 | Inklings of adventure |  |
3. PART III.
Ten o'clock a.m., and the weather like the Prophet's
Paradise,
“Warmth without heat, and coolness without cold.”
boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main
street of Pera, dividing her attention between a handsome
Armenian, with a red button in the top of his
black lamb's-wool cap,[8] and her three boarders, Job,
Maimuna, and myself, at that critical moment about
mounting our horses for a gallop to Belgrade.
We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and
with a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our
shovel-shaped stirrups into the sides of our horses, and
pranced away up the street, getting many a glance of
translated, from the dark eyes that are seen day and
night at the windows of the leaden-colored houses of
the Armenians.
We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for
the Boulevard or Bond-street, but, blessed privilege of
the East! we were sufficiently comme il faut for Pera.
To avoid the embarrassment of Maimuna's sex, I had
dressed her, from an English “slop-shop” at Galata,
in the checked shirt, jacket, and trowsers of a sailor-boy,
but as she was obstinately determined that her
long black hair should not be shorn, a turban was her
only resource for concealment, and the dark and
glossy mass was hidden in the folds of an Albanian
shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a costume
as could well be imagined. With the white duck
trowsers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was
a little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and
breast, the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat
close round her throat, and the silken and gold fringe
of the shawl flowing coquetishly over her left cheek
and ear, she was certainly an odd figure on horseback,
and, but for her admirable riding and excessive grace of
attitude, she might have been as much a subject for a
caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly along
at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji, (which he
had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem,) and, as he usually put it on askew, the
gaillard and rakish character of his head-dress, and the
grave respectability of his black coat and salt-and-pepper
trowsers, produced a contrast which elicited a
smile even from the admiring damsels at the windows.
Maimuna went caracoling along till the road entered
the black shadow of the Cemetery of Pera, and then,
pulling up her well-managed horse, she rode close to
my side, with the air of subdued respect which was
morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers,
were sitting on the graves of their kindred with their
veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that
thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than those of the
living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay
beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on
the spot endeared by their memories.
“I declare to you,” said Job, following Maimuna's
example in waiting till I came up, “that I think the
Turks the most misrepresented and abused people on
earth. Look at this scene! Here are whole families
seated upon graves over which the grass grows green
and fresh, the children playing at their feet, and their
own faces the pictures of calm cheerfulness and enjoyment.
They are the by-word for brutes, and there is
not a gentler or more poetical race of beings between
the Indus and the Arkansaw!”
It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish
tombs are as splendid as white marble can make them,
with letters and devices in red and gold, and often the
most delicious sculptures, and, with the crowded closeness
of the monuments, the vast extent of the burial-ground
over hill and dale, and the cypresses (nowhere
so magnificent) veiling all in a deep religious shadow,
dim, and yet broken by spots of the clearest sunshine,
a more impressive and peculiar scene could scarce be
imagined. It might exist in other countries, but it
would be a desert. To the Mussulman death is not
repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be
happiest. At all hours of the day you find the
tombs of Constantinople surrounded by the living.
They spread their carpets, and arrange their simple
repast around the stone which records the name and
virtues of their own dead, and talk of them as they do
of the living and absent,—parted from them to meet
again, if not in life, in paradise.
“For my own part,” continued Job, “I see nothing
in scripture which contradicts the supposition that we
shall haunt, in the intermediate state between death
and heaven, the familiar places to which we have been
accustomed. In that case, how delightful are the habits
of these people, and how cheeringly vanish the horrors
of the grave! Death, with us, is appalling! The
smile has scarce faded from our lips, the light scarce
dead in our eye, when we are thrust into a noisome
vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a fear.
We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our
friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the
vermin that infest the gloom, with chillness, with darkness,
with disease; and, memento as it is of their own
coming destiny, what wonder if they chase us, and the
forecast shadows of the grave, with the same hurried
disgust from their remembrance. Suppose, for an instant,
(what is by no means improbable,) that the
spirits of the dead are about us, conscious and watchful!
Suppose that they have still a feeling of sympathy
in the decaying form they have so long inhabited,
in its organs, its senses, its once-admired and long-cherished
grace and proportion; that they feel the
contumely and disgust with which the features we professed
to love are cast like garbage into the earth, and
the indecent haste with which we turn away from the
solitary spot, and think of it but as the abode of festering
and revolting corruption!”
