University of Virginia Library

96. LETTER XCVI.

The “Golden Horn” is a curved arm of the sea,
the broadest extremity meeting the Bosphorus and
forming the harbor of Constantinople, and the other
tapering away till it is lost in the “Valley of Sweet
Waters.” It curls through the midst of the “seven-hilled”
city, and you cross it whenever you have an
errand in old Stamboul. Its hundreds of shooting
caiques, its forests of merchantmen and men-of-war,
its noise and its confusion, are exchanged in scarce
ten minutes of swift pulling for the breathless and
Eden-like solitude of a valley that has not its parallel,
I am inclined to think, between the Mississippi and
the Caspian. It is called in Turkish khyat-khana.
Opening with a gentle curve from the Golden Horn,
it winds away into the hills toward Belgrade, its long
and even hollow, thridded by a lively stream, and
carpeted by a broad belt of unbroken green sward
swelling up to the enclosing hills, with a grass so verdant
and silken that it seems the very floor of faery.
In the midst of its longest stretch to the eye (perhaps
two miles of level meadow) stands a beautiful serai of
the sultan's, unfenced and open, as if it had sprung
from the lap of the green meadow like a lily. The
stream runs by its door, and over a mimic fall whose
lip is of scolloped marble, is built an oriental kiosk, all
carving and gold, that is only too delicate and fantastical
for reality.

Here, with the first grass of spring, the sultan sends
his fine-footed Arabians to pasture; and here come
the ladies of his harem (chosen, women and horses,
for much the same class of qualities), and in the long
summer afternoons, with mounted eunuchs on the
hills around, forbidding on pain of death, all approach
to the sacred retreat, they venture to drop their jealous
veils and ramble about in their unsunned beauty.

After a gallop of three or four miles over the broad
waste table plains, in the neighborhood of Constantinople,
we checked our horses suddenly on the brow
of a precipitous descent, with this scene of beauty
spread out before us. I had not yet approached it
by water, and it seemed to me as if the earth had burst
open at my feet, and revealed some realm of enchantment.
Behind me, and away beyond the valley to the
very horizon, I could see only a trackless heath, brown
and treeless, while a hundred feet below lay a strip of
very Paradise, blooming in all the verdure and heavenly
freshness of spring. We descended slowly, and
crossing a bridge half hidden by willows, rode in upon
the elastic green sward (for myself) with half a feeling
of profanation. There were no eunuchs upon the
hills, however, and our spirited Turkish horses threw
their wild heads into the air, and we flew over the verdant
turf like a troop of Delhis, the sound of the hoofs
on the yielding carpet scarcely audible. The fair
palace in the centre of this domain of loveliness was
closed, and it was only after we had walked around it
that we observed a small tent of the prophet's green
couched in a small dell on the hill-side, and containing
probably the guard of its imperial master.

We mounted again and rode up the valley for two
or three miles, following the same level and verdant
curve, the soft carpet broken only by the silver thread
of the Barbyses, loitering through it on its way to the
sea. A herd of buffaloes, tended by a Bulgarian boy,
stretched on his back in the sunshine, and a small
caravan of camels bringing wood from the hills, and
keeping to the soft valley as a relief to their spongy
feet, were the only animated portions of the landscape.
I think I shall never form to my mind another picture
of romantic rural beauty (an employment of the imagination
I am much given to when out of humor with
the world) that will not resemble the “Valley of Sweet
Waters”—the khyat-khana of Constantinople. “Poor
Slingsby” never was here.[25]

The lofty mosque of Sulymanye, the bazars of the
opium-eaters, and the Timar-hané, or mad-house of
Constantinople, are all upon one square in the highest
part of the city. We entered the vast court of the
mosque from a narrow and filthy street, and the impression
of its towering plane-trees and noble area, and
of the strange, but grand and costly pile in its centre,
was almost devotional. An inner court, enclosed by
a kind of romanesque wall, contained a sacred marble
fountain of light and airy architecture, and the portico
facing this was sustained by some of those splendid
and gigantic columns of porphyry and jasper, the
spoils of the churches of Asia Minor.[26]

I think the most beautiful spire that rises into the

sky is the Turkish minaret. If I may illustrate an
object of such magnitude by so trifling a comparison,
it is exactly the shape and proportions of an ever-pointed
pencil-case—the silver bands answering to the
encircling galleries, one above another, from which
the muezzin calls out the hour of prayer. The minaret
is painted white, the galleries are fantastically
carved, and rising to the height of the highest steeples
in our country (four and sometimes six to a single
mosque), these slender and pointed fingers of devotion
seem to enter the very sky. Remembering. dear
reader, that there are two hundred and twenty mosques,
and three hundred chapels in Constantinople, raising,
perhaps, in all, a thousand minarets to heaven, you
may get some idea of the magnificence of this seven-hilled
capital of the east.

