tarbouch; but he declines all offices and honours, and anything that may tend to fix him as a Turkish subject, and looks to return and enjoy in his own country and among his own people the fruits of his honourable labours. If the good wishes of a friend can avail him, he will soon return to our city rich with the profits of untiring industry, and an honourable testimony to his countrymen of the success of American skill and enterprise abroad.

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

And again: our whole consular system is radically wrong, disreputable, and injurious to our character and interests. While other nations consider the support of their consuls a part of the expenses of their government, we suffer ourselves to be represented by merchants, whose pecuniary interests are mixed up with all the local and political questions that affect the place and who are under a strong inducement to make their office subservient to their commercial relations. I make no imputations against any of them. I could not if I would, for I do not know an American merchant holding the office who is not a respectable man; but the representative of our country ought to be the representative of our country only; removed from any distracting or conflicting interests, standing like a watchman to protect the honour of his nation and the rights of her citizens. And more than this, all over the Mediterranean there are ports where commerce presents no inducements to the American merchant, and there the office falls into the hands of the natives; and at this day the American arms are blazoned on the doors, and the American flag is waving over the houses, of Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Arabs, and all the mongrel population of that inland sea; and in the ports under the dominion of Turkey particularly, the office is coveted as a means of protecting the holder against the liabilities to his own government, and of revenue by selling that protection to others. I will not mention them by name, for I bear them no ill will personally, and I have received kindness from most of the petty vagabonds who live under the folds of the American flag; but the consuls at Gendoa and Algiers are a disgrace to the American name.

Congress has lately turned its attention to this subject, and will, before long, I hope, effect a complete change in the character of our consular department, and give it the respectability which it wants; the only remedy is by following the example of other nations, in fixing salaries to the office, and forbidding the holders to engage in trade.

Besides the leading inducements to this change, there is a secondary consideration, which, in my eyes, is not without its value, in that it would furnish a valuable school of instruction for our young men. The offices would be sought by such. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a year would maintain them respectably, in most of the ports of the Mediterranean, and young men resident in those places, living upon salaries, and not obliged to engage in commerce, would employ their leisure hours in acquiring the language of the country, in communicating with the interior, and among them would return upon us an acc.u.mulation of knowledge far more than repaying us for all the expense of supporting them abroad.

Doubtless the reader expects other things in Constantinople; but all things are changing. The day has gone by when the Christian could not cross the threshold of a mosque and live. Even the sacred mosque of St.

Sophia, the ancient Christian church, so long closed against the Christians' feet, now, upon great occasions, again opens its doors to the descendants of its Christian builders. One of these great occasions happened while I was there. The sultan gave a firman to the French amba.s.sador, under which all the European residents and travellers visited it. Unfortunately, I was unwell, and could not go out that day, and was obliged afterward to content myself with walking around its walls, with uplifted eyes and a heavy heart, admiring the glittering crescent and thinking of the prostrate cross.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mosque of Sultan Suliman.]

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

In the afternoon I went for the last time to the Armenian burying-ground.

In the East the graveyards are the general promenades, the places of rendezvous, and the lounging-places; and in Constantinople the Armenian burying-ground is the most beautiful, and the favourite. Situated in the suburbs of Pera, overlooking the Bosphorus, shaded by n.o.ble palm-trees, almost regularly toward evening I found myself sitting upon the same tombstone, looking upon the silvery water at my feet, studded with palaces, flas.h.i.+ng and glittering with caiques from the golden palace of the sultan to the seraglio point, and then turned to the animated groups thronging the burying-ground; the Armenian in his flowing robes, the das.h.i.+ng Greek, the stiff and out-of-place-looking Frank; Turks in their gay and bright costume, glittering arms, and solemn beards, enjoying the superlative of existence in dozing over their pipe; and women in long white veils, apart under some delightful shade, in little picnic parties, eating ices and confectionary. Here and there, toward the outskirts, was the araba, the only wheeled carriage known among the Turks, with a long low body, highly carved and gilded, drawn by oxen fancifully trimmed with ribands, and filled with soft cus.h.i.+ons, on which the Turkish and Armenian ladies almost buried themselves. Instead of the cypress, the burying-ground is shaded by n.o.ble plane-trees; and the tombstones, instead of being upright, are all flat, having at the head a couple of little niches scooped out to hold water, with the beautiful idea to induce birds to come there and drink and sing among the trees.

Their tombstones, too, have another mark, which, in a country where men are apt to forget who their fathers were, would exclude them even from that place where all mortal distinctions are laid low, viz., a mark indicating the profession or occupation of the deceased; as, a pair of shears to mark the grave of a tailor; a razor that of a barber; and on many of them was another mark indicating the manner of death, the bowstring, or some other mark, showing that the stone covered a victim of Turkish cruelty. But all these things are well known; nothing has escaped the prying eyes of curious travellers; and I merely state, for my own credit's sake, that I followed the steps of those who had gone before me, visited the Sweet Waters, Scutary, and Belgrade, the reservoirs, aqueducts, and ruins of the palace of Constantine, and saw the dancing dervishes; rowed up the Bosphorus to Buyukdere, lunched under the tree where G.o.dfrey encamped with his gallant crusaders, and looked out upon the Black Sea from the top of the Giant's Mountain.

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Circa.s.sia 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 Circa.s.sian 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 beaute!" 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 ma.s.sacre 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 enc.u.mbrance, 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 s.h.i.+rts 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 Petraea, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 cla.s.sically called a pyroscaphe, a miserable old thing; and yet as much form and circ.u.mstance were observed in sending her off as in fitting out an _exploring expedition_.

Consuls' and amba.s.sadors' boats were pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, 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 G.o.dspeed, 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-pa.s.sengers 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 cla.s.sic waters, as if indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, bl.u.s.tering 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 amba.s.sadors; pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es of this extremity of the Bosphorus were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples, monuments of the fears or grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sociations. 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociations to a new country grown up in our own day. We escaped, and, I am obliged to say, without noticing them, the Cyaneae, "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 pa.s.sing through which the good s.h.i.+p 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 pa.s.sage of the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean. Still, if the number of s.h.i.+pwrecks be any evidence of its character, it is indeed ent.i.tled 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 outbl.u.s.tered the winds and waves with our steamboat; pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Odessa.]

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 dest.i.tute 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 s.h.i.+pping. 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 princ.i.p.al.

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 ash.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sports 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 pa.s.sports, 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 pa.s.sengers; and never, perhaps, did steamboat pour forth a more motley a.s.semblage 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.