The Project Gutenberg eBook, Eothen, by A. W. Kinglake This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Eothen with an introduction and notes Author: A. W. Kinglake Release Date: September 10, 2013 [eBook #43684] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EOTHEN***

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

EOTHEN

By

A. W. KINGLAKE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

By ANON

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

FROM A PAINTING

By the AUTHOR

LONDON

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

MDCCCC

p. ivΠρὸς ᾒῶ τε καί ήλἱου ἀνατολὰς ὲποιέετο τὴν ὀδὁν.—Herod. vii. 58.

p. v CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE. Introduction vii Preface xxxv I. Over the Border 1 II. Turkish Travelling 14 III. Constantinople 30 IV. The Troad 41 V. Infidel Smyrna 50 VI. Greek Mariners 63 VII. Cyprus 74 VIII. Lady Hester Stanhope 82 IX. The sanctuary 111 X. The Monks of Palestine 115 XI. Galilee 123 XII. My First Bivouac 128 XIII. The Dead Sea 137 XIV. The Black Tents 144 XV. Passage of the Jordan 148 XVI. Terra Santa 155 XVII. The Desert 175 p. viXVIII. Cairo and the Plague 202 XIX. The Pyramids 231 XX. The Sphinx 235 XXI. Cairo to Suez 237 XXII. Suez 246 XXIII. Suez to Gaza 253 XXIV. Gaza to Nablus 261 XXV. Mariam 267 XXVI. The Prophet Damoor 278 XXVII. Damascus 284 XXVIII. Pass of the Lebanon 293 XXIX. Surprise of Satalieh 298 Appendix 308

p. vii INTRODUCTION

I

Eothen is the earliest work of Alexander William Kinglake, best known as the historian of the Crimean War. It is an account of a tour—or rather of selected adventures which occurred during a tour—undertaken in the Levant in 1834, but was not published until ten years later. The biographical notices of the Author are somewhat meagre, as by his dying directions all his papers were destroyed. He was born near Taunton in 1809, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, at which latter he is said to have been the friend of Thackeray and Tennyson. On leaving college he started on his Oriental tour with Lord Pollington (the Methley of Eothen), and on returning to England was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, and obtained a lucrative practice. But the life was too tame to suit his taste. In 1845 he visited Algeria, and went through a campaign with the flying column of St. Arnaud; and in 1854 went to the Crimea with Lord Raglan, and was present at the p. viiibattle of Alma. On returning to England he decided to go into politics, and was elected for Bridgewater in 1857 in the Liberal interest. He seems to have been a poor speaker, and to have exercised little parliamentary influence; but we are told that in 1859 he was strongly opposed to the Conspiracy Bill, which was introduced after Orsini’s attempt to murder Napoleon III., and that in 1860 he denounced the cession of Nice and Savoy to France. In both cases he was apparently actuated by his personal dislike of Napoleon, which is evident in his historical works. In 1868 he was again returned for Bridgewater, but unseated on petition, for bribery. One might have supposed that he had acquired this habit in the East, but his biographers assert that he knew nothing of the irregularities which were committed by his agents. But the chief business of his later life was the composition of the History of the War in the Crimea, of which the first two volumes appeared in 1863, and the seventh and eighth (completing the work) in 1887. He died in 1891.

II

His earlier and less ambitious, though perhaps more charming, book was rejected by several publishers, but proved an immense success. It caught the popular fancy at once, and after the lapse of more than fifty years still maintains an honourable p. ixposition. In the year after its first appearance it passed through three editions, containing several variations from the editio princeps which have attracted the attention of those who are interested in bibliography. It is only fair to reprint the book with these corrections, which seem mostly due to the author’s laudable desire for greater accuracy. For instance, he was apparently seized with qualms as to his assertion (end of chap. xiii.) that when he emerged from the Dead Sea after bathing therein his “skin was thickly encrusted with sulphate of magnesia,” and cautiously substituted “salts” for the more chemical expression. Yet I observe that the most recent Encyclopædia states that “the water of the Dead Sea is characterised by the presence of a large quantity of magnesian salts,” so perhaps his first statement was not so wrong after all. He also found that he had talked of Jove when he should have said Neptune in his account of the Troad, and, conceiving a mistrust of the former deity, removed his name not only from this passage but also from chap. xviii., in which he altered “That touch was worthy of Jove” into “In that touch was true hospitality.” I confess that I think this regard for truth might have moved him to expunge his account of the advances made to him by the young ladies of Bethlehem (end of chap. xvi.); I cannot believe that narrative to be even probable, but anyone may retort that my scepticism is due to the absence of those attractive qualities which Kinglake possessed.

p. xIn chap. xvi. he says that shrouds are dipped in the holy water of the Jordan and “preserved as a burial dress which shall inure” (later editions “enure”) “for salvation in the realms of death.” Some critical scholar of eminence should be called upon to emend or explain this mysterious passage. At least, if people are allowed to print such things in the nineteenth century what right have we to emend the classical authors when they choose to be unintelligible?

The truth is that Eothen, despite its great literary merits, is often comfortably slipshod. And very properly so, for if there is to be any correspondence between subject and style, it must be inappropriate for a traveller recounting confidentially his diversions and mishaps to adopt the phraseology of Gibbon. Matthew Arnold, in his “Essay on the Literary Influence of Academies,” selected the History of the Crimean War as an example of what he called the Corinthian style. Eothen certainly presents specimens of this manner, but they are hardly characteristic; it is often “urbane,” and has “the warm glow, blithe movement, and pliancy of life,” which, according to the critic’s definition, Corinthians lack. It is not devoid of unity, but it is many sided and kaleidoscopic. The author varies from the trivial to the solemn, from boisterous exuberance to careful austerity, from flippancy to rhapsody, and is perhaps never quite serious. One wonders whether one is reading a clever but somewhat slangy letter, or a long-meditated p. xiessay polished and repolished by incessant labor limæ. Perhaps between 1834 and 1844 he worked up and rearranged old spontaneous effusions, as indeed his preface suggests. He often writes like a schoolboy, and sometimes like a philosopher; he is at his best when he records what he has seen in phrases not without rhetoric and not without humour, but distinct and clear as his own impressions. “The foot falls noiseless in the crumbling soil of an Eastern city, and silence follows you still. Again and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have nothing for you—no welcome—no wonder—no wrath—no scorn—they look upon you as we do upon a December’s fall of snow—as a ‘seasonable,’ unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose to be revealed hereafter.” How vivid and how true!

But perhaps the reader may ask, as I ask myself, whether an introduction to Eothen is really necessary. The book is so simple and complete in itself that it seems to require no explanation or commentary. But for the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the Levant of to-day, it is well to explain that the sixty-four years which have elapsed since Kinglake made his Eastern tour have brought about important changes in the extent, and some few in the condition, of the Turkish Empire. The “unchanging East” is a popular phrase which is only true in a very limited sense. It has arisen chiefly from the habit of pious publishers of representing Abraham in the p. xiicostume of a modern Bedouin Sheikh, and it is peculiarly audacious to apply it to regions like Constantinople and Egypt, which have witnessed exceptional vicissitudes and undergone remarkable changes,—political, religious, and linguistic. It is however just to say that the Turk is unchanging,—and it is to the presence of the Turk that are due the peculiar characteristics of the Levant, as the region visited by Kinglake may conveniently be termed; like the Bourbons, he forgets nothing and learns nothing; as he was on the day when he entered Europe, so he was in 1834 and so he is now. The boundaries of Turkey have changed; there are now no Pashas at Belgrade, or even at Sofia; and Ottoman territory is no longer plague-stricken. But whenever one crosses the Turkish frontier, one may find functionaries like the delightful potentate of Karagholookoldour, and be conscious of effecting within the space of a few hundred yards a change greater than can be experienced in any amount of travel in other European countries, including Russia. One passes from regions where people have roughly the same habits and ideas as ourselves—where they believe in political economy, get drunk in public, sit upon chairs, and do not feel there is anything indelicate in mentioning their wives—to a land where people do none of these things, where the naked desolation of the country at the side of the railway offers a startling contrast to the smug prosperity of the Balkan States, where people prefer to sit curled up on hard sofas, and where it p. xiiiis bad taste to condole with a man on his wife’s death.

In 1834, the year of Kinglake’s journey, Turkey in Europe was considerably more extensive than at the present day. Greece had already revolted and been recognised as an independent state. Wallachia and Moldavia were in process of securing their freedom. But the territories now known as Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina were still integral portions of the Ottoman Empire; and though Servia (in which the scene of the opening chapters of Eothen is laid) had been constituted a principality under Milosh Obrenovich as prince, in 1830, several of the fortresses were still garrisoned by Ottoman troops, which accounts for the presence of the Pasha at Belgrade. It is interesting to observe that though our Author must have proceeded to Adrianople straight across Bulgaria, he never mentions the name of that country. This apparently strange omission is really quite natural. The Bulgarians, though in some ways the most vigorous element among the Balkan races, passed through greater trials than the Servians or Roumanians, and for a time lost their national consciousness more completely. They were nearer Constantinople, and therefore any political movement was more easily kept in check; while all the religious and educational establishments of the country were in the hands of Greek priests who practically proscribed the Bulgarian language. I have been informed by a gentleman who has resided p. xivforty years in Turkey, that when he first entered the Ottoman dominions every educated Bulgarian called himself a Greek, and would have been ashamed to employ his national designation, which was hardly in general use before the movement of 1860. Another striking omission of Eothen is that it contains hardly any allusion to the Sultan. At the present day the descendant of Osman, who claims to be also the successor of the Prophet, is a well-known figure to the British public. The Pall Mall Gazette familiarly calls him “The Shadow.” [xiv] The friends of the Armenians hold him personally responsible for the massacres; and a modern Kinglake, even if bent on avoiding “political disquisitions,” would certainly describe the Selamlik or weekly visit of the Sovereign to the mosque. You cannot travel in Turkey without hearing the name of “Our Master” (Effendimiz) or “the Imperial Person” (Zat-i-Shahane) daily mentioned, and feeling that his wishes (which usually do not coincide with those of European travellers, and affect the minutest details) are the only real power in the country. This state of things is due almost entirely to the personal energy of the present occupant of the Ottoman throne, who for good or evil has succeeded in concentrating all power into his hands, and in displaying the greatest p. xvexample of practical autocracy ever seen. In 1834 Mahmoud was Sultan, one of the most vigorous of Ottoman princes, but then near his end, and doubtless wearied out by a reign of constant reverse and ineffectual efforts at reform.

