University of Virginia Library

91. LETTER XCI.

A half hour's walk brought us within sight of the
pacha's camp. The green and white tents of five thousand
Turkish troops were pitched on the edge of a
stream, partly sheltered by a grove of noble oaks, and
defended by wicker batteries at distances of thirty or
forty feet. We were stopped by the sentinel on guard,
while a message was sent in to the pacha for permission
to wait upon him. Meantime a number of young
officers came out from their tents, and commenced
examining our dresses with the curiosity of boys.
One put on my gloves, another examined the cloth of
my coat, a third took from me a curious stick I had
purchased at Vienna, and a more familiar gentleman
took up my hand, and after comparing it with his own
black fingers, stroked it with an approving smile that
was meant probably as a compliment. My companions
underwent the same review, and their curiosity
was still unsated when a good-looking officer, with his
cimeter under his arm, came to conduct us to the
commander-in-chief.

The long lines of tents were bent to the direction
of the stream, and, at short distances, the silken banner
stuck in the ground under the charge of a sentinel,
and a divan covered with rich carpets under the
shade of the nearest tree, marked the tent of an officer.
The interior of those of the soldiers exhibited
merely a stand of muskets and a raised platform for
bed and table, covered with coarse mats, and decked
with the European accoutrements now common in
Turkey. It was the middle of the afternoon, and
most of the officers lay asleep on low ottomans, with
their tent-curtains undrawn, and their long chibouques
beside them, or still at their lips. Hundreds of soldiers
loitered about, engaged in various occupations,
sweeping, driving their tent-stakes more firmly into the
ground, cleaning arms, cooking, or with their heels
under them playing silently at dominoes. Half the
camp lay on the opposite bank of the stream, and
there was repeated the same warlike picture, the
white uniform and the loose red cap with its gold bullion
and blue tassel, appearing and disappearing between
the rows of tents, and the bright red banners
clinging to the staff in the breathless sunshine.

We soon approached the splendid pavilion of the
pacha, unlike the rest in shape, and surrounded by a
quantity of servants, some cooking at the root of a
tree, and all pursuing their vocation with a singular
earnestness. A superb banner of bright crimson silk,
wrought with long lines of Turkish characters, probably
passages from the Koran, stood in a raised socket
guarded by two sentinels. Near the tent, and not far
from the edge of the stream, stood a gayly-painted
kiosk, not unlike the fantastic summer-houses sometimes
seen in a European garden, and here our conductor
stopped, and kicking off his slippers, motioned
for us to enter.

We mounted the steps, and passing a small entrance-room
filled with guards, stood in the presence
of the commander-in-chief. He sat on a divan, cross-legged,
in a military frock-coat wrought with gold on
the collar and cuffs, a sparkling diamond crescent on
his breast, and a cimeter at his side, with a belt richly
wrought, and held by a buckle of dazzling brilliants.
His aid sat beside him, in a dress somewhat similar,
and both appeared to be men of about forty. The
pacha is a stern, dark, soldier-like man, with a thick,
straight beard as black as jet, and features which look
incapable of a smile. He bowed without rising when
we entered, and motioned for us to be seated. A little
conversation passed between him and the consul's
son, who acted as our interpreter, and coffee came in
almost immediately. There was an aroma about it
which might revive a mummy. The small china-cups,
with thin gold filagree sockets, were soon emptied
and taken away, and the officer in waiting introduced
a soldier to go through the manual exercise by
way of amusing us.

He was a powerful fellow, and threw his musket
about with so much violence, that I feared every moment,
the stock, lock, and barrel, would part company.
He had taken off his shoes before venturing into
the presence of his commander, and looked oddly
enough, playing the soldier in his stockings. I was
relieved of considerable apprehension when he ordered
arms, and backed out to his slippers.

The next exhibition was that of a military band.
A drum-major, with a proper gold-headed stick,
wheeled some sixty fellows with all kinds of instruments
under the windows of the kiosk, and with a
whirl of his baton, the harmony commenced. I could
just detect some resemblance to a march. The drums
rolled, the “ear-piercing fifes” fulfilled their destiny,
and trombone, serpent, and horn, showed of what
they were capable. The pacha got upon his knees to
lean out of the window, and, as I rose from my low
seat at the same time, he pulled me down beside him,
and gave me half his carpet, patting me on the back,
and pressing me to the window with his arm over my
neck. I have observed frequently among the Turks
this singular familiarity of manners both to strangers
and one another. It is an odd contrast with their habitual
gravity.

