University of Virginia Library

100. LETTER C.

Pulled over to Scutari in a caique, for a day's
ramble. The Chrysopolis, the “golden city” of the
ancients, forms the Asian side of the bay, and, though
reckoned, generally, as a part of Constantinople, is in
itself a large and populous capital. It is built on a
hill, very bold upon the side washed by the sea of
Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on the opposite
shore, with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing
to her partner (Europe). You will find the simile
very beautifully elaborated in the first chapter of “The
Armenians.”

We strolled through the bazar awhile, meeting, occasionally,
a caravan of tired and dusty merchants,
coming in from Asia, some with Syrian horses, and
some with dusky, Nubian slaves, following barefoot,
in their blankets; and, emerging from the crowded
street upon a square, we stopped a moment to look at
the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble mosque.
Close to the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron,
and planted about closely with cypresses, stands a
small temple of airy architecture, supported on four
slender columns, and enclosed by a net of gilt wire,
forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana
Valide. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed
in red and gold, occupies the area of this poetical
sepulchre; small, sweet-scented shrubs half bury it in
their rich flowers, and birds of the gayest plumage
flutter and sing above her in their beautiful prison. If
the soul of the departed sultana is still susceptible of
sentiment, she must look down with some complacency
upon the disposition of her “mortal coil.” I have
not seen so fanciful a grave in my travels.

We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling
Dervishes. It stands in the edge of the great cemetery
of Scutari, the favorite burial-place of the Turks.
The self-torturing worship of this singular class of
devotees takes place only on a certain day of the week,
and we found the gates closed. A small café stood
opposite, sheltered by large plane-trees, and on a
bench at the door, sat a dervish, employed in the unclerical
vocation of mending slippers. Calling for a
cup of the fragrant Turkish coffee, we seated ourselves
on the matted bench beside him, and, entering
into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon
the most courteous terms. He laid down his last, and
accepted a proffered narghilê, and, between the heavily
drawn puffs of the bubbling vase, gave us some information
respecting his order, of which the peculiarity
that most struck me was a law compelling them to
follow some secular profession. In this point, at least,
they are more apostolic than the clergy of Christendom.
Whatever may be the dervish's excellence as a
“mender of souls,” thought I, as I took up the last,
and looked at the stitching of the bright new patch,
(may I get well out of this sentence without a pun!)
I doubt whether there is a divine within the Christian
pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work in
any corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our
chibouques smoked to ashes, we took leave of our
papoosh-mending friend, who laid his hand on his
breast, and said, with the expressive phraseology of
the east, “You shall be welcome again.”

We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast cemetery,
and found its cool and damp air a grateful exchange
for the sunshine. The author of Anastasius
gives a very graphic description of this place, throwing
in some horrors, however, for which he is indebted to
his admirable imagination. I never was in a more
agreeable place for a summer-morning's lounge, and,
as I sat down on a turbaned headstone, near the tomb
of Mohammed the second's horse, and indulged in a
train of reflections arising from the superior distinction
of the brute's ashes over those of his master, I
could remember no place, except Plato's Academy at
Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease.

We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved
slab, capped with a small turban, fretted and gilt, arrested
my attention. “It is the tomb,” said my companion,
“of one of the ichoglans or sultan's pages.
The peculiar turban is distinctive of his rank, and the
inscription says, he died at eighteen, after having seen
enough of the world! Similar sentiments are to be
found on almost every stone.” Close by stood the
ambitious cenotaph of a former pacha of Widin, with
a swollen turban, crossed with folds of gold, and a foot-stone
painted and carved, only less gorgeously than
the other; and under his name and titles was written,
“I enjoyed not the world.” Farther on, we stopped at
the black-banded turban of a cadi, and read again, underneath,
“I took no pleasure in this evil world.” You
would think the Turks a philosophizing people, judging
by these posthumous declarations; but one need
not travel to learn that tombstones are sad liars.

The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as
a city. Its black cypress pall spreads away over hill
and dale, and terminates, at last, on a long point projecting
into Marmora, as if it would pour into the sea
the dead it could no longer cover. From the Armenian
village, immediately above, it forms a dark, and
not unpicturesque foreground to a brilliant picture of
the gulf of Nicomedia and the clustering Princes' islands.
With the economy of room which the Turks
practise in their burying-grounds, laying the dead,
literally, side by side, and the immense extent of this
forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no one spot
on the earth are so many of the human race gathered
together.

We wandered about among the tombs till we began
to desire to see the cheerful light of day, and crossing
toward the height of Bulgurlu, commenced its ascent,
with the design of descending by the other side to the
Bosphorus, and returning, by caique, to the city.

