University of Virginia Library

106. LETTER CVI.

Three or four hours more of hard riding brought
us to a long glen, opening upon the broad plains of
Lydia. We were on the look-out here for the “natural
statue of Niobe,” spoken of by the ancient writers
as visible from the road in this neighborhood; but
there was nothing that looked like her, unless she was,
as the poet describes her, a “Niobe, all tears,” and
runs down toward the Sarabat, in what we took to be
only a very pretty mountain rivulet. It served for
simple fresh water to our volunteer companion, who
darted off an hour before sunset, and had finished his
ablutions and prayers, and was rising from his knees as
we overtook him upon its grassy border. Almost the
only thing that grows in these long mountain passes,
is the peculiar thorn of Syria, said to be the same of
which our Savior's crown was plaited. It differs from
the common species, in having a hooked thorn alternating
with the straight, adding cruelly to its power
of laceration. It is remarkable that the flower, at this
season withering on the bush, is a circular golden-colored
leaf, resembling exactly the radiated glory
usually drawn around the heads of Christ and the
Virgin.

Amid a sunset of uncommon splendor, firing every
peak of the opposite range of hills with an effulgent
red, and filling the valley between with an atmosphere
of heavenly purple, we descended into the plain.

Mount Sypilus, in whose rocks the magnetic ore is
said to have been first discovered, hung over us in
bold precipices; and, rounding a projecting spur, we
came suddenly in sight of the minarets and cypresses
of Magnesia (not pronounced as if written in an
apothecary's bill), the ancient capital of the Ottoman
empire.

On the side of the ascent, above the town, we observed
a large isolated mansion, surrounded with a
wall, and planted about with noble trees, looking,
with the exception that it was too freshly painted, like
one of the fine old castle palaces of Italy. It was
something very extraordinary for the east, where no
man builds beyond the city wall, and no house is
very much larger than another. It was the hereditary
residence, we afterward discovered, of almost the
only noble family in Turkey—that of the Bey-Oglou.
You will recollect Byron's allusion to it in the “Bride
of Abydos:”

I quote from memory, perhaps incorrectly.

The present descendant is still in possession of the
title, and is said to be a liberal-minded and hospitable
old Turk, of the ancient and better school. His camels
are the finest that come into Smyrna, and are famous
for their beauty and appointments.

Our devout companion left us at the first turning in
the town, laying his hand to his breast in gratitude
for having been suffered to annoy us all day with his
brilliant equitation, and we stumbled in through the
increasing shadows of twilight to the caravanserai.

It is very possible that the reader has but a slender
conception of an oriental hotel. Supposing it, at least,
from the inadequacy of my own previous ideas, I shall
allow myself a little particularity in the description
of the conveniences which the travelling Zuleikas and
Fatimas, the Maleks and Othmans, of eastern story,
encounter in their romantic journeys.

It was near the farther outskirt of the large city of
Magnesia (the accent, I repeat, is on the penult), that
we found the way encumbered with some scores of
kneeling camels, announcing our vicinity to a khan.
A large wooden building, rather off its perpendicular,
with a great many windows, but no panes in them, and
only here and there a shutter “hanging by the eyelids,”
presently appeared, and entering its hospitable
gateway, which had neither gate nor porter, we dismounted
in a large court, lit only by the stars, and
pre-occupied by any number of mules and horses
An inviting staircase led to a gallery encircling the
whoie area, from which opened thirty or forty small
doors; but, though we made as much noise as could
be expected of as many men and horses, no waiter
looked over the balustrade, nor maid Cicely, nor Boniface,
or their corresponding representatives in Turkey,
invited us in. The suridjee looked to his horses,
which was his business, and to look to ourselves was
ours; though, with our stiff limbs and clamorous appetites,
we set about it rather despairingly.

The Figaro of the Turks is a caféjee, who, besides
shaving, making coffee, and bleeding, is supposed to
be capable of every office required by man. He is
generally a Greek, the Mussulman seldom having
sufficient facility of character for the vocation. In a
few minutes, then, the nearest Figaro was produced,
who, scarce dissembling his surprise at the improvidence
of travellers who went about without pot or
kettle, bag of rice or bottle of oil, led the way with
his primitive lamp to our apartment. We might have
our choice of twenty. Having looked at the other
nineteen, we came back to the first, reconciled to it
by sheer force of comparison. Of its two windows,
one alone had a shutter that would fulfil its destiny.
It contained neither chair, table, nor utensil of any
description. Its floor had not been swept, nor its
walls whitewashed since the days of Timour the Tartar.
“Kalo! Kalo!” (Greek for you will be very
comfortable), cried our commissary, throwing down
some old mats to spread our carpets upon. But
the mats were alive with vermin, and, for sweeping
the room, the dust would not have been laid
till midnight. So we threw down our carpets upon
the floor, and driving from our minds the too
luxurious thoughts of clean straw, and a corner
in a warm barn, sat down, by the glimmer of a
flaring taper, to wait, with what patience we might,
for a chicken still breathing freely on his roost, and
turn our backs as ingeniously as possible on a chilly
December wind, that came in at the open window, as
if it knew the caravanserai were free to all comers.
There is but one circumstance to add to this faithful
description—and it is one which, in the minds of many
very worthy persons, would turn the scale in favor
of the hotels of the east, with all their disadvantages
—there was nothing to pay!