At this moment we turned to the left, descending to
the Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little
in advance during Job's unintelligible monologue, came
galloping back to tell us that there was a corpse in the
road. We quickened our pace, and the next moment
our horses started aside from the bier, left in a bend of
the highway with a single individual, the grave-digger,
sitting cross-legged beside it. Without looking up at
our approach, the man mumbled something between
path.
“What does he say?” I asked of Maimuna.
“He repeats a verse of the Koran,” she replied,
“which promises a reward in paradise to him who
bears the dead forty steps on its way to the grave.”
Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle
over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the
grave-digger that he would officiate as bearer. The
man nodded assent, but looked down the road without
arising from his seat.
`You are but three,” said Maimuna, “and he waits
for a fourth.”
I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my
friend in the humanities of life, and the grave-digger,
seeing that we were Europeans, smiled with a kind
of pleased surprise, and uttering the all-expressive
“Pekkhe!” resumed his look-out for the fourth
bearer.
The corpse was that of a poor old man. The coffin
was without a cover, and he lay in it, in his turban
and slippers, his hands crossed over his breast, and
the folds of his girdle stuck full of flowers. He might
have been asleep, for any look of death about him.
His lips were slightly unclosed, and his long beard was
combed smoothly over his breast. The odor of the
pipe and the pastille struggled with the perfume of the
flowers, and there was in his whole aspect a life-likeness
and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin,
and the additional horrors of approaching death, perhaps,
combine, in other countries, utterly to do away.
“Hitherto,” said Job, as he gazed attentively on the
calm old man, “I have envied the Scaligers their uplifted
and airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street
of Verona, and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus
of Petrarch, looking away over the peaceful Campagna
of Lombardy; but here is a Turkish beggar who will
tombs,—a kind of Utopia of the dead?”
A young man with a load of vegetables for the
market of Pera, came toiling up the hill behind his
mule. Sure of his assistance, the grave-digger arose,
and as we took our places at the poles, the marketer
quietly turned his beast out of the road, and assisted
us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. The grave
was not far off, and having deposited the corpse on its
border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting
clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts
toward the Valley of Sweet Waters.
The Armenians at Constantinople are despised by the Turks,
and tacitly submit, like the Jews, to occupy a degraded position as a
people. A few, however, are employed as interpreters by the embassies,
and these are allowed to wear the mark of a red worsted button
in the high black cap of the race,—a distinction which just serves to
make them the greatest possible coxcombs.
2. II.
We were taking breath on the silken banks of the
Barbyses,—Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed,
up to her barb's girths in sparkling water, and Job and
myself laughing at her frolics from either side, when
an old woman, bent double with age, came hobbling
toward us from a hovel in the hill-side.
“Maimuna,” said Job, fishing out some trumpery
paras from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, “give
this to that good woman, and tell her that he who gives
it is happy, and would share his joy with her.”
The gipsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a
short distance from the decrepit creature, and after a
little conversation returned, leading her horse.
“She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you
give her money?”
“Tell her, to buy bread for her children,” said my
patriarchal friend.
Maimuna went back, conversed with her again, and
returned with the money.
“She says she has no need of it. There is no human
creature between her and Allah!”
The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his rejected
paras, and Maimuna rode between us in silence.
It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of
the lips of an angel.
3. III.
We kept up the Valley of Sweet Waters, tracing
the Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills; and then
mounting a steep ascent, struck across to the east, over
a country, which, though so near the capital of the
Turkish empire, is as wild as the plains of the Hermus.
Shrubs, forest-trees, and wild grass, cover the apparently
illimitable waste, and save a half-visible horse-path
which guides the traveler across, there is scarce
an evidence that you are not the first adventurer in the
wilderness.
What a natural delight is freedom! What a bound
gives the heart at the sight of the unfenced earth, the
unseparated hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested
valleys! How thrilling it is—unlike any other joy—
to spur a fiery horse to the hill-top, and gaze away
over dell and precipice to the horizon, and never a
wall between, nor a human limit to say “Thus far
shalt thou go, and no farther!” Oh, I think we have
an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the
caged eaglet's, or the antelope's that is reared in the
Arab's tent; an instinct of nature that scorns boundary
and chain; that yearns to the free desert; that would
have the earth, like the sea or the sky, unappropriated
and open; that rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot
and dwelling-place, and springs passionately back to
its freedom even after years of subduing method and
spirit-breaking confinement! I have felt it on the sea,
in the forests of America, on the desolated plains of
Asia and Roumelia; I should feel it till my heart
burst, had I the wings of a bird!
