University of Virginia Library

92. LETTER XCII.

What an image of life it is! The good ship dashes
bravely on her course—the spray flies from her
prow—her sheets are steady and full—to look up to
her spreading canvass, and feel her springing away beneath,
you would not give her “for the best horse the
sun has in his stable.” The next moment, hey! the
foresail is aback! the wind baffles and dies, the ripples
sink from the sea, the ship loses her “way,” and the
pennant drops to the mast in a breathless calm!
“Clear away the anchor!” and here we are till this
“crab in the ascendant” that makes “all our affairs go
backward,” yields to our better stars.

We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets
of Gallipoli (the ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop
to our patience. A deeply-laden Spanish merchant
lay off the pier, with a crew of red-capped and olive-complexioned
fellows taking in grain from a Turkish
caique, and a crowd of modern Thracians, in the noble
costumes and flowing beards of the country, closed
around us as we stepped from the boat.

A street of cafés led from the end of the pier, and
as usual, they were all crowded with Turks, leaning
forward over their slippers, and crossing their long
chibouques as they conversed together. It is odd
that even the habit of a life can make their painful
and unnatural posture an agreeable one. Yet they
will sit with their legs crooked under them, in a way
that strains the unaccustomed knee till it cracks again,
motionless by the hour together.

I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare a
beauty is a handsome beard. Here no man shaves,
and there is as great a difference in beards as in stature.
The men of rank that we have seen, might have been
picked out anywhere by their superior beauty in this
respect. It grows vilely, it seems to me, on scoundrels.
The beggars ashore, the low Jews who board
us with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and
petty shopkeepers of the towns, have all some mark
in their beards that nature never intended them for
gentlemen. Your smooth chin is a great leveller, trust
me!

These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether.
Gallipoli is so seldom touched by a Christian foot,
that it preserves all its peculiarities entire, and is likely
to do so for the next century. We walked on, ascending
a narrow street completely shut in by the roofs of
the low houses meeting above. There are no carriages
or carts, and the Turks glide over the stones in
their loose slippers with an indolent shuffle that seems
rather to add to the silence. You hear no voice, for
they seldom speak, and never above the key of a bassoon;
and what with the odd costumes, long beards,
grave faces, and twilight darkness all about you, it is
like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered
in some incantation scene.

Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first
got among the grocers. Every shop was a fellow to
the other, containing an old Turk squatted among
soap, jars of oil, raisins, olives, pickled fish, and sweet
meats, and everything within his reach. He would
sell you his whole stock in trade without taking his
pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his yellow slipper.

The next turn brought us into the Jews' quarter.

They were all tailors, and their shops were as dark as
Erebus. The light crept through the chinks in the
roof, falling invariably on the same aquiline nose and
ragged beard, with now and then a pair of copper spectacles,
while in the back of the dim tenement sat an
old woman with a group of handsome little Hebrews,
(they are always handsome when very young, with
their clear skins and dark eyes) the whole family
stitching away most diligently. It was laughable to
see how every shop in the street presented the same
picture.

We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile
work they turned out. We were hesitating between
two turnings when an old Jew, with a high lamb's-wool
cap and long black caftan, rather shabby for
wear, addressed me in a sort of lingua Franca, half
Italian, half French, with a sprinkling of Spanish, and
inquiring whether I belonged to the frigate in the harbor,
offered to supply us with provisions, etc., etc. I
declined his services, and he asked us directly to his
house to take coffee, as plump a non sequitur as I
have met in my travels.

We followed the old man to a very secluded part of
the town, stopping a moment by the way to look at
the remains of an old fort built by the Genoese in the
stout times of Andrea Doria. (Where be their galleys
now?) Hajji (so he was called, he said, from
having been to Jerusalem) stopped at last at the door
of a shabby house, and throwing it open with a hospitable
smile, bade us welcome. We mounted a creaking
stair, and found things within better than the promise
of the exterior. One half the floor of the room
was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly, and a
nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the
three sides, closed at the two extremities by a lattice-work
like the arm of a sofa. The windows were set
in fantastical arabesque frames, the upper panes coarsely
colored, but with a rich effect, and the view hence
stretched over the Hellespont toward the south, with a
delicious background of the valleys about Lampsacus.
No palace window looks on a fairer scene. The broad
strait was as smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew's
pipe, and the vines that furnished Themistocles with
wine during his exile in Persia, looked of as golden a
green in the light of the sunset, as if the honor of the
tribute still warmed their classic juices.