The Armenian question, like the Bulgarian, is of recent date, and we consequently find that Kinglake says as little of the one as of the other; but he often speaks of the doings of Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha, which at this period formed one of the chief preoccupations of the Porte. Mehemet Ali was a native of Cavalla who held a military command in Egypt. In the troubles which succeeded the French occupation of that country, at the beginning of the century, he succeeded in making himself head of the popular party in Cairo, ousted the Turkish Governor, and established himself in his place. He was recognised by the Porte in 1805, and the Khediviate was subsequently made hereditary in his family. At this time the Mamluks (or descendants of the Turkish Guard instituted by the Sultans of Egypt in the thirteenth century) occupied a position somewhat similar to that of the Janissaries at Constantinople. Mehemet Ali, like Sultan Mahmoud, felt that this military imperium in imperio rendered fixed Government impossible, and determined to consolidate his own rule by breaking the power of the Mamluks. He did so by inviting their leaders to a banquet, at which they were surprised and massacred. The Sultan, in return for his recognition p. xviof Mehemet Ali as ruler of Egypt, made use of him during some years to keep in order various rebellious provinces of the Empire. He was first ordered to quell the Wahabi insurrection in Arabia, and his campaign there is alluded to in chap. xviii. These people were a sort of Mohammedan Puritans [xvi] who had made themselves masters of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Mehemet Ali sent against them his son Tosun, who captured Mecca in 1813, but died, and was replaced by his younger brother Ibrahim Pasha, who is often mentioned in Eothen. He finally concluded the Wahabi war in 1818, and is next heard of fighting against Greece, which was beginning the struggle for independence. Mehemet Ali was again called upon to assist the Sultan in suppressing rebellion, and again sent his son to represent him. Ibrahim captured Missolonghi in 1825, but was defeated in 1827 by the united fleets at Navarino, under Sir Edward Codrington, and retired from Greece. In return for these services Mehemet Ali claimed that the Pashalik of Syria should be added to his dominions. The Sultan refused the request of his powerful vassal; but the latter picked a quarrel with the Turkish governor of Syria, and sent Ibrahim to invade the province. Ibrahim not only made a triumphal entry into Damascus, but defeated the Turkish Army at Beilan and advanced into Asia p. xviiMinor, where he routed a second force, sent against him by the Sultan, near Konia, in December 1832. The defeated Turkish troops joined the Egyptians, Ibrahim advanced victoriously to Broussa, and had Constantinople at his mercy. The Sultan in his extremity called the Russians to his assistance. The Treaty of Unkiar Iskelesi was concluded in 1833; Ibrahim was obliged to retire, but the Pashaliks of Syria and Adana were given to Mehemet Ali, and treated with great rigour, as mentioned in chap. xv. At the time of Kinglake’s visit to Egypt the plague seems to have been the one absorbing preoccupation of everyone in Cairo, and we learn little from him of the normal state of the country at this period. The most remarkable of his Egyptian sayings is the prophecy at the end of the chapter called “The Sphinx.” “The Englishman leaning far over to hold his loved India will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the faithful.” To have made this prediction at a time when India was still under the Company, when we had no interests in North-East Africa or the Red Sea, before the Suez Canal was a serious project, perhaps before we had occupied Aden, [xvii] is indeed an example of no ordinary political foresight.

Such was the political condition of the lands p. xviiiwhich Kinglake visited, and of many aspects of which he gives a most living picture. In his diverting preface he disclaims all intention of being instructive, of describing manners and customs, still less of discussing political and social questions. Perhaps his narrative sometimes reminds the reader of his statement (chap. viii.) that a story may be false as a mere fact but perfectly true as an illustration. Some great writers impart durability to their work by selecting from a mass of details such traits as are important and characteristic, and passing lightly over what is transitory. For instance, the main impression left by Thackeray’s novels is not that the life there described is old-fashioned, but that it is in essentials the life of to-day. So, too, in Eothen a reader acquainted with the East hardly notices anachronisms. Judged as a description of the Levant of 1898, it is inaccurate, or rather inadequate, almost exclusively on account of its omissions. But the principal descriptions, incidents, and portraits—the Mohammedan quarter at Belgrade, the conversation between the Pasha and the Dragoman, the meeting of the two Englishmen in the desert, Dimitri and Mysseri—are, if considered as types, as true to nature to-day as they were sixty years ago, and doubtless will be sixty years hence.

Kinglake treats the Levant in the only way it ought to be treated if it is to be enjoyed—half-seriously. Those whom business or philanthropy p. xixoblige to devote to it any real exertion, sentiment, or interest, lay up for themselves nothing but disillusion and disappointment, for, whether they are fascinated by the picturesque and manly virtues of the Moslems, or roused to honourable indignation by the slaughter and oppression of their fellow-Christians, they will find in the end that, as Lord Salisbury once said, they have put their money on the wrong horse. In the Eastern Derby there are no winning horses. One after another they have all disappointed their backers; the faults of Eastern Christendom brought about and still keep up the rule of the Turk, and few who have an adequate knowledge of the facts of the case believe either that the Christians are happy under that rule or that they furnish in themselves the elements of anything much better.

Yet this dreary tragedy—this daily round of oppression and misgovernment, varied by outbursts of interracial fury—has a brighter side. To the mere spectator, to the intelligent traveller with literary taste and a sense of humour, the surface of Levantine life is a stream of perpetual amusement, often broadening into comedy, and sometimes bursting all bounds and breaking into a screaming farce. The number and variety of races and languages afford infinite possibilities of misunderstanding and mistranslation (which it must be admitted are the basis of many good stories); the Orientalised European and the Europeanised Oriental are alike inexpressibly droll. Their very crimes have an element of the burlesque, p. xxwhich seems to disarm censure and remove the whole transaction to a non-moral sphere where ordinary rules of right and wrong do not apply. The Turk, if not precisely witty himself, is at least the cause of wit in others. Extreme Asiatic dignity amidst ludicrously undignified European surroundings, a mixture of pomp and homeliness, power and childishness, give rise to humorous anecdotes of a peculiar and very characteristic flavour, examples of which may be found in several works besides Eothen, notably Robert Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant. Another excellent illustration is supplied by Vazoff’s Under the Yoke, a translation of which has been published in English. It is an historical novel, written by a Bulgarian burning with indignation against the Ottoman rule. Yet the Turkish Caimmakam, as drawn by a bitter enemy, is no bloody tyrant, but an exquisitely diverting old gentleman whose every appearance is hailed by the reader with impatient delight. As the violence of the Turk, so also the dishonesty and corruption of the Rayah seem to lose their enormity when viewed in this gentle, humorous light. The swindling is so palpable, and yet so gravely decorous in its external forms, that it ceases to shock; it is so universal that in the end no one seems to have suffered much wrong. To vary the celebrated remark about the Scilly Islanders, one may say that these people gain a precarious livelihood by taking bribes from one another. Again the elaborate and ceremonious phraseology essential to all p. xxiliterary composition in the East enables a writer to make intrinsically preposterous assertions with a gravity which renders criticism impossible. What reply can be given to the officials who assert that Armenians commit suicide in order to throw suspicion on certain excellent Kurds residing in their neighbourhood? or who when called upon to explain why they have incarcerated a foreign traveller under circumstances of extreme indignity, blandly reply that “the said gentleman was indeed hospitably entertained in the Government buildings”?

This last instance shows that Oriental travelling must not be undertaken without due precautions. A certain retinue, and sufficient influence to secure the courtesy of the authorities (which Kinglake evidently had), are essential. With them the traveller acquires a feeling, often manifest in Eothen, that he is a sultan possessed of absolute authority over his surroundings. There is just enough hardship to make comparative comfort seem luxury, just enough danger to make it pleasant, when all is over, to hear from what perils one has escaped. Should, however, any reader be inclined to use Eothen as a practical manual, he must be cautious in following some of its precepts. Kinglake constantly insists that intimidation, haughtiness, and defiance of all regulations are the only means of impressing Orientals; and chronicles with great satisfaction his own exploits in this line, concluding with “the Surprise of Satalieh.” What he says is true enough as long as the Oriental believes that the p. xxiitraveller is a prince in his own country, and that any interference with his mad whims will bring severe punishment. But unfortunately the secret is out. Enlightened officials are well aware that many Englishmen are not cousins of the Queen, and have a shrewd suspicion that hindrances placed in the way of the prying European are not displeasing to the Imperial Government. The “Lord of London,” who fifty years ago obtained a firman which made every provincial official bow before him, may now be kept waiting days or weeks for a travelling passport; and, unless he uses tact as well as bumptiousness, may find himself in a position to write to the Times about the interior of Turkish provincial prisons, and become the subject of a Blue Book. Still even now, if travellers will be cautious and polite in dealing with people of whose language and customs they are profoundly ignorant, and not bluster unless they know very well what they are about (for I admit that bluster has its uses), they will find travelling more interesting, diverting, and enjoyable in the Levant than in any other part of the world.