The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu stands on the descent of a hill in the little village
of Belgrade, some twelve or fourteen miles from
but the best house of the dozen that form the village,
and overlooks a dell below that reminds one of the
“Emerald valleys of Cashmeer.” We wandered
through its deserted rooms, discussed the clever woman
who has described her travels so graphically, and
then followed Maimuna to the narrow street, in search
of kibaubs. The butcher's shop in Turkey is as open
as the trottoir to the street, and with only an entire
sheep hanging between us and a dozen hungry beggars,
attracted by the presence of strangers, we crossed
our legs on the straw carpet, and setting the wooden
tripod in the centre, waited patiently the movements of
our feeder, who combined in his single person the
three vocations of butcher, cook, and waiter. One
must have traveled east of Cape Colonna to relish a
dinner so slightly disguised, but, once rid of European
prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact
that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding—a traveler's
appetite subauditur.
Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a
snow-white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a
mouth incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most
trenchant and janissaresque style of handling his
cleaver. Having laid open his bed of coals with a
kind of conjurer's flourish of the poker, he slapped the
pendent mutton on the thigh in a fashion of encouragement,
and waiting an instant for our admiration to subside,
he whipped his knife from its sheath, and had out
a dozen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in
Vermontese) “in no time.” With the same alacrity
these were cut into bits “of the size of a piece of
chalk,” (another favorite expression of Job's,) run
upon a skewer, and laid on the coals, and in three
minutes, more or less, they appeared smoking on the
trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well peppered,
and of a most seducing and provocative savor. If you
Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you
have occasion for the medium of a fork, and I frankly
own, that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross-legged
in a kibaub-shop, between my friend and the
gipsy, and making a most diligent use of my thumb
and fore-finger. I have dined since at the Rocher de
Cancale and the Traveler's with less satisfaction.
Having paid something like sixpence sterling for
our three dinners, (rather an overcharge, Maimuna
thought,) we unpicketed our horses from the long
grass, and bade adieu to Belgrade, on our way to the
Aqueducts. We were to follow down a verdant valley,
and, exhilarated by a flask of Greek wine, (which
I forgot to mention,) and the ever-thrilling circumstances
of unlimited greensward and horses that wait
not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic
up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job
cried us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet
of calm water, and the vast marble wall, built by the
Sultans in the days of their magnificence and crossing
the valley from side to side, burst upon us like a scene
of enchantment in the wilderness.
Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at
Belgrade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splendid
monuments of architecture, there is little in the
first aspect to remind you that you are not in the wilds
of Missouri; but a further search discloses, in the recesses
of the hidden windings of the valley, circular
staircases of marble leading to secluded baths, now
filled with leaves and neglected, but evidently on a
scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. From the
perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, all
traces even of the most costly serai may easily have
disappeared in a few years, when once abandoned to
ruin; and I pleased myself with imagining, as we
slackened bridle, and rode slowly beneath the gigantic
scenes of Oriental pleasure that must have existed
here in the days of the warlike yet effeminate Selims.
It is a place for the enchantments of the “Arabian
Nights” to have been realized.
I have followed the common error in giving these
structures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aqueducts.
They are rather walls built across the deep
valleys, of different altitudes, to create reservoirs for
the supply of aqueducts, but are built with all the
magnificence and ornament of a façade to a temple.
We rode on from one to the other, arriving at last at
the lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part,
forming a giddy wall across an apparently bottomless
ravine, as dark and impracticable as the glen of the
Cauterskill in America. Our road lay on the other
side, but though with a steady eye one might venture
to cross the parapet on foot, there were no means of
getting our horses over, short of a return of half a mile
to the path we had neglected higher up the valley.
We might swim it, above the embankment, but the opposite
shore was a precipice.
“What shall we do?” I asked.
Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast,
and started off in a sober canter to return.
I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of
water above, and the abyss of rock and darkness below,
and then calling to Maimuna, who had ridden
farther down the bank, I turned my horse's head after
him.
“Signore!” cried the gipsy from below.
“What is it, Carissima?”
“Maimuna never goes back!”
“Silly child!” I answered, “you are not going to
cross the ravine?”
“Yes!” was the reply, and the voice became more
over before you!”