The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old
woman, who left her slippers below as she stepped
upon the mat, and our host followed with chibouques
and a renewed welcome. A bright pair of eyes had
been peeping for some time from one of the chambers,
and with Hajji's permission I called out a graceful
creature of fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian Cupidon,
and a timid sweetness of expression that might
have descended to her from the gentle Ruth of scripture.
There are lovely beings all over the world. It
were a desert else. But I did not think to find such
a diamond in a Hebrew's bosom. I have forgotten to
mention her hair, which was very remarkable. I
thought at first it was died with henna. It covered
her back and shoulders in the greatest profusion, braided
near the head, and floating below in glossy and
silken curls of a richness you would deny nature had
you seen it in a painting. The color was of the deep
burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but
catching the light at every motion like threads of gold.
In my life I have seen nothing so beautiful. It was
the “hair lustrous and smiling” of quaint old Burton.[23] There was something in it that you could scarce avoid
associating with the character of the wearer—as if it
stole its softness from some inborn gentleness in her
heart. I shall never thread my fingers through such
locks again!

We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped
gingerly down in the fading twilight to our boat. As
we were crossing an open space between the bazars,
two gentlemen in a costume half European half Oriental,
with spurs and pistols, and a quantity of dust on
their mustaches, passed, and immediately turned and
called me by name. The last place in which I should
have looked for acquaintances, would be Gallipoli.
They were two French exquisites whom I had known
at Rome, travelling to Constantinople with no more
serious object, I dare be sworn, than to return with
long beards from the east. They had just arrived on
horseback, and were looking for a khan. I commended
them to my old friend the Jew, who offered at once
to lodge them at his house, and we parted in this by-corner
of Thrace, as if we had but met for the second
time in a morning stroll to St. Peter's.

We lay till noon in the glassy harbor of Gallipoli,
and then the breeze came slowly up the Hellespont,
its advancing edge marked by a crowd of small sail
keeping even pace with its wings. We soon opened
into the extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy
island of the same name is at this moment on our lee.
The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace,
and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good
breeze, we make ourselves certain of seeing Constantinople
to-morrow.

We were ten miles distant when I came on deck
this morning. A long line of land with a slightly-waving
outline began to emerge from the mist of sunrise,
and with a glass I could distinguish the clustering
masses and shining eminences of a distant and far
extending city. We were approaching it with a cloud
of company. A Turkish ship-of-war with the crescent
and star fluttering on her blood-red flag, a French
cutter bearing the handsome tri-color at her peak, and
an uncounted swarm of merchantmen, taking advantage
of the newly-changed wind, were spreading every
thread of canvass, and stretching on as eagerly as we
toward the metropolis of the east. There was something
in the companionship which elated me. It
seemed as if all the world shared in my anticipations—
as if all the world were going to Constantinople.

I approached the mistress of the east with different
feelings from that which had inspired me in entering
the older cities of Europe. The interest of the latter
sprang from the past. Rome, Florence, Athens, were
delightful from the store of history and poetry I
brought with me and had accumulated in my youth—
from what they once were, and for that of which they
preserved the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary,
is still the gem of the Orient—still the home of the
superb Turk, and the resort of many nations of the
east—still all that fires curiosity and excites the imagination
in the descriptions of the traveller. I was
coming to a living city, full of strange people and
strange costumes, language, and manners. It was, to
the places I had seen, like the warm and breathing
woman perfect in life, to the interesting but lifeless
and mutilated statue.

As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering
minarets of a hundred mosques were first distinguishable.
Towers, domes, and dark spots of cypresses
next emerged to the eye, and a sea of buildings, followed
undulating in many swells and widening along
the line of the sea as if we were approaching a continent
covered to its farthest limits with one unbroken
city.

We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore
which seemed closed before us. A few minutes opened
to us a curving bay, winding in and lost to the eye
behind a swelling eminence, and as if mosques, towers,
and palaces, had spread away and opened to receive us

into their bosom, we shot into the heart of a busy city,
and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of hills,
studded from base to summit with buildings of indescribable
splendor.

An American gentleman had joined us in the Dardanelles,
and stood with us, looking at the transcendant
panorama. “What is this lovely point, gemmed
with gardens and fantastic palaces, and with every variety
of tree and building on its gentle slope descending
so gracefully to the sea?” The Seraglio! “What
is this opening of bright water, crowded with shipping,
and sprinkled with these fairy boats so gayly decked and
so slender, shooting from side to side like the crossing
flight of a thousand arrows?” The Golden Horn, that
winds up through the city and terminates in the valley
of Sweet Waters! “And what is this other stream,
opening into the hills to the east, and lined with glittering
palaces as far as the eye can reach?” The
Bosphorus. “And what is this, and that, and the
other exquisite and surpassing beauty—features of a
scene to which the earth surely has no shadow of a
parallel!” Patience! patience! We have a month
before us, and we will see.