I write these lines as I sit in the hall of the largest hotel in New York, a newly arrived stranger, somewhat dazed by the bustle and the glare. The whole establishment is on a greater scale than anything else in the world—except its own bills. Everything is made of gold and marble, including, I fancy, the food—at least this hypothesis plausibly reconciles the quality and texture of the viands with the value p. xxiiithe vendors seem to attach to them. Enormous lifts shoot their living freights up into spheres unseen, or engulf them in abysmal chasms. All round people are ringing electric bells, telephoning, telegraphing, stenographing, polygraphing, and generally communicating their ideas about money to their fellow-creatures by any means rather than the voice which God put in the larynx for the purpose of quiet conversation. On one side an operatic concert is being performed, on the other porters and luggage jostle a brilliant throng of fashionably dressed people. It is as if someone had given an evening party at a railway station. “Whirr! whirr! all by wheels! whizz! whizz! all by steam!” and electricity, as the immortal Pasha of Karagholookoldour would have said. Now my mind (like the Pasha’s) comprehends locomotives, and I am an enthusiast for progress, but amidst all the whizz and whirr and ringing of electric bells, my memory turns somewhat regretfully to a hotel where I resided not long ago in the “Exalted Country”—that fine old Stamboul’s jargon is so much more soothing to the tongue than the strange abbreviations and initials they use over here—which was certainly more interesting, and not, I think, more uncomfortable than this Transatlantic Caravanserai. Perhaps I shall write an introduction congenial to the Shade of Kinglake (if indeed the Shades are interested in new editions of their works) if instead of instituting a comparison between the Levant of to-day and of 1834, I recount a journey to the town p. xxivof Karakeui in the year of grace 1898, and describe the local hotel. Let not the reader in pursuit of that “sound learning” which Kinglake kept at arm’s length rashly identify Karakeui with the first town he finds on the map bearing that name. The Turk has not a great variety of local designations. When possible he adopts one from some other language, treating it with the scant courtesy which long-winded, infidel polysyllables deserve (e.g. Edirné, Fílibé, for Adrianople and Phílippopoli); but when forced to have recourse to his own invention he calls most places Karakeui (or Blacktown), except those which are dubbed Oldtown, Newtown, or Whitetown.

It has been justly said that the East begins on the other side of Vienna, but, out of deference to the susceptibilities of the Magyars, who consider themselves in the van of civilisation, the Orient Express affects to be extremely European during its transit through Hungary. It bustles and shakes, and is very uncomfortable. In Servia it is more at its ease, though it still makes a pretence of thinking that time is money by only stopping ten minutes at every station. In Bulgaria it ceases to imitate Western ways, and becomes frankly Oriental, reposing for half an hour at spots where there are no passengers and no traffic. The part of the journey which lies on Turkish territory follows a singularly tortuous and corkscrew course, across a perfectly level plain which presents no obvious engineering difficulties. The Porte confided the construction of this line to p. xxvan eminent Israelite at a remuneration of so much for every kilometre built. The eminent Israelite was straightway possessed by the spirit of his ancestors, and made a large fortune by laying the rails along a road as lengthy and complicated as that selected by Moses when he spent forty years in traversing a distance which anyone else can accomplish in a few days.

On arriving in Turkey we are at once seized by the representatives of the Board of Health. After all, times have indeed changed since Eothen was written. Instead of being put in quarantine by Europe, Turkey now puts Europe in quarantine. It is true that good Moslems still hold that men’s souls leave their bodies when God calls them, and count it impious to suppose that neglect or precaution can hasten or delay the Divine summons. But though the Porte are not disposed to amend the sanitary condition of Mecca, they enforce quarantine regulations all round Constantinople with fanatical rigour. This is due partly to the fears of the Palace, and partly, I think, to a sense of humour. It is an excellent joke to apply a parody of European rules to Europeans in the name of sanitary science: to keep a set of fussy business people waiting a few days because they have come from a country which has not imposed quarantine on another country where there has been a doubtful case of cholera, or to detain a ship with a valuable cargo while embassies and merchants scream that thousands of pounds are being p. xxvilost daily. On the present occasion we are told we must wait a day under inspection, to see if we develop the symptoms of any terrible malady, and are accordingly lodged in damp little wooden huts on a muddy plain, where we are certainly likely to fall ill even if hale and hearty on arriving. Turkish soldiers prevent us from crossing an imaginary line and contaminating the surrounding desert. The quarantine doctor, however, explains to me that he has a peculiar respect for my character, sanitary and general, and would like to take a walk with me outside the limits of the establishment. He has a remarkable pedigree. His father was a Bohemian monk who found convent life too narrow for his taste, and accordingly embraced Islam. Once within the true fold he made up for lost time by marrying as many wives as his new liberty allowed, and this is one of the results. He confides to me that his one ambition is to wear decorations, and that in return for his civilities strangers of distinction have procured for him the orders of their respective countries. The Siamese Minister, who recently passed through, made him a Commander of the Order of the White Elephant. Could I not obtain for him the Order of the Garter? Doubtless I possess it myself. With blushing mendacity I lead him to believe that I do, but explain that the distinction is only given to Englishmen and not to foreigners. I see that he does not believe me, and meditates revenge. Before we leave the quarantine station we have to be p. xxviidisinfected. The doctor attaches a garden hose to a reservoir filled with a fetid and corrosive fluid. The victims are led up one by one by the military authorities as if to execution, and the jet is turned upon them, causing their garments to burst out into leprous spots. I see by the doctor’s eye that he means to make me pay for my unfriendliness in the matter of the decoration, and therefore, casting scruple to the winds, I assure him that if he will only treat me gently he shall have the Fourth Class of the Garter. He is at once all civility and consideration, and when I am led up in front of his infernal machine, directs an odoriferous douche to the right and left, leaving me unwetted in the middle.

Truly the way into Turkey is beset with as many difficulties as the road to paradise. After the quarantine comes the Custom House. The entry of most things is absolutely prohibited, and those which do enter pay a high duty. Books are treated with incredible severity. No work is allowed to pass the frontier which hints that the Turks were ever defeated, or that the Ottoman Government or the Mohammedan religion have any imperfections. Turkish officials having found by experience that very little European literature comes up to their high standard, simply confiscate as “seditious” every publication which mentions Turkey or the Mohammedan East. Eothen, even without the present highly seditious preface, is placed on the index, as are also Shakespeare, Byron, Dante, the p. xxviiiEncyclopædia Britannica, Baedeker, and Murray. In practice, of course, certain familiar argumenta ad hominem modify this Draconian system, but even the golden key sometimes fails to open the door. The officials watch one another, and know that they are much more likely to obtain a Turkish decoration by confiscating some infamous historian who is not ashamed to say that the Turks were once driven out of Hungary than they are to receive the Garter for letting his calumnies in. But there is an end to all troubles, even on the Turkish frontier, and at last we are allowed to proceed to Karakeui, where I ultimately alight at the hotel.

Karakeui lies on a plateau, under a range of snowy mountains which glitter with strange distinctness in the pure translucent air. A forest of minarets bears testimony to the piety of the place. It is the sacred month of Ramazan, and at sunset they will be festooned with lights and blaze like columns of fire, while in the mosque below myriads of little oil lamps will shed their soft glow on the bowing crowds, the plashing fountains, and the names of saints and prophets blazoned on the walls in green and red. In the streets is a motley throng of men and animals. Strings of camels and pack-horses, dogs, sheep, and turkeys are mixed up with the human crowd. Bulgarians and Servians quarrel in the bazaar, and denounce one another to the Turks. They each claim exclusive rights over the only Christian Church, and the Governor, to end the dispute, has shut it up p. xxixaltogether. A few Greeks are occupied in making large fortunes, and are ready to expatiate on the Hellenic Idea, and to explain how, from a certain peculiar point of view, the late war may be regarded as a victory for Greece. Albanians, armed with many weapons, and with moustaches as long as their own rifles, swagger through the crowd which respectfully makes way for them.