I was vexed, but I knew the self-will and temerity
of the wild Asiatic, and, very certain that, if there
were danger, it would be run before I could reach
her, I drove the stirrups into my horse's sides, and
overtook Job at the descent into the valley. We ascended
again, and rode down the opposite shore to the
embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was not
there.
“She will have perished in the abyss,” said Job.
I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot,
in search of her, when I heard her horse's footsteps,
and the next moment she dashed up the steep, having
failed in her attempt, and stood once more where we
had parted. The sun was setting, and we had ten
miles to ride, and impatient of her obstinacy, I sharply
ordered her to go up the ravine at speed, and cross as
we had done.
I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the
moment, the appearance of that lovely creature, as
she resolutely refused to obey me. Her horse, the
same fiery Arabian she had ridden from Sardis, (an
animal that, except when she was on his back, would
scarce have sold for a gold sequin,) stood with head
erect, and panting nostrils, glancing down with his
wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been
urged,—the whole group, horse and rider, completely
relieved against the sky from the isolated mound they
occupied, and, at this instant, the gold flood of the setting
sun pouring full on them through a break in the
masses of the forest. Her own fierce attitude, and
beautiful and frowning face, the thin lip curled resolutely,
and the brown and polished cheek deepened
with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swelling
beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped
from the turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders,
in rich disorder—it was a picture which the pencil of
Martin (and it would have suited his genius) could
scarce have exaggerated. The stately, half-Arabic,
half-Grecian architecture of the aqueducts, and the
cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the forest
around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a
composition.
I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, looking
well to my feet, with the intention of reasoning
with the obstinate being, who, vexed at my reproaches
and her own failure, was now in as pretty a rage as
myself, when I heard the trampling of horses in the
forest. I stopped mid-way to listen, and presently
there sprang a horseman up the bank in an Oriental
costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the sun,
and a cast of features that at once betrayed his origin.
“A Zingara!” I shouted back to Job.
The gipsy, who was about nineteen, and as well-made
and gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a
woman, seemed as much astonished as ourselves, and
sat in his saddle gazing on the extraordinary figure I
have described, evidently recognizing one of his own
race, but probably puzzled with the mixture of costumes,
and struck at the same time with Maimuna's
excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I had
never seen her to such advantage as now. She might
have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she
seemed in the gold of that burning sunset.
I gazed on them both a moment, and was about
finishing my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of
mounted gipsies and baggage-horses came up the bank
at a quick pace, and in another minute Maimuna was
surrounded. I sprang to her bridle, and apprehensive
of, I scarce knew what danger, gave her one of the
two pistols I carried always in my bosom.
The gipsy chief (for such he evidently was) measured
me from head to foot with a look of dislike, and
speaking for the first time, addressed Maimuna in his
own language with a remark which sent the blood to
her temples with a suddenness I had never before
seen.
“What does he say?” I asked.
“It is no matter, Signore, but it is false!” Her
black eyes were like coals of fire, as she spoke.
“Leave your horse,” I said to her, in a low tone,
“and cross the parapet. I will prevent his following
you, and will join you on your own before you can
reach Constantinople. Turn the horses' heads homeward!”
I continued in English to Job, who was crying
out to me from the other side to come back.
Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount,
but the gipsy, anticipating her motion, touched his
horse with the stirrup, and sprang with a single leap
between her and the parapet. The troop had gathered
into a circle behind us, and seeing our retreat
thus cut off, I presented my pistol to the young chief,
and demanded, in Italian, that he should clear the
way.
A blow from behind, the instant that I was pulling
the trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine,
and, in the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse
against the unguarded gipsy, nearly overturning him
into the abyss, and spurred desperately upon the parapet.
One cry from the whole gipsy troop, and then
all was silent as the grave, except the click of her
horse's hoofs on the marble verge, as, trembling palpably
in every limb, the terrified animal crossed the
giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute,
bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with
a snort of fear and delight amid the branches of the
forest.
What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the
where Maimuna had left me, till the gipsy, recovering
from his amazement, dismounted and put his
pistol to my breast.
“Call her back!” he said to me, in very good Italian,
and with a tone in which rage and determination
were strangely mingled, “or you die where you stand.”
Without regarding his threat, I looked at him with
a new thought stealing into my mind. He probably
read the pacific change in my feelings, for he dropped
his arm, and the frown on his own features moderated
to a stedfast and inquisitive regard.
