University of Virginia Library

95. LETTER XCV.

We left the ship with two caiques, each pulled by
three men, and carrying three persons, on an excursion
to the Black sea. We were followed by the
captain in his fast-pulling gig with six oars, who proposed
to beat the feathery boats of the country in a
twenty miles' pull against the tremendous current of
the Bosphorus.

The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves
à la Turque, in the bottom of the sharp caique, and
as our broad-brimmed pagans, after the first mile, took
off their shawled turbans, unwound their cashmere
girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered jackets, and
with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample
trousers to embarrass their action, commenced “giving
way,” in long, energetic strokes—I say, just then,
with the sunshine and the west wind attempered to
half a degree warmer than the blood (which I take to
be the perfection of temperature), and a long, long
autumn day, or two, or three before us, and not a
thought in the company that was not kindly and joyous—just
then, I say, I dropped a “white stone” on
the hour, and said, “here is a moment, old Care, that
has slipped through your rusty fingers! You have
pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless
mark your cross on the future—but the present, by a
thousand pulses in this warm frame laid along in the
sunshine, is care-free, and the last hour of Eden came
not on a softer pinion!”

We shot along through the sultan's fleet (some
eighteen or twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they
lie at anchor in this narrow strait, of a supernatural
size), and then, nearing the European shore to take
advantage of the counter-current, my kind friend, Mr.
H., who is at home on these beautiful waters, began
to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with
many a little history of their occupants between, to
which in a letter, written with a traveller's haste, and
in moments stolen from fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep,
I could not pretend to do justice.

The Bosphorus is quite—there can be no manner
of doubt of it—the most singularly beautiful scenery
in the world. From Constantinople to the Black
Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of
Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of
bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each
with its splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets,
and its hundred small houses buried in trees.
each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses and
turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretching

back into the hills, of which every summit and
swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide,
and the palaces of the sultan and his ministers, and of
the wealthier Turks and Armenians, are built half over
the water, and the ascending caique shoots beneath
his window, within the length of the owner's pipe;
and with his own slender boat lying under the stairs,
the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cushions
of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which
bears him (so built on the water's edge is this magnificent
capital) to almost every spot that can require
his presence.

A beautiful palace is that of the “Marble Cradle,”
or Beshiktash, the sultan's winter residence. Its bright
gardens with latticed fences (through which, as we
almost touched in passing, we saw the gleam of the
golden orange and lemon trees, and the thousand
flowers, and heard the splash of fountains and the
singing of birds) lean down to the lip of the Bosphorus,
and declining to the south, and protected from
everything but the sun by an enclosing wall, enjoy,
like the terrace of old King René, a perpetual summer.
The brazen gates open on the water, and the
palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the oriental
style, of a bright pink, stands between the gardens,
with its back to the wall.

The summer palace, where the “unmuzzled lion”
as his flatterers call him, resides at present, is just
above on the Asian side, at a village called Beylerbey.
It is an immense building, painted yellow, with white
cornices, and has an extensive terrace-garden, rising
over the hill behind. The harem has eight projecting
wings, each occupied by one of the sultan's lawful
wives.

Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the
European shore, stands the serai of the sultan's eldest
sister. It is a Chinese-looking structure, but exceedingly
picturesque, and like everything else on the
Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene. There
is not a building on either side, from the Black sea to
Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries;
and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation
perspectives, lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks,
seem as naturally the growth of the climate as the
pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid sultana
lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of condition,
a little emperess in an empire sufficiently large
(for a woman), seeing no bearded face, it is presumed,
except her black eunuchs' and her European physician's,
and having, though a sultan's sister, less liberty
than she gives even her slaves, whom she permits to
marry if they will. She can neither read nor write,
and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish.

A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantastical
little palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sultana,
who is to be married to Haleil Pacha, the commander
of the artillery. She is about twenty, and,
report says, handsome and spirited. Her betrothed
was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a
boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favoritism.
By the laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he
is to be banished to a distant pachalik after living with
his wife a year, his connexion with blood-royal making
him dangerously eligible to the throne. His bride
remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if she
has one), and lives the remainder of her life in a widow's
seclusion, with an allowance proportioned to her
rank. His consolation is provided for by the mussulman
privilege of as many more wives as he can support.
Heaven send him resignation—if he needs it
notwithstanding.