The hotel is kept by an Armenian, who left his native village on account of what are beautifully termed the “events” which occurred there. Having been inspired by these occurrences with a wholesome respect for the followers of the Prophet, he is a little apt to recoup himself at the expense of his co-religionists; but the local Ottoman authorities, to whose care I am duly recommended as being “one of those who wish well to the Sublime Government,” have sternly informed him that I am not to be fleeced. (I wonder if the Governor of New York would address a similar warning to the proprietor of this hotel.) The establishment is constructed in the form of a quadrangle. The central space is a quagmire, wherein are embedded, and, so to speak, held as hostages for payment, the vehicles in which the travellers have arrived. The ground floor of the surrounding buildings is devoted to stabling. Outside the first floor, and above the aforesaid quagmire, runs a gallery, from which open a number of cells, bare and whitewashed, devoid of all furniture, but, contrary to what might be expected, scrupulously p. xxxclean. A marble bath is not, as in New York, attached to each apartment, but in response to a suitable shout a boy brings a brass jug and basin, pours water over your hands and wipes them on an embroidered towel. There is no table and no bed. When you are disposed to sleep, a pile of rugs is spread on the floor. If you want to write, you naturally sit on your heels and hold your paper in your hand—an attitude which, at least in the case of Europeans, tends to restrain exuberance and keep literary composition within due limits. At meal times a little table like a high stool is brought in. The guests squat round it on their heels, and eat with their fingers out of a large saucer set on a broad tin tray. Turkish dinners consist of a quantity of dishes, generally at least seven or eight, and sometimes as many as twenty; but each is only tasted and rapidly removed. At first it looks somewhat mysterious when people apparently wrap up some pieces of string in brown paper and eat the parcel with avidity. But the string is cheese drawn out like very attenuated vermicelli, and the brown paper sheets of very thin bread which serve as a tablecloth and napkin as well as for food. During Ramazan no Moslem may eat, drink, or smoke between sunrise and sunset. The latter phenomenon is announced by a cannon, and some minutes before the gun fires a hungry crowd is gathered round the table waiting for the blessed sound. Then follows half an hour of rapid, silent nutrition, for Turks do p. xxxinot talk at table. Afterwards, an hour or more of prayer; and then the earlier part of the night, until at least twelve or one, is devoted to visiting or attending the puppet show called Karagyöz. [xxxi] Half an hour before dawn people go round the town beating drums, and the faithful hurriedly take a last meal before the morning cannon announces the dawn.

My neighbour in the room on the right is a spy appointed by the Imperial Government to watch over my doings. He is a charming companion, and I fancy has a very pretty talent for the composition of imaginative literature. My only regret is that I have never seen the daily reports which he draws up on my conduct. They are, I believe, replete with incident, and are excellent specimens of a new and interesting variety of fiction. The room on my left is occupied by the Christian Vice-Governor of the Province, who was appointed some months ago under immense pressure from the Powers, met by such resistance on the part of the Porte that one might have supposed his nomination was a deadly blow to the Turkish Empire. It is a wise plan of the Porte’s never to make the most trivial concession without opposing a resistance, which is often successful, and always seems to enhance the importance of p. xxxiithe point in dispute. But the concession once made, means are soon discovered to deprive it of all its value, and the positions of victors and vanquished in the game prove to be reversed. In the present case the Christian Vice-Governor found that none of his co-religionists were disposed to let him lodgings; and the local authorities, with a tender solicitude for his welfare, represented to him that there was a strong feeling against him in the town, and that he would be much more comfortable in the hotel; predicting (like Kinglake’s prophet, Damoor) that if he went out into the streets, or meddled in the administration, he would arouse that excitable sentiment known as Mussulman religious feeling. Like the Jews of Safet, the Christian Vice-Governor thought that the predictions of such practical men were not to be disregarded, and takes his ease in his inn with as good a grace as he can muster. Another interesting occupant of the hotel is the Turkish inspector of Reforms. To rightly understand the duties of this functionary it must be remembered that the Turkish Government is divided into two parts, which have no connection with one another: firstly, the real Government, which is hard to comprehend, but of which one gets a dim idea by observation on the spot; and secondly, the show Government, intended to impress Europe, and having as chief practical result the enrichment of telegraphic agencies. Two common manifestations of the show Government are circulars to the Powers, and commissions despatched to the p. xxxiiiProvinces to rectify abuses. The present Commissioner has come to inspect reforms, and from the official language used respecting him it may be supposed that his mission is to tend and water the new institutions which are springing up like a luxuriant vegetation in a favourable climate, but at the same time to exercise a fatherly control, prevent the country from rushing into downright republicanism, and not permit the Christians to positively oppress their weaker Mohammedan brethren. He is a very affable man, with a broad, smiling face, and an amiable rotundity of person which causes his gorgeous uniform to burst its buttons and gape at critical points. He pays me long visits for the purpose of political discussion, being, as he calls it, tout à fait dans les idées libérales, and in order that this outpouring of radical views may not be interrupted, he brings a soldier to mount guard over the door. No tortures could make me disclose the Commissioner’s confidences. I will merely observe that the long fasts of Ramazan are irksome to an enlightened mind, and that liberal theologians hold that a mixture of brandy and champagne does not fall under the Prophet’s ban, inasmuch as it cannot accurately be described as either wine or spirits.

Very different is the room at the end of the passage. No guard is needed here. The door stands proudly open, and all the world may see that no crumb of bread or drop of water enters from sunrise to sunset. In the middle of a low sofa sits, p. xxxivcross-legged, a Hodja, clad in striped silk. He is no ordinary country parson, but a noted preacher invited to tour in the provinces during Ramazan, and hold what in other countries would be called revival meetings. His thin nervous face shows that he is not a real Turk. Probably he is of Arab extraction, and in any case he burns with a Semitic indignation against those who “ascribe companions to God.” Round him sit in a solemn circle the notables of the town,—stout, devout men of the churchwarden order, who, to judge from the heavy sighs and puffs which they occasionally emit, do not share the Hodja’s fierce joy in trampling on the desires of the flesh. To-morrow he will preach in the Great Mosque with a sword in his hand, in token that the building was once a Christian Church and has been won from the infidel. I tell the Commissioner for Reforms that I think this dangerous and injudicious. He explains that the whole point of the ceremony lies in the fact that the sword is sheathed, as a token that religious discord is at an end, and that an era of mutual love and toleration has commenced. But when I think of that nervous, fanatical face, the green garments, the ample turban, the amulets and the sword, I cannot help suspecting that it is better to be a Christian traveller than a Christian resident at Karakeui.

p. xxxv Preface to the First Edition

Addressed by the

Author to One of His Friends

When you first entertained the idea of travelling in the East you asked me to send you an outline of the tour which I had made, in order that you might the better be able to choose a route for yourself. In answer to this request I gave you a large French map, on which the course of my journeys had been carefully marked; but I did not conceal from myself that this was rather a dry mode for a man to adopt when he wished to impart the results of his experience to a dear and intimate friend. Now, long before the period of your planning an Oriental tour I had intended to write some account of my Eastern travels. I had, indeed, begun the task, and had failed; I had begun it a second time, and failing again, had abandoned my attempt with a sensation of utter distaste. I was unable to speak out, and chiefly, I think, for this reason, that I knew not to whom I was speaking. It might be you, or perhaps our Lady of Bitterness, [xxxv] who would read my story, or it might be some member of the Royal p. xxxviStatistical Society, and how on earth was I to write in a way that would do for all three?

Well, your request for a sketch of my tour suggested to me the idea of complying with your wish by a revival of my twice-abandoned attempt. I tried; and the pleasure and confidence which I felt in speaking to you soon made my task so easy, and even amusing, that after a while (though not in time for your tour) I completed the scrawl from which this book was originally printed.

The very feeling, however, which enabled me to write thus freely, prevented me from robing my thoughts in that grave and decorous style which I should have maintained if I had professed to lecture the public. Whilst I feigned to myself that you, and you only, were listening, I could not by any possibility speak very solemnly. Heaven forbid that I should talk to my own genial friend as though he were a great and enlightened community, or any other respectable aggregate!

Yet I well understood that the mere fact of my professing to speak to you rather than to the public generally could not perfectly excuse me for printing a narrative too roughly worded, and accordingly, in revising the proof-sheets, I have struck out those phrases which seemed to be less fit for a published volume than for intimate conversation. It is hardly to be expected, however, that correction of this kind should be perfectly complete, or that the almost boisterous tone in which many parts of the book were originally written should be thoroughly subdued. I venture, therefore, to ask, that the familiarity of language still possibly apparent in the work may be laid to the account of our delightful intimacy, rather than to any presumptuous motive. I feel, as you know, much too timidly, too distantly, and too p. xxxviirespectfully toward the public to be capable of seeking to put myself on terms of easy fellowship with strange and casual readers.

It is right to forewarn people (and I have tried to do this as well as I can, by my studiously unpromising title-page) [xxxvii] that the book is quite superficial in its character. I have endeavoured to discard from it all valuable matter derived from the works of others, and it appears to me that my efforts in this direction have been attended with great success. I believe I may truly acknowledge that from all details of geographical discovery, or antiquarian research—from all display of “sound learning and religious knowledge”—from all historical and scientific illustrations—from all useful statistics—from all political disquisitions—and from all good moral reflections, the volume is thoroughly free.