It was near the hour of prayer, and the devout mussulmans
were thronging into the court of Sulymanye
by every gate. Passing the noble doors, with their
strangely-carved arches of arabesque, which invite all
to enter but the profaning foot of the Christian, the
turbaned crowd repaired first to the fountains. From
the walls of every mosque, by small conduits pouring
into a marble basin, flow streams of pure water for the
religious ablutions of the faithful. The mussulman
approaches, throws off his flowing robe, steps out of
his yellow slippers, and unwinds his voluminous turban
with devout deliberateness. A small marble step,
worn hollow with pious use, supports his foot while
he washes from the knee downward. His hands and
arms, with the flowing sleeve of his silk shirt rolled to
the shoulder, receive the same lavation, and then,
washing his face, he repeats a brief prayer, resumes
all but his slippers, and enters the mosque barefooted.
The mihrab (or niche indicating the side toward the
tomb of the prophet), fixes his eye. He folds his
hands together, prays a moment standing, prostrates
himself flat on his face toward the hallowed quarter,
rises upon his knees, and continues praying and prostrating
himself for perhaps half an hour. And all this
process is required by the mufti, and performed by
every good mussulman five times a day! A rigid adherence
to it is almost universal among the Turks. In
what an odor of sanctity would a Christian live, who
should make himself thus “familiar with heaven!”

As the muezzin from the minaret was shouting his
last “mashallah!” with a voice like a man calling out
from the clouds, we left the court of the majestic
mosque, with Byron's reflection:—

and, having delivered ourselves of this scrap of poetical
philosophy, we crossed over the square to the
opium-eaters.

A long row of half-ruined buildings, of a single story,
with porticoes in front, and the broad, raised platform
beneath, on which the Turks sit cross-legged at
public places, is the scene of what was once a peculiarly
oriental spectacle. The mufti has of late years
denounced the use of opium, and the devotees to its
sublime intoxication have either conquered the habit,
or what is more probable, indulge it in more secret
places. The shops are partly ruinous, and those that
remain in order are used as cafés, in which, however,
it is said that the dangerous drug may still be procured.
My companion inquired of a good-humored-looking
caffejee whether there was any place at which a confirmed
opium-eater could be seen under its influence.
He said there was an old Turk, who was in the habit
of frequenting his shop, and, if we could wait an hour
or two, we might see him in the highest state of intoxication.
We had no time to spare, if the object
had been worth our while.

And here, thought I, as we sat down and took a cup
of coffee in the half-ruined café, have descended upon
the delirious brains of these noble drunkards, the visions
of Paradise so glowingly described in books—
visions, it is said, as far exceeding the poor invention
of the poet, as the houris of the prophet exceed the
fair damsels of this world. Here men, otherwise in
their senses, have believed themselves emperors, warriors,
poets; these wretched walls and bending roof
the fair proportions of a palace; this gray old caffejee
a Hylas or a Ganymede. Here men have come to
cast off, for an hour, the dull thraldom of the body;
to soar into the glorious world of fancy at a penalty of
a thousand times the proportion of real misery; to
sacrifice the invaluable energies of health, and deliberately
poison the very fountain of life, for a few brief
moments of magnificent and phrensied blessedness.
It is powerfully described in the “Opium-Eater” of
De Quincy.

At the extremity of this line of buildings, by a natural
proximity, stands the Timar-hané. We passed
the porter at the gate without question, and entered a
large quadrangle, surrounded with the grated windows
of cells on the ground-floor. In every window was
chained a maniac. The doors of the cells were all
open, and, descending by a step upon the low stone
floor of the first, we found ourselves in the presence
of four men chained to rings, in the four corners, by
massy iron collars. The man in the window sat
crouched together, like a person benumbed (the day
was raw and cold as December), the heavy chain of
his collar hanging on his naked breast, and his shoulders
imperfectly covered with a narrow blanket. His
eyes were large and fierce, and his mouth was fixed in
an expression of indignant sullenness. My companion
asked him if he were ill. He said he should be
well, if he were out—that he was brought there in a
fit of intoxication two years ago, and was no more
crazy than his keeper. Poor fellow! It might easily
be true! He lifted his heavy collar from his neck
as he spoke, and it was not difficult to believe that
misery like his for two long years would, of itself, destroy
reason. There was a better dressed man in the
opposite corner, who informed us, in a gentlemanly
voice, that he had been a captain in the sultan's army,
and was brought there in the delirium of a fever. He
was at a loss to know, he said, why he was imprisoned
still.