“Zingara!” I said, “Maimuna is my slave.”
A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impatient
look from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an instant.
I proceeded to tell him briefly how I had obtained
possession of her, while the troop gradually
closed around, attracted by his excessive look of interest
in the tale, though they probably did not understand
the language in which I spoke, and all fixing
their wild eyes earnestly on my face.
“And now, Zingara,” I said, “I will bring her
back on one condition—that, when the offer is fairly
made her, if she chooses still to go with me, she shall
be free to do so. I have protected her, and sworn still
to protect her as long as she should choose to eat of
my bread. Though my slave, she is pure and guiltless
as when she left the tent of her mother, and is worthy
of the bosom of an emperor.”
The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips.
“You agree to our compact, then?” I asked.
He put his hand to his forehead, and then laid it,
with a slight inclination, on his breast.
“She cannot have gone far,” I said, and stepping on
the mound above the parapet, I shouted her name till
the woods rang again with the echo.
A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to
of explanation, fastened their horses to a tree, and
crossed to us by the parapet.
The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and
stood aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a difficult
task, but I felt that it was a moment decisive of
her destiny, and the responsibility weighed heavily on
my breast. Though excessively attached to her—
though she had been endeared to me by sacrifices, and
by the ties of protection---though, in short, I loved
her, not with a passion, but with an affection—as a
father more than as a lover—I still felt it to be my duty
to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon
me, to return to her own people and remain in her own
land of the sun. What her fate would be in the state
of society to which I must else introduce her, had
been eloquently depicted by Job, and will readily be
imagined by the reader.
After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment
at my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom,
and, with the tears streaming like rain over her jacket,
listened in silence and with averted eyes. I concluded
with representing to her, in rather strong colors,
the feelings with which she might be received by my
friends, and the difficulty she would find in accomodating
herself to the customs of people, to whom not
only she must be inferior in the accomplishments of
a woman, but who might find, even in the color of that
loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her.
Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her
heart was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary
wrong, and she bowed her head again, and her tears
flowed on.
I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face.
“I am a burthen to you,” she said.
“No, dearest Maimuna! no! but if I were to see
you wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell
your people?”
She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if
her heart would break. I thought it best to let her
feelings have way, and walking apart with the young
gipsy, I gave him more of the particulars of her history,
and exacted a promise that, if she should finally
be left with the troop, he would return with her to the
tribe of her mother, at Sardis.
Maimuna stood gazing fixedly into the ravine when
we turned back, and there was an erectness in her attitude,
and a fierte in the air of her head, that, I must
acknowledge, promised more for my fears than my
wishes. Her pride was roused, it was easy with half
a glance to see.
With the suddenness of Oriental passion, the young
chief had become already enamored of her, and, with
a feeling of jealousy which, even though I wished him
success, I could not control, I saw him kneel at her
feet and plead with her in an inaudible tone. She had
been less than woman if she had been insensible to
that passionate cadence, and the imploring earnestness
of the noble countenance on which she looked.
It was evident that she was interested, though she
began with scaree deigning to lift her eyes from the
ground.
I felt a sinking of the heart which I cannot describe
when he rose to his feet and left her standing alone.
The troop had withdrawn at his command, and Job,
to whom the scene was too painful, had re-crossed the
parapet, and stood by his horse's head waiting the result.
The twilight had deepened, the forest looked
black around us, and a single star sprang into the sky,
while the west was still glowing in a fast purpling gold
and crimson.
“Signore!” said Maimuna, walking calmly to my
“I am breaking my heart; I know not what to do.”
At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and
drew its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge
we were approaching.
“Stay!” she cried; “the next shall decide the fate
of Maimuna! If it cross to the East, the will of Allah
be done! I will leave you!”
I called to the gipsy, and we stood on the verge of
the parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness
deepened around us, the abyss grew black and indistinguishable,
and the night-birds flitted past like audible
shadows. I drew Maimuna to my bosom, and
with my hands buried in her long hair, pressed her to
my heart, that beat as painfully and as heavily as her
own.
A sudden shriek! She started from my bosom, and
as she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face
of the mirror from which I had forgetfully withdrawn
my gaze, the vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like
a beam of the sunset, from west to east!
I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss
on her lips, and flinging her into the arms of the gipsy,
crossed the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried
in vain to outrun my anguish, to Constantinople.
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