My excuse for the book is its truth. You and I know a man fond of hazarding elaborate jokes, who, whenever a story of his happens not to go down as wit, will evade the awkwardness of the failure by bravely maintaining that all he has said is pure fact. I can honestly take this decent though humble mode of escape. My narrative is not merely righteously exact in matters of fact (where fact is in question), but it is true in this larger sense—it conveys, not those impressions which ought to have been produced upon any “well-constituted mind,” but those which were really and truly received at the time of his rambles by a headstrong and not very amiable traveller, whose prejudices in favour of other people’s notions were then exceedingly slight. As I have p. xxxviiifelt, so I have written; and the result is, that there will often be found in my narrative a jarring discord between the associations properly belonging to interesting sites, and the tone in which I speak of them. This seemingly perverse mode of treating the subject is forced upon me by my plan of adhering to sentimental truth, and really does not result from any impertinent wish to tease or trifle with readers. I ought, for instance, to have felt as strongly in Judæa as in Galilee, but it was not so in fact. The religious sentiment (born in solitude) which had heated my brain in the sanctuary of Nazareth was rudely chilled at the foot of Zion by disenchanting scenes, and this change is accordingly disclosed by the perfectly worldly tone in which I speak of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

My notion of dwelling precisely upon those matters which happened to interest me, and upon none other, would of course be intolerable in a regular book of travels. If I had been passing through countries not previously explored, it would have been sadly perverse to withhold careful descriptions of admirable objects merely because my own feelings of interest in them may have happened to flag; but where the countries which one visits have been thoroughly and ably described, and even artistically illustrated by others, one is fully at liberty to say as little (though not quite so much) as one chooses. Now a traveller is a creature not always looking at sights; he remembers (how often!) the happy land of his birth; he has, too, his moments of humble enthusiasm about fire and food, about shade and drink; and if he gives to these feelings anything like the prominence which really belonged to them at the time of his travelling, he will not seem a very good teacher. Once having determined to write the sheer truth concerning the things which chiefly have p. xxxixinterested him, he must, and he will, sing a sadly long strain about self; he will talk for whole pages together about his bivouac fire, and ruin the ruins of Baalbec with eight or ten cold lines.

But it seems to me that this egotism of a traveller, however incessant, however shameless and obtrusive, must still convey some true ideas of the country through which he has passed. His very selfishness, his habit of referring the whole external world to his own sensations, compels him, as it were, in his writings to observe the laws of perspective;—he tells you of objects, not as he knows them to be, but as they seemed to him. The people and the things that most concern him personally, however mean and insignificant, take large proportions in his picture, because they stand so near to him. He shows you his dragoman, and the gaunt features of his Arabs—his tent, his kneeling camels, his baggage strewed upon the sand; but the proper wonders of the land—the cities, the mighty ruins and monuments of bygone ages, he throws back faintly in the distance. It is thus that he felt, and thus he strives to repeat the scenes of the Elder World. You may listen to him for ever without learning much in the way of statistics; but, perhaps, if you bear with him long enough, you may find yourself slowly and faintly impressed with the realities of Eastern travel.

My scheme of refusing to dwell upon matters which failed to interest my own feelings has been departed from in one instance—namely, in my detail of the late Lady Hester Stanhope’s conversation on supernatural topics. The truth is, that I have been much questioned on this subject, and I thought that my best plan would be to write down at once all that I could ever have to say concerning the personage whose career has excited so much curiosity amongst p. xlEnglishwomen. The result is, that my account of the lady goes to a length which is not justified either by the importance of the subject, or by the extent to which it interested the narrator.

You will see that I constantly speak of “my People,” “my Party,” “my Arabs,” and so on, using terms which might possibly seem to imply that I moved about with a pompous retinue. This of course was not the case. I travelled with the simplicity proper to my station, as one of the industrious class, who was not flying from his country because of ennui, but was strengthening his will, and tempering the metal of his nature, for that life of toil and conflict in which he is now engaged. But an Englishman journeying in the East must necessarily have with him dragomen capable of interpreting the Oriental languages; the absence of wheeled carriages obliges him to use several beasts of burthen for his baggage, as well as for himself and his attendants; the owners of the horses, or camels, with their slaves or servants, fall in as part of his train; and altogether, the cavalcade becomes rather numerous, without, however, occasioning any proportionate increase of expense. When a traveller speaks of all these followers in mass, he calls them his “people,” or his “troop,” or his “party,” without intending to make you believe that he is therefore a Sovereign Prince.

You will see that I sometimes follow the custom of the Scots in describing my fellow-countrymen by the names of their paternal homes.

Of course all these explanations are meant for casual readers. To you, without one syllable of excuse or deprecation, and in all the confidence of a friendship that never yet was clouded, I give the long-promised volume, and add but this one “Goodbye!” for I dare not stand greeting you here.

p. 1 CHAPTER I

OVER THE BORDER

At Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me; the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman’s fortress—austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube—historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of the East.

The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet their people hold no communion. [1] The Hungarian on the north, and the Turk and Servian on the southern side of the Save are as much asunder as though there were fifty broad provinces that lay in the path between them. Of the men p. 2that bustled around me in the streets of Semlin there was not, perhaps, one who had ever gone down to look upon the stranger race dwelling under the walls of that opposite castle. It is the plague, and the dread of the plague, that divide the one people from the other. All coming and going stands forbidden by the terrors of the yellow flag. If you dare to break the laws of the quarantine, you will be tried with military haste; the court will scream out your sentence to you from a tribunal some fifty yards off; the priest, instead of gently whispering to you the sweet hopes of religion, will console you at duelling distance; and after that you will find yourself carefully shot, and carelessly buried in the ground of the lazaretto.

When all was in order for our departure we walked down to the precincts of the quarantine establishment, and here awaited us a “compromised” [2] officer of the Austrian Government, who lives in a state of perpetual excommunication. The boats, with their “compromised” rowers, were also in readiness.

After coming in contact with any creature or thing belonging to the Ottoman Empire it would be impossible for us to return to the Austrian territory without undergoing an imprisonment of fourteen days in the odious lazaretto. We felt, therefore, that before we committed ourselves it was important to take care that none of the arrangements necessary for p. 3the journey had been forgotten; and in our anxiety to avoid such a misfortune, we managed the work of departure from Semlin with nearly as much solemnity as if we had been departing this life. Some obliging persons, from whom we had received civilities during our short stay in the place, came down to say their farewell at the river’s side; and now, as we stood with them at the distance of three or four yards from the “compromised” officer, they asked if we were perfectly certain that we had wound up all our affairs in Christendom, and whether we had no parting requests to make. We repeated the caution to our servants, and took anxious thought lest by any possibility we might be cut off from some cherished object of affection:—were they quite sure that nothing had been forgotten—that there was no fragrant dressing-case with its gold-compelling letters of credit from which we might be parting for ever?—No; all our treasures lay safely stowed in the boat, and we were ready to follow them to the ends of the earth. Now, therefore, we shook hands with our Semlin friends, who immediately retreated for three or four paces, so as to leave us in the centre of a space between them and the “compromised” officer. The latter then advanced, and asking once more if we had done with the civilised world, held forth his hand. I met it with mine, and there was an end to Christendom for many a day to come.

We soon neared the southern bank of the river, but no sounds came down from the blank walls above, and there was no living thing that we could yet see, except one great hovering bird of the vulture race, flying low, and intent, and wheeling round and round over the pest-accursed city.

But presently there issued from the postern a group p. 4of human beings—beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties; but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans. They made for the point towards which we were steering, and when at last I sprang upon the shore, I heard, and saw myself now first surrounded by men of Asiatic blood. I have since ridden through the land of the Osmanlees, from the Servian border to the Golden Horn—from the Gulf of Satalieh to the tomb of Achilles; but never have I seen such ultra-Turkish looking fellows as those who received me on the banks of the Save. They were men in the humblest order of life, having come to meet our boat in the hope of earning something by carrying our luggage up to the city; but poor though they were, it was plain that they were Turks of the proud old school, and had not yet forgotten the fierce, careless bearing of their once victorious race.

Though the province of Servia generally has obtained a kind of independence, yet Belgrade, as being a place of strength on the frontier, is still garrisoned by Turkish troops under the command of a Pasha. Whether the fellows who now surrounded us were soldiers, or peaceful inhabitants, I did not understand: they wore the old Turkish costume; vests and jackets of many and brilliant colours, divided from the loose petticoat-trousers by heavy volumes of shawl, so thickly folded around their waists as to give the meagre wearers something of the dignity of true corpulence. This cincture enclosed a whole bundle of weapons; no man bore less than one brace of immensely long pistols, and a yataghan (or cutlass), with a dagger or two of various shapes and sizes; most of these arms were p. 5inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that they contrasted shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to which they were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point of honour with the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan to suffer from his own adversity); then the long drooping mustachios, and the ample folds of the once white turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, and that appearance of trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which I have since seen so often in those of the Ottoman people who live, and remember old times; they seemed as if they were thinking that they would have been more usefully, more honourably, and more piously employed in cutting our throats than in carrying our portmanteaus. The faithful Steel (Methley’s Yorkshire servant) stood aghast for a moment at the sight of his master’s luggage upon the shoulders of these warlike porters, and when at last we began to move up he could scarcely avoid turning round to cast one affectionate look towards Christendom, but quickly again he marched on with steps of a man, not frightened exactly, but sternly prepared for death, or the Koran, or even for plural wives.

The Moslem quarter of a city is lonely and desolate. You go up and down, and on over shelving and hillocky paths through the narrow lanes walled in by blank, windowless dwellings; you come out upon an open space strewed with the black ruins that some late fire has left; you pass by a mountain of castaway things, the rubbish of centuries, and on it you see numbers of big, wolflike dogs lying torpid under the sun, with limbs p. 6out-stretched to the full, as if they were dead; storks, or cranes, sitting fearless upon the low roofs, look gravely down upon you; the still air that you breathe is loaded with the scent of citron, and pomegranate rinds scorched by the sun, or (as you approach the bazaar) with the dry, dead perfume of strange spices. You long for some signs of life, and tread the ground more heavily, as though you would wake the sleepers with the heel of your boot; but the foot falls noiseless upon the crumbling soil of an Eastern city, and silence follows you still. Again and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have nothing for you—no welcome—no wonder—no wrath—no scorn—they look upon you as we do upon a December’s fall of snow—as a “seasonable,” unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose, to be revealed hereafter.