We passed on to a poor, half naked wretch in the
last stage of illness and idiocy, who sat chattering to
himself, and, though trembling with the cold, interrupted
his monologue continually with fits of the
wildest laughter. Farther on sat a young man of a
face so full of intellectual beauty, an eye so large and
mild, a mouth of such mingled sadness and sweetness,
and a forehead so broad, and marked so nobly,
that we stood, all of us, struck with a simultaneous
feeling of pity and surprise. A countenance more
beaming with all that is admirable in human nature, I
have never seen, even in painting. He might have sat
to Da Vinci for the “beloved apostle.” He had tied
the heavy chain by a shred to a round of the grating,
to keep its weight from his neck, and seemed calm
and resigned, with all his sadness. My friend spoke
to him, but he answered obscurely, and, seeing that
our gaze disturbed him, we passed unwillingly on.
Oh, what room there is in the world for pity! If that
poor prisoner be not a maniac (as he may not be), and,
if nature has not falsified in the structure of his mind
the superior impress on his features, what Prometheus-like
agony has he suffered! The guiltiest felon
is better cared for. And allowing his mind to be a
wreck, and allowing the hundred human minds, in the
same cheerless prison, to be certainly in ruins, oh what
have they done to be weighed down with iron on their
necks, and exposed, like caged beasts, shivering and
naked, to the eye of pitiless curiosity? I have visited
lunatic asylums in France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany,
but, culpably neglected as most of them are, I have
seen nothing comparable to this in horror.

“Is he never unchained?” we asked. “Never!”
And yet, from the ring to the iron collar, there was
just chain enough to permit him to stand upright!
There were no vessels near them, not even a pitcher
of water. Their dens were cleansed and the poor sufferers
fed at appointed hours, and, come wind or rain,
there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them
from the inclemency of the weather.

We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the
same dampness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch
had been chained to the same spot for twenty years.
The keeper said he never slept. He talked all the
night long. Sometimes at mid-day his voice would
cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with
a start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with
the same incoherent rapidity. He had been a dervish.
His collar and chain were bound with rags, and a tattered
coat was fastened up on the inside of the window,
forming a small recess in which he sat, between the
room and the grating. He was emaciated to the last
degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails
curled over the ends of his fingers, and his appearance,
save only an eye of the keenest lustre, that of a
wild beast.

In the last room we entered, we found a good-looking
young man, well dressed, healthy, composed, and
having every appearance of a person in the soundest
state of mind and body. He saluted us courteously,
and told my friend that he was a renegade Greek. He
had turned mussulman a year or two ago, had lost his
reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite
as a thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satisfied
that the best had been done for him. One of the
party took hold of his chain. He winced as the collar
stirred on his neck, and said the lock was on the
outside of the window (which was true), and that the
boys came in and tormented him by pulling it sometimes.
“There they are,” he said, pointing to two or
three children who had just entered the court, and
were running round from one prisoner to another.
We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to
his breast and bowed with a smile. As we passed toward
the gate, the chattering lunatic on the opposite
side screamed after us, the old dervish laid his skinny
hands on the bars of his window, and talked louder
and faster, and the children, approaching close to the
poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excitement.

It was a relief to escape to the common sights and
sounds of the city. We walked on to the Hippodrome.
The only remaining beauty of this famous
square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan Achmet,
which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa
Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without.
Its six slender and towering minarets are the
handsomest in Constantinople. The wondrous obelisk
in the centre of the square, remains perfect as in
the time of the Christian emperors, but the brazen tripod
is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent-like
pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to
its fall.

Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries,
and from the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were
levelled upon them, as they rushed from the conflagration
within. And here, when Constantinople was
the “second Rome,” were witnessed the triumphal
processions of Christian conquest, the march of the
crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults
which Justinian, walking among the people with the
gospel in his hand, tried in vain to allay ere they burnt
the great edifice built of the ruins of the temple of
Solomon. And around this now neglected area, the
captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the
conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solomon,
“Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” while the
conquerer himself, throwing aside his crown, prostra
ted himself at the feet of the beautiful Theodora,
raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian emperess
of the east. From any elevated point of the
city, you may still see the ruins of the palace of the
renowned warrior, and read yourself a lesson on human
vicissitudes, remembering the school-book story
of “an obolon for Belisarius!”

The Hippodrome was, until late years, the constant
scene of the games of the jereed. With the destruction
of the Janizaries, and the introduction of European
tactics, this graceful exercise has gone out of
fashion. The east is fast losing its picturesqueness.
Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be undergoing
a gradual change, and when, as the Turks
themselves predict, the moslem is driven into Asia,
this splendid capital will become another Paris, and
with the improvements in travel, a summer in Constantinople
will be as little thought of as a tour in Italy.
Politicians in this part of the world predict such
a change as about to arrive.