The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a
handsome palace on the same side of the Bosphorus;
and the Armenian seraffs, or bankers, though compelled,
like all rayahs, to paint their houses of a dull
lead color (only a mussulman may live in a red house
in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking
tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that
of the sultan himself. They have a singular effect,
those black, funereal houses, standing in the foreground
of a picture of such light and beauty!

We pass Orta-keni, the Jew village, the Arnaout-keni,
occupied mostly by Greeks; and here, if you
have read “the Armenians,” you are in the midst of
its most stirring scenes. The story is a true one, not
much embellished in the hands of the novelist, and
there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands the
house of the heroine's father, the old seraff Oglou
and, behind the garden, you may see the small cottage,
inhabited, secretly, by the enamored Constantine,
and here, in the pretty village of Bebec, lives, at
this moment, the widowed and disconsolate Veronica,
dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately refusing all society
but her own sad remembrance. I must try to
see her. Her “husband of a night” was compelled to
marry again by the hospodar, his father (but this is
not in the novel, you will remember), and there is late
news that his wife is dead, and the lovers of romance
in Stamboul are hoping he will return and make a
happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The
“orthodox catholic Armenian, broker and moneychanger
to boot,” who was to have been her forced
husband, is a very amiable and good-looking fellow,
now in the employ of our chargé d'affaires as second
dragoman.

We approach Roumeli-Hissar, a jutting point almost
meeting a similar projection from the Asian
shore, crowned, like its vis-a-vis, with a formidable
battery. The Bosphorus here is but half an arrow-flight
in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their
nearest approach, stand looking each other in the
face, like boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and
a most formidable row of teeth on either side. The
current scampers through between the two castles, as
if happy to get out of the way, and, up-stream, it is
hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful points,
however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when
I remember how green was the foliage that half enveloped
the walls, and how richly picturesque the
hills behind them. Here, in the European castle,
were executed the greater part of the janisaries, hundreds
in a day, of the manliest frames in the empire,
thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and stripped,
to float, unmourned and unregarded, to the sea.

Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads
again, and a curving bay, which is set like a mirror, in
a frame of the softest foliage and verdure, is pointed
out as a spot at which the crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon
and Raymond of Toulouse encamped on their
way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are loftier,
and the Giant's mountain, upon which the Russian
army encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would
be a respectable eminence in any country. At its
foot, the strait expands into quite a lake, and on the
European side, in a scoop of the shore, exquisitely
placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and
Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Austrian
and other flags were flying over a half dozen of
the most desirable residences I have seen since
Italy.

We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our
spent caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the
Black sea. The waves were breaking on the “blue
Symplegades,” a mile on our left, and, before us, toward
the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, and, south, toward
Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue waste
of waters, apparently as himitless as the ocean. The
Black sea is particularly blue.

We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to
remember that I had reached my farthest step into
the east. Henceforth I shall be on the return. I
sent a long look over the waters to the bright lands

beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and wishing
for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flying
above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I
lay back in the boat with a “change in the spirit of
my dream.”

We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the
ruins of a fine old Genoese castle, which looks over
the Black sea, and after a lunch upon grapes and coffee,
at a small village at the foot of the hill on which
it stands, we embarked and followed our companions.
Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we
landed and walked along the thronged and beautiful
shore to Terapia, meeting hundreds of fair Armenians
and Greeks (all beautiful, it seemed to me), issuing
forth for their evening promenade, and, with a call of
ceremony on the English ambassador, for whom I
had letters, we again took to the caique, and fled down
with the current like a bird. Oh, what a sunset was
there!

We were to dine and pass the night at the country-house
of an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded
and lovely village, six or eight miles from Constantinople.
We reached the landing as the stars began to
glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable and hospitable
entertainments I remember to have shared, we
took an early breakfast with our noble host, and returned
to the ship. I could wish my friends no
brighter passage in their lives than such an excursion
as mine to the Black sea.