Some people had come down to meet us with an invitation from the Pasha, and we wound our way up to the castle. At the gates there were groups of soldiers, some smoking, and some lying flat like corpses upon the cool stones. We went through courts, ascended steps, passed along a corridor, and walked into an airy, whitewashed room, with an European clock at one end of it, and Moostapha Pasha at the other; the fine, old, bearded potentate looked very like Jove—like Jove, too, in the midst of his clouds, for the silvery fumes of the narghile [6] hung lightly circling round him.

The Pasha received us with the smooth, kind, p. 7gentle manner that belongs to well-bred Osmanlees; then he lightly clapped his hands, and instantly the sound filled all the lower end of the room with slaves; a syllable dropped from his lips which bowed all heads, and conjured away the attendants like ghosts (their coming and their going was thus swift and quiet, because their feet were bare, and they passed through no door, but only by the yielding folds of a purder). Soon the coffee-bearers appeared, every man carrying separately his tiny cup in a small metal stand; and presently to each of us there came a pipe-bearer, who first rested the bowl of the tchibouque at a measured distance on the floor, and then, on this axis, wheeled round the long cheery stick, and gracefully presented it on half-bended knee; already the well-kindled fire was glowing secure in the bowl, and so, when I pressed the amber lip [7] to mine, there was no coyness to conquer; the willing fume came up, and answered my slightest sigh, and followed softly every breath inspired, till it touched me with some faint sense and understanding of Asiatic contentment.

Asiatic contentment! Yet scarcely, perhaps, one hour before I had been wanting my bill, and ringing for waiters, in a shrill and busy hotel.

In the Ottoman dominions there is scarcely any hereditary influence except that which belongs to the family of the Sultan; and wealth, too, is a highly volatile blessing, not easily transmitted to the descendant of the owner. From these causes it results that the people standing in the place of nobles p. 8and gentry are official personages, and though many (indeed the greater number) of these potentates are humbly born and bred, you will seldom, I think, find them wanting in that polished smoothness of manner, and those well-undulating tones which belong to the best Osmanlees. The truth is, that most of the men in authority have risen from their humble station by the arts of the courtier, and they preserve in their high estate those gentle powers of fascination to which they owe their success. Yet unless you can contrive to learn a little of the language, you will be rather bored by your visits of ceremony; the intervention of the interpreter, or dragoman as he is called, is fatal to the spirit of conversation. I think I should mislead you if I were to attempt to give the substance of any particular conversation with Orientals. A traveller may write and say that “the Pasha of So-and-so was particularly interested in the vast progress which has been made in the application of steam, and appeared to understand the structure of our machinery—that he remarked upon the gigantic results of our manufacturing industry—showed that he possessed considerable knowledge of our Indian affairs, and of the constitution of the Company, and expressed a lively admiration of the many sterling qualities for which the people of England are distinguished.” But the heap of commonplaces thus quietly attributed to the Pasha will have been founded perhaps on some such talking as this:—

Pasha.—The Englishman is welcome; most blessed among hours is this, the hour of his coming.

Dragoman (to the traveller).—The Pasha pays you his compliments.

Traveller.—Give him my best compliments in p. 9return, and say I’m delighted to have the honour of seeing him.

Dragoman (to the Pasha).—His lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe for a moment, and has crossed the broad waters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue of followers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of the Pasha among Pashas—the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik of Karagholookoldour.

Traveller (to his dragoman).—What on earth have you been saying about London? The Pasha will be taking me for a mere cockney. Have not I told you always to say that I am from a branch of the family of Mudcombe Park, and that I am to be a magistrate for the county of Bedfordshire, only I’ve not qualified, and that I should have been a deputy-lieutenant if it had not been for the extraordinary conduct of Lord Mountpromise, and that I was a candidate for Goldborough at the last election, and that I should have won easy if my committee had not been bought. I wish to Heaven that if you do say anything about me, you’d tell the simple truth.

Dragoman [is silent].

Pasha.—What says the friendly Lord of London? is there aught that I can grant him within the Pashalik of Karagholookoldour?

Dragoman (growing sulky and literal).—This friendly Englishman—this branch of Mudcombe—this head-purveyor of Goldborough—this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, is recounting his achievements, and the number of his titles.

Pasha.—The end of his honours is more distant than the ends of the earth, and the catalogue of p. 10his glorious deeds is brighter than the firmament of heaven!

Dragoman (to the traveller).—The Pasha congratulates your Excellency.

Traveller.—About Goldborough? The deuce he does!—but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman Empire. Tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speech from the throne, pledging England to preserve the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions.

Dragoman (to the Pasha).—This branch of Mudcombe, this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England the talking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions has been assured for ever and ever by a speech from the velvet chair.

Pasha.—Wonderful chair! Wonderful houses!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!—wonderful chair! wonderful houses! wonderful people!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!

Traveller (to the dragoman).—What does the Pasha mean by that whizzing? he does not mean to say, does he, that our Government will ever abandon their pledges to the Sultan?

Dragoman.—No, your Excellency; but he says the English talk by wheels, and by steam.

Traveller.—That’s an exaggeration; but say that the English really have carried machinery to great perfection; tell the Pasha (he’ll be struck with that) that whenever we have any disturbances to put down, even at two or three hundred miles from London, we can send troops by the thousand to the scene of action in a few hours.

Dragoman (recovering his temper and freedom of p. 11speech).—His Excellency, this Lord of Mudcombe, observes to your Highness, that whenever the Irish, or the French, or the Indians rebel against the English, whole armies of soldiers, and brigades of artillery, are dropped into a mighty chasm called Euston Square, and in the biting of a cartridge they arise up again in Manchester, or Dublin, or Paris, or Delhi, and utterly exterminate the enemies of England from the face of the earth.

Pasha.—I know it—I know all—the particulars have been faithfully related to me, and my mind comprehends locomotives. The armies of the English ride upon the vapours of boiling caldrons, and their horses are flaming coals!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!

Traveller (to his dragoman).—I wish to have the opinion of an unprejudiced Ottoman gentleman as to the prospects of our English commerce and manufactures; just ask the Pasha to give me his views on the subject.

Pasha (after having received the communication of the dragoman).—The ships of the English swarm like flies; their printed calicoes cover the whole earth; and by the side of their swords the blades of Damascus are blades of grass. All India is but an item in the ledger-books of the merchants, whose lumber-rooms are filled with ancient thrones!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!

Dragoman.—The Pasha compliments the cutlery of England, and also the East India Company.

Traveller.—The Pasha’s right about the cutlery (I tried my scimitar with the common officers’ swords belonging to our fellows at Malta, and they cut it like the leaf of a novel). Well (to the p. 12dragoman), tell the Pasha I am exceedingly gratified to find that he entertains such a high opinion of our manufacturing energy, but I should like him to know, though, that we have got something in England besides that. These foreigners are always fancying that we have nothing but ships, and railways, and East India Companies; do just tell the Pasha that our rural districts deserve his attention, and that even within the last two hundred years there has been an evident improvement in the culture of the turnip, and if he does not take any interest about that, at all events you can explain that we have our virtues in the country—that we are a truth-telling people, and, like the Osmanlees, are faithful in the performance of our promises. Oh! and, by the bye, whilst you are about it, you may as well just say at the end that the British yeoman is still, thank God! the British yeoman.

Pasha (after hearing the dragoman).—It is true, it is true:—through all Feringhistan the English are foremost and best; for the Russians are drilled swine, and the Germans are sleeping babes, and the Italians are the servants of songs, and the French are the sons of newspapers, and the Greeks they are weavers of lies, but the English and the Osmanlees are brothers together in righteousness; for the Osmanlees believe in one only God, and cleave to the Koran, and destroy idols; so do the English worship one God, and abominate graven images, and tell the truth, and believe in a book, and though they drink the juice of the grape, yet to say that they worship their prophet as God, or to say that they are eaters of pork, these are lies—lies born of Greeks, and nursed by Jews!

Dragoman.—The Pasha compliments the English.

p. 13Traveller (rising).—Well, I’ve had enough of this. Tell the Pasha I am greatly obliged to him for his hospitality, and still more for his kindness in furnishing me with horses, and say that now I must be off.

Pasha (after hearing the dragoman, and standing up on his divan). [13]—Proud are the sires, and blessed are the dams of the horses that shall carry his Excellency to the end of his prosperous journey. May the saddle beneath him glide down to the gates of the happy city, like a boat swimming on the third river of Paradise. May he sleep the sleep of a child, when his friends are around him; and the while that his enemies are abroad, may his eyes flame red through the darkness—more red than the eyes of ten tigers! Farewell!

Dragoman.—The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey.

So ends the visit.

p. 14 CHAPTER II

TURKISH TRAVELLING

In two or three hours our party was ready; the servants, the Tatar, the mounted Suridgees, [14a] and the baggage-horses, altogether made up a strong cavalcade. The accomplished Mysseri, [14b] of whom you have heard me speak so often, and who served me so faithfully throughout my Oriental journeys, acted as our interpreter, and was, in fact, the brain of our corps. The Tatar, you know, is a Government courier properly employed in carrying despatches, but also sent with travellers to speed them on their way, and answer with his head for their safety. The man whose head was thus pledged for our precious lives was a glorious-looking fellow, with the regular and handsome cast of countenance which is now characteristic of the Ottoman race. [14c] His features displayed p. 15a good deal of serene pride, self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, and something of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of intellect. He had been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and kept up the odd strut of his old corps, which used to affright the Christians in former times—that rolling gait so comically pompous, that a close imitation of it, even in the broadest farce, would be looked upon as a very rough over-acting of the character. It is occasioned in part by dress and accoutrements. The weighty bundle of weapons carried upon the chest throws back the body so as to give it a wonderful portliness, and, moreover, the immense masses of clothes that swathe his limbs force the wearer in walking to swing himself heavily round from left to right, and from right to left. In truth, this great edifice of woollen, and cotton, and silk, and silver, and brass, and steel is not at all fitted for moving on foot; it cannot even walk without frightfully discomposing its fair proportions; and as to running—our Tatar ran once (it was in order to pick up a partridge that Methley had winged with a pistol-shot), and really the attempt was one of the funniest misdirections of human energy that wondering man ever saw. But put him in his stirrups, and then is the Tatar himself again: there he lives at his pleasure, reposing in the tranquillity of that true home (the home of his ancestors) which the saddle seems to afford him, and drawing from his pipe the calm pleasures of his “own fireside,” or else dashing sudden over the earth, as though for a moment he felt the mouth of a Turcoman steed, and saw his own Scythian plains lying boundless and open before him.

It was not till his subordinates had nearly completed their preparations for their march that our p. 16Tatar, “commanding the forces,” arrived; he came sleek and fresh from the bath (for so is the custom of the Ottomans when they start upon a journey), and was carefully accoutred at every point. From his thigh to his throat he was loaded with arms and other implements of a campaigning life. There is no scarcity of water along the whole road from Belgrade to Stamboul, but the habits of our Tatar were formed by his ancestors and not by himself, so he took good care to see that his leathern water-flask was amply charged and properly strapped to the saddle, along with his blessed tchibouque. And now at last he has cursed the Suridgees in all proper figures of speech, and is ready for a ride of a thousand miles; but before he comforts his soul in the marble baths of Stamboul he will be another and a lesser man; his sense of responsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a fraction of the sleek Moostapha that now leads out our party from the gates of Belgrade.

The Suridgees are the men employed to lead the baggage-horses. They are most of them gipsies. Their lot is a sad one: they are the last of the human race, and all the sins of their superiors (including the horses) can safely be visited on them. But the wretched look often more picturesque than their betters; and though all the world despise these poor Suridgees, their tawny skins and their grisly beards will gain them honourable standing in the foreground of a landscape. We had a couple of these fellows with us, each leading a baggage-horse, to the tail of which last another baggage-horse was attached. There was a world of trouble in persuading the stiff angular portmanteaus of Europe to adapt themselves p. 17to their new condition and sit quietly on pack-saddles, but all was right at last, and it gladdened my eyes to see our little troop file off through the winding lanes of the city, and show down brightly in the plain beneath. The one of our party that seemed to be most out of keeping with the rest of the scene was Methley’s Yorkshire servant, who always rode doggedly on in his pantry jacket, looking out for “gentlemen’s seats.”

Methley and I had English saddles, but I think we should have done just as well (I should certainly have seen more of the country) if we had adopted saddles like that of our Tatar, who towered so loftily over the scraggy little beast that carried him. In taking thought for the East, whilst in England, I had made one capital hit which you must not forget—I had brought with me a pair of common spurs. These were a great comfort to me throughout my horseback travels, by keeping up the cheerfulness of the many unhappy nags that I had to bestride; the angle of the Oriental stirrup is a very poor substitute for spurs.

The Ottoman horseman, raised by his saddle to a great height above the humble level of the back that he bestrides, and using an awfully sharp bit, is able to lift the crest of his nag, and force him into a strangely fast shuffling walk, the orthodox pace for the journey. My comrade and I, using English saddles, could not easily keep our beasts up to this peculiar amble; besides, we thought it a bore to be followed by our attendants for a thousand miles, and we generally, therefore, did duty as the rearguard of our “grand army”; we used to walk our horses till the party in front had got into the distance, and then retrieve the lost ground by a gallop.

We had ridden on for some two or three hours; p. 18the stir and bustle of our commencing journey had ceased, the liveliness of our little troop had worn off with the declining day, and the night closed in as we entered the great Servian forest. Through this our road was to last for more than a hundred miles. Endless, and endless now on either side, the tall oaks closed in their ranks and stood gloomily lowering over us, as grim as an army of giants with a thousand years’ pay in arrear. One strived with listening ear to catch some tidings of that forest world within—some stirring of beasts, some night-bird’s scream, but all was quite hushed, except the voice of the cicalas that peopled every bough, and filled the depths of the forest through and through, with one same hum everlasting—more stilling than very silence.

At first our way was in darkness, but after a while the moon got up, and touched the glittering arms and tawny faces of our men with light so pale and mystic, that the watchful Tatar felt bound to look out for demons, and take proper means for keeping them off; forthwith he determined that the duty of frightening away our ghostly enemies (like every other troublesome work) should fall upon the poor Suridgees, who accordingly lifted up their voices, and burst upon the dreadful stillness of the forest with shrieks and dismal howls. These precautions were kept up incessantly, and were followed by the most complete success, for not one demon came near us.

Long before midnight we reached the hamlet in which we were to rest for the night; it was made up of about a dozen clay huts, standing upon a small tract of ground hardly won from the forest. The peasants that lived there spoke a Slavonic dialect, and Mysseri’s knowledge of the Russian tongue enabled him to talk with them freely. We took up our p. 19quarters in a square room with white walls and an earthen floor, quite bare of furniture, and utterly void of women. They told us, however, that these Servian villagers lived in happy abundance, but that they were careful to conceal their riches, as well as their wives.

The burthens unstrapped from the pack-saddles very quickly furnished our den; a couple of quilts spread upon the floor, with a carpet-bag at the head of each, became capital sofas—portmanteaus, and hat-boxes, and writing-cases, and books, and maps, and gleaming arms soon lay strewed around us in pleasant confusion. Mysseri’s canteen too began to yield up its treasures, but we relied upon finding some provisions in the village. At first the natives declared that their hens were mere old maids and all their cows unmarried; but our Tatar swore such a grand sonorous oath, and fingered the hilt of his yataghan with such persuasive touch, that the land soon flowed with milk, and mountains of eggs arose.

And soon there was tea before us, with all its unspeakable fragrance, and as we reclined on the floor, we found that a portmanteau was just the right height for a table; the duty of candlesticks was ably performed by a couple of intelligent natives; the rest of the villagers stood by the open doorway at the lower end of the room, and watched our banqueting with grave and devout attention.

The first night of your first campaign (though you be but a mere peaceful campaigner) is a glorious time in your life. It is so sweet to find one’s self free from the stale civilisation of Europe! Oh, my dear ally, when first you spread your carpet in the midst of these Eastern scenes, do think for a moment of those your fellow-creatures, that dwell in squares, p. 20and streets, and even (for such is the fate of many!) in actual country houses; think of the people that are “presenting their compliments,” and “requesting the honour,” and “much regretting,”—of those that are pinioned at dinner-tables, or stuck up in ballrooms, or cruelly planted in pews,—ay, think of these, and so remembering how many poor devils are living in a state of utter respectability, you will glory the more in your own delightful escape.

I am bound to confess, however, that with all its charms a mud floor (like a mercenary match) does certainly promote early rising. Long before daybreak we were up, and had breakfasted; after this there was nearly a whole tedious hour to endure whilst the horses were laden by torchlight; but this had an end, and at last we went on once more. Cloaked, and sombre, at first we made our sullen way through the darkness, with scarcely one barter of words; but soon the genial morn burst down from heaven, and stirred the blood so gladly through our veins, that the very Suridgees, with all their troubles, could now look up for an instant, and almost seem to believe in the temporary goodness of God.

The actual movement from one place to another, in Europeanised countries, is a process so temporary—it occupies, I mean, so small a proportion of the traveller’s entire time—that his mind remains unsettled, so long as the wheels are going; he may be alive enough to external objects of interest, and to the crowding ideas which are often invited by the excitement of a changing scene, but he is still conscious of being in a provisional state, and his mind is constantly recurring to the expected end of his journey; his ordinary ways of thought have been interrupted, and before any new mental habits can be p. 21formed he is quietly fixed in his hotel. It will be otherwise with you when you journey in the East. Day after day, perhaps week after week and month after month, your foot is in the stirrup. To taste the cold breath of the earliest morn, and to lead, or follow, your bright cavalcade till sunset through forests and mountain passes, through valleys and desolate plains, all this becomes your mode of life, and you ride, eat, drink, and curse the mosquitoes as systematically as your friends in England eat, drink, and sleep. If you are wise, you will not look upon the long period of time thus occupied in actual movement as the mere gulf dividing you from the end of your journey, but rather as one of those rare and plastic seasons of your life from which, perhaps, in after times you may love to date the moulding of your character—that is, your very identity. Once feel this, and you will soon grow happy and contented in your saddle-home. As for me and my comrade, however, in this part of our journey we often forgot Stamboul, forgot all the Ottoman Empire, and only remembered old times. We went back, loitering on the banks of Thames—not grim old Thames of “after life,” that washes the Parliament Houses, and drowns despairing girl—but Thames, the “old Eton fellow,” that wrestled with us in our boyhood till he taught us to be stronger than he. We bullied Keate, and scoffed at Larry Miller, and Okes; we rode along loudly laughing, and talked to the grave Servian forest as though it were the “Brocas clump.”