Walking leisurely on between fields of the brightest
cultivation, we passed, half way up, a small and rural
serai, the summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the
younger sister of the sultan, and soon after stood, well
breathed, on the lofty summit of Bulgurlu. The constantly-occurring
sairgahs, or small grass platforms,
for spreading the carpet and “taking kaif,” show how
well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position
commanding, perhaps, views unparallelled in the
world for their extraordinary beauty. But let us take
breath and look around us.

We stood some three miles back from the Bosphorus,
perhaps a thousand feet above its level. There
lay Constantinople! The “temptation of Satan”
could not have been more sublime. It seemed as if
all the “kingdoms of the earth” were swept confusedly
to the borders of the two continents. From Seraglio
Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia,
the eye followed a continued wall; and from the same
point, twenty miles up the Bosphorus, on either shore,
stretched one crowded and unbroken city! The star-shaped
bay in the midst, crowded with flying boats;
the Golden Horn sweeping out from behind the hills,
and pouring through the city like a broad river, studded
with ships; and, in the palace-lined and hill-sheltered
Bosphorus, the sultan's fleet at anchor, the lofty
men-of-war flaunting their blood-red flags, and thrusting
their tapering spars almost into the balconies of
the fairy dwellings, and among the bright foliage of
the terraced gardens above them. Could a scene be
more strangely and beautifully mingled?

But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen
to my polyglot friend, while he explains the details of
the panorama.

First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a
snow-white cloud resting on the edge of the horizon.
That is Olympus. Within sight of his snowy summit,
and along toward the extremity of this long line
of eastern hills, lie Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia,
Paphlagonia, and the whole scene of the apostles'
travels in Asia Minor; and just at his feet, if you will
condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its
silks, and one of the most populous and thriving of
the sultan's cities. Returning over Marmora by the
Princes' Islands, at the western extremity of Constantinople,
stands the Fortress of the Seven Towers,
where fell the Emperor Constantine Palæologus,
where Othman the second was strangled, where refractory
ambassadors are left to come to their senses and
the sultan's terms, and where, in short, that “zealous
public butcher,” the seraskier, cuts any Gordian knot
that may tangle his political meshes; and here was
the famous “Golden Gate,” attended no more by its
“fifty porters with white wands,” and its crowds of
“ichoglans and mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters,
and slipper-bearers,” as in the days of the Selims.

Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn
you may count the “seven hills” of ancient Stamboul,
the towering arches of the aqueduct of Valens,
crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome
and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial
mosques crowning and surrounding their summits.
What an orient look do those gallery-bound and sky-piercing
shafts give to the varied picture!

There is but one “Seraglio Point” in the world.
Look at that tapering cape, shaped like a lady's foot,
proiecting from Stamboul toward the shore of Asia,
and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. It is
cut off from the rest of the city, you observe, by a
high wall, flanked with towers, and the circumference
of the whole seraglio may be three miles. But what
a gem of beauty it is! In what varied foliage its unapproachable
palaces are buried, and how exquisitely
gleam from the midst of the bright leaves its gilded
cupolas, its gay balconies, its airy belvideres, and its
glittering domes! And mark the height of those
dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner
of its imperial gardens, and throwing their deep shadows
on every bright cluster of foliage, and every gilded
lattice of the sacred enclosure. They seem to remind
one, that amid all its splendor and with all its
secluded retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of royalty
has been stained, from its first appropriation by
the monarchs of the east till now, with the blood of
victims to the ambition of its changing masters. The
cypresses are still young over the graves of an uncle
and a brother, whose cold murder within those lovely
precincts prepared the throne for the present sultan.
The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud
himself, is at present occupied by his children, two
noble boys, of whom one, by the usual system, must
fall a sacrifice to the security of the other.

Keeping on toward the Black sea, we cross the
Golden Horn to Pera, the European and diplomatic
quarter of the city. The high hill on which it stands
overlooks all Constantinople; and along its ridge
toward the beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs the
principal street of the Franks, the promenade of the
dragoman exquisites, and the Broadway of shops and
belles. Here meet, on the narrow pavé, the veiled
Armenian, who would die with shame to show her
chin to a stranger, and the wife of the European merchant,
in a Paris hat and short petticoats, mutually
each other's sincere horror. Here the street is somewhat
cleaner, the dogs somewhat less anti-Christian,
and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects of contempt.
It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, neither
Turkish nor Christian; and nobody who could
claim a shelter for his head elsewhere, would take the
whole of its slate-colored and shingled palaces as a gift.

Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galata
which your dainty diplomatist would not write on his
card for an embassy, but for which, as being honestly
what it calls itself, I entertain a certain respect, wanting
in my opinion of its mongrel neighbor. Heavy
gates divide these different quarters of the city, and
if you would pass after sunset, you must anoint the
hinges with a piastre.