The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the
European uniform into his army. With the exception
of the Tunisian cap, which is substituted for the
thick and handsome turban, the dress is such as is
worn by the soldiers of the French army. Their tailors
are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed
only to the loose and graceful costume of the east,
are awkward and constrained. I never saw so uncouth
a set of fellows as the five thousand mussulmans in
this army of the Dardanelles; and yet in their Turkish
trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck full of
arms, and their long mustache, they would be as martial-looking
troops as ever followed a banner.

We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The
shell-shaped caique, with her tall sharp extremities
and fantastic sail, yielded to the rapid current of the
Hellespont; and our two boatmen, as handsome a
brace of Turks as ever were drawn in a picture, pulled
their legs under them more closely, and commenced
singing the alternate stanzas of a villanous duet.
The helmsman's part was rather humorous, and his
merry black eyes redeemed it somewhat, but his fellow
was as grave as a dervish, and howled as if he
were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat.

If I were to live in the east as long as the wandering
Jew, I think these heavenly sunsets, evening after
evening, scarce varying by a shade, would never become
familiar to my eye. They surprise me day after
day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though
the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit
contracted of the hour, are almost always the same.
The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly,
is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present.
The past comes up with the twilight, and wherever I
may be, and in whatever scene mingling, my heart
breaks away, and goes down into the west with the
sun. I am at home as duly as the bird settles to her
nest.

It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a
musing passage, to remember the poetical justice of
Uhland in crossing the ferry:—

I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by
this fanciful tariff. Our unmusical mussulmans were
content, however, and we left them to pull back
against the tide, by a star that cast a shadow like a
meteor.

The moon changed this morning, and the wind,
that in this clime of fable is as constant to her as Endymion,
changed too. The white caps vanished from
the hurrying waves of the Dardanelles, and after an
hour or two of calm, the long-expected breeze came
tripping out of Asia, with oriental softness, and is now
leading us gently up the Hellespont.

As we passed between the two castles of the Dardanelles,
the commodore saluted the pacha with nineteen
guns, and in half an hour we were off Abydos,
where our friend from the south has deserted us, and
we are compelled to anchor. It would be unclassical
to complain of delay on so poetical a spot. It is beautiful,
too. The shores on both the Asian and European
sides are charmingly varied and the sun lies on
them, and on the calm strait that links them, with a
beauty worthy of the fair spirit of Hero. A small
Turkish castle occupies the site of the “torch-lit
tower” of Abydos, and there is a corresponding one
at Sestos. The distance between looks little more
than a mile—not a surprising feat for any swimmer, I
should think. Lady-loves in our day, alas! are not
won so lightly. The current of the Hellespont, however,
remains the same, and so does the moral of Leander's
story. The Hellespont of matrimony may be
crossed with the tide. The deuse is to get back!

Lampsacus on the starboard-bow, and a fairer spot
lies on no river's brink. Its trees, vineyards, and cottages,
slant up almost imperceptibly from the water's
edge, and the hills around have the look “of a clean
and quiet privacy,” with a rural elegance that might
tempt Shakspere's Jaques to come and moralize.
By the way, there have been philosophers here. Did
not Alexander forgive the city its obstinate defence for
the sake of Anaximenes? There was a sad dog of a
deity worshipped here about that time.

I take a fresh look at it from the port, as I write.
Pastures, every one with a bordering of tall trees, cattle
as beautiful as the daughter of Ianchus, lanes of
wild shrubbery, a greener stripe through the fields like
the track of a stream, and smoke curling from every
cluster of trees, telling as plainly as the fancy can
read, that there is both poetry and pillaw at Lampsacus.

Just opposite stands the modern Gallipoli, a Turkish
town of some thirty thousand inhabitants, at the
head of the Hellespont. The Hellespont gets broader
here, and a few miles farther up we open into the
Sea of Marmora. A French brig-of-war, that has
been hanging about us for a fortnight (watching our
movements in this unusual cruise for an American
frigate, perhaps), is just ahead, and a quantity of
sail are stretching off on the southern tack, to make
the best use of their new sea-room for beating up to
Constantinople.

We hope to see Seraglio Point to-morrow. Mr.
Hodgson, the secretary of our embassy to Turkey,
has just come on board from the Smyrna packet, and
the agreeable preparations for going on shore, are already
on the stir. I do not find that the edge of curiosity
dulls with use. The prospect of seeing a strange
city to-morrow, produces the same quick-pulsed emotion
that I felt in the diligence two years ago, rattling
over the last post to Paris. The entrances to Florence,
Rome, Venice, Vienna, Athens, are marked
each with as white a stone. He may “gather no moss”
who rolls about the world; but that which the gold
of the careful can not buy—pleasure—when the soul
is most athirst for it, grows under his feet. Of
the many daily reasons I find to thank Providence,
not the least is that of being what Clodio calls himself
in the play “a here-and-thereian.”