Our pace was commonly very slow, for the baggage-horses served us for a drag, and kept us to a rate of little more than five miles in the hour, but now and then, and chiefly at night, a spirit of movement p. 22would suddenly animate the whole party; the baggage-horses would be teased into a gallop, and when once this was done, there would be such a banging of portmanteaus, and such convulsions of carpet-bags upon their panting sides, and the Suridgees would follow them up with such a hurricane of blows, and screams, and curses, that stopping or relaxing was scarcely possible; then the rest of us would put our horses into a gallop, and so, all shouting cheerily, would hunt, and drive the sumpter beasts like a flock of goats, up hill and down dale, right on to the end of their journey.

The distances at which we got relays of horses varied greatly; some were not more than fifteen or twenty miles, but twice, I think, we performed a whole day’s journey of more than sixty miles with the same beasts.

When at last we came out from the forest our road lay through scenes like those of an English park. The green sward unfenced, and left to the free pasture of cattle, was dotted with groups of stately trees, and here and there darkened over with larger masses of wood, that seemed gathered together for bounding the domain, and shutting out some “infernal” fellow-creature in the shape of a newly made squire; in one or two spots the hanging copses looked down upon a lawn below with such sheltering mien, that seeing the like in England you would have been tempted almost to ask the name of the spendthrift, or the madman who had dared to pull down “the old hall.”

There are few countries less infested by “lions” than the provinces on this part of your route. You are not called upon to “drop a tear” over the tomb of “the once brilliant” anybody, or to pay your p. 23“tribute of respect” to anything dead or alive. There are no Servian or Bulgarian litterateurs with whom it would be positively disgraceful not to form an acquaintance; you have no staring, no praising to get through; the only public building of any interest that lies on the road is of modern date, but is said to be a good specimen of Oriental architecture; it is of a pyramidical shape, and is made up of thirty thousand skulls, contributed by the rebellious Servians in the early part (I believe) of this century: I am not at all sure of my date, but I fancy it was in the year 1806 that the first skull was laid. [23] I am ashamed to say that in the darkness of the early morning we unknowingly went by the neighbourhood of this triumph of art, and so basely got off from admiring “the simple grandeur of the architect’s conception,” and “the exquisite beauty of the fretwork.”

There being no “lions,” we ought at least to have met with a few perils, but the only robbers we saw anything of had been long since dead and gone. The poor fellows had been impaled upon high poles, and so propped up by the transverse spokes beneath them, that their skeletons, clothed with some white, p. 24wax-like remains of flesh, still sat up lolling in the sunshine, and listlessly stared without eyes.

One day it seemed to me that our path was a little more rugged than usual, and I found that I was deserving for myself the title of Sabalkansky, or “Transcender of the Balcan.” The truth is, that, as a military barrier, the Balcan is a fabulous mountain. Such seems to be the view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the east with the eye of a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia Pass, which I followed, there is no narrow defile, and no ascent sufficiently difficult to stop, or delay for long time, a train of siege artillery.

Before we reached Adrianople, Methley had been seized with we knew not what ailment, and when we had taken up our quarters in the city he was cast to the very earth by sickness. Andrianople enjoyed an English consul, and I felt sure that, in Eastern phrase, his house would cease to be his house, and would become the house of my sick comrade. I should have judged rightly under ordinary circumstances, but the levelling plague was abroad, and the dread of it had dominion over the consular mind. So now (whether dying or not, one could hardly tell), upon a quilt stretched out along the floor, there lay the best hope of an ancient line, without the material aids to comfort of even the humblest sort, and (sad to say) without the consolation of a friend, or even a comrade worth having. I have a notion that tenderness and pity are affections occasioned in some measure by living within doors; certainly, at the time I speak of, the open-air life which I have been leading, or the wayfaring hardships of the journey, had so strangely blunted me, that I felt intolerant of illness, and looked down upon my companion as if the poor fellow in p. 25falling ill had betrayed a want of spirit. I entertained, too, a most absurd idea—an idea that his illness was partly affected. You see that I have made a confession: this I hope—that I may always hereafter look charitably upon the hard, savage acts of peasants, and the cruelties of a “brutal” soldiery. God knows that I strived to melt myself into common charity, and to put on a gentleness which I could not feel, but this attempt did not cheat the keenness of the sufferer; he could not have felt the less deserted because that I was with him.

We called to aid a solemn Armenian (I think he was), half soothsayer, half hakim or doctor, who, all the while counting his beads, fixed his eyes steadily upon the patient, and then suddenly dealt him a violent blow on the chest. Methley bravely dissembled his pain, for he fancied that the blow was meant to try whether or not the plague were on him.

Here was really a sad embarrassment—no bed; nothing to offer the invalid in the shape of food save a piece of thin, tough, flexible, drab-coloured cloth, made of flour and mill-stones in equal proportions, and called by the name of “bread”; then the patient, of course, had no “confidence in his medical man,” and on the whole, the best chance of saving my comrade seemed to lie in taking him out of the reach of his doctor, and bearing him away to the neighbourhood of some more genial consul. But how was this to be done? Methley was much too ill to be kept in his saddle, and wheel carriages, as means of travelling, were unknown. There is, however, such a thing as an “araba,” a vehicle drawn by oxen, in which the wives of a rich man are sometimes dragged four or five miles over the grass by p. 26way of recreation. The carriage is rudely framed, but you recognise in the simple grandeur of its design a likeness to things majestic; in short, if your carpenter’s son were to make a “Lord Mayor’s coach” for little Amy, he would build a carriage very much in the style of a Turkish araba. No one had ever heard of horses being used for drawing a carriage in this part of the world, but necessity is the mother of innovation as well as of invention. I was fully justified, I think, in arguing that there were numerous instances of horses being used for that purpose in our own country—that the laws of nature are uniform in their operation over all the world (except Ireland)—that that which was true in Piccadilly, must be true in Adrianople—that the matter could not fairly be treated as an ecclesiastical question, for that the circumstance of Methley’s going on to Stamboul in an araba drawn by horses, when calmly and dispassionately considered, would appear to be perfectly consistent with the maintenance of the Mahometan religion as by law established. Thus poor, dear, patient Reason would have fought her slow battle against Asiatic prejudice, and I am convinced that she would have established the possibility (and perhaps even the propriety) of harnessing horses in a hundred and fifty years; but in the meantime Mysseri, well seconded by our Tatar, put a very quick end to the controversy by having the horses put to.

It was a sore thing for me to see my poor comrade brought to this, for young though he was, he was a veteran in travel. When scarcely yet of age he had invaded India from the frontiers of Russia, and that so swiftly, that measuring by the time of his flight the broad dominions of the king of kings were p. 27shrivelled up to a dukedom, and now, poor fellow, he was to be poked into an araba, like a Georgian girl! He suffered greatly, for there were no springs for the carriage, and no road for the wheels; and so the concern jolted on over the open country with such twists, and jerks, and jumps, as might almost dislocate the supple tongue of Satan.

All day the patient kept himself shut up within the lattice-work of the araba, and I could hardly know how he was faring until the end of the day’s journey, when I found that he was not worse, and was buoyed up with the hope of some day reaching Constantinople.

I was always conning over my maps, and fancied that I knew pretty well my line, but after Adrianople I had made more southing than I knew for, and it was with unbelieving wonder, and delight, that I came suddenly upon the shore of the sea. A little while, and its gentle billows were flowing beneath the hoofs of my beast; but the hearing of the ripple was not enough communion, and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not to know and possess it—I must needs plunge into its depth and quench my longing love in the palpable waves; and so when old Moostapha (defender against demons) looked round for his charge, he saw with horror and dismay that he for whose life his own life stood pledged was possessed of some devil who had driven him down into the sea—that the rider and the steed had vanished from earth, and that out among the waves was the gasping crest of a post-horse, and the ghostly head of the Englishman moving upon the face of the waters.

We started very early indeed on the last day of our journey, and from the moment of being off until p. 28we gained the shelter of the imperial walls we were struggling face to face with an icy storm that swept right down from the steppes of Tartary, keen, fierce, and steady as a northern conqueror. Methley’s servant, who was the greatest sufferer, kept his saddle until we reached Stamboul, but was then found to be quite benumbed in limbs, and his brain was so much affected that when he was lifted from his horse he fell away in a state of unconsciousness, the first stage of a dangerous fever.

Our Tatar, worn down by care and toil, and carrying seven heavens full of water in his manifold jackets and shawls, was a mere weak and vapid dilution of the sleek Moostapha, who scarce more than one fortnight before came out like a bridegroom from his chamber to take the command of our party.

Mysseri seemed somewhat over-wearied, but he had lost none of his strangely quiet energy. He wore a grave look, however, for he now had learnt that the plague was prevailing at Constantinople, and he was fearing that our two sick men, and the miserable looks of our whole party, might make us unwelcome at Pera.

We crossed the Golden Horn in a caïque. As soon as we had landed, some woebegone-looking fellows were got together and laden with our baggage. Then on we went, dripping, and sloshing