Ali Bey, in his travels, predicts the fall of the Ottoman
empire from the neglected state of the khans;
this inattention to the public institutions of hospitality,
being a falling away from the leading Mussulman
virtue. They never gave the traveller more than a
shelter, however, in their best days; and to enter a
cold, unfurnished room, after a day's hard travel, even
if the floor were clean, and the windows would shut,
is rather comfortless. Yet such is eastern travel, and
the alternative is to take “the sky for a great-coat,”
and find as soft a stone as possible for your pillow.

We gathered around our pilaw, which came in the

progress of time, and consisted of a chicken, buried
in a handsomely-shaped cone of rice and butter, forming,
with a large crater-like black bowl in which it
stood, the cloud of smoke issuing from its peak, and
the lava of butter flowing down its sides, as pretty a
miniature Vesuvius, as you would find in a modeller's
window in the Toledo. Encouraging that sin in
Christians, which they would not commit themselves,
they brought us some wine of the country, the sin of
drinking which, one would think, was its own sufficient
punishment. With each a wooden spoon, the immediate
and only means of communication between the
dish and the mouth, we soon solved the doubtful
problem of the depth of the crater, and then casting
lots who should lie next the window to take off the
edge of the December blast, we improved upon some
hints taken from the fig-packers of Smyrna, and with
an economy of exposed surface, which can only be
learned by travel, disposed ourselves in a solid body to
sleep.

The tinkling of the camels' bells awoke me as the
day was breaking, and my toilet being already made,
I sprang readily up and descended to the court of the
caravanserai. It was an eastern scene, and not an unpoetical
one. The patient and intelligent camels were
kneeling in regular ranks to receive their loads, complaining
in a voice almost human, as the driver flung
the heavy bales upon the saddles too roughly, while
the small donkey; no larger than a Newfoundland
dog, leader of the long caravan, took his place at the
head of the gigantic file, pricking back his long ears
as if he were counting his spongy-footed followers, as
they fell in behind him. Here and there knelt six or
seven, with their unsightly humps still unburdened,
eating with their peculiar deliberateness from small
heaps of provender, and scattered over the adjacent
fields, wandered separately the caravan of some indolent
driver, browsing upon the shrubs, and looking occasionally
with intelligent expectation toward the
khan, for the appearance of their tardy master. Over
all rose the mingled music of the small bells, with
which their gay-covered harness was profusely covered,
varied by the heavy beat of the larger ones borne
at the necks of the leading and last camels of the file,
while the retreating sounds of the caravans already on
their march, came in with the softer tones which completed
its sweetness.

In a short time my companions joined me, and we
started for a walk in the town. The necessity of attending
the daylight prayers, makes all Mussulmans
early risers, and we found the streets already crowded,
and the merchants and artificers as busy as at noon.
Turning a corner to get out of the way of a row of
butchers, who were slaughtering sheep revoltingly in
front of their stalls, we met two old Turks coming
from the mosque, one of whom, with the familiarity
of manners which characterizes the nation, took from
my hand a stout English riding-whip which I carried,
and began to exercise it on the bag-like trousers of
his friend. After amusing himself a while in this
manner, he returned the whip, and, patting me condescendingly
on the cheek, gave me two figs from his
voluminous pocket, and walked on. Considering that
I stand six feet in my stockings, an unwiedly size, you
may say, for a pet, this freak of the old Magnesian
would seem rather extraordinary. Yet it illustrates
the Turkish manners, which, as I have often had occasion
to notice, are a singular mixture of profound
gravity and the most childish simplicity.

We found a few fine old marble columns in the
porches of the mosques, but one Turkish town is just
like another, and after an hour or two of wandering
about among the wooden houses and narrow streets,
we returned to the khan, and, with a cup of coffee,
mounted and resumed our journey.

I have never seen a finer plain than that of Magne
sia. With an even breadth of seven or eight miles,
its length can not be less than fifty or sixty, and
throughout its whole extent it is one unbroken picture
of fertile field and meadow, shut in by two lofty ranges
of mountains, and watered by the full and winding
Hermus. Without fence, and almost without human
habitation, it is a noble expanse to the eye, possessing
all the untrammelled beauty of a wilderness without
its detracting inutility. It is literally “clothed with
flocks.” As we rode on under the eastern brow of
Mount Sypilus, and struck out more into the open
plain, as far as we could distinguish by the eye, spread
the snowy sheep in hundreds, at merely separating
distances, checkered here and there by a herd of the tall
jet-black goats of the east, walking onward in slow
and sober procession, with the solemn state of a funeral.
The road was lined with camels, coming into
Smyrna by this grand highway of nature, and bringing
all the varied produce of Asia Minor to barter in
its busy mart. We must have passed a thousand in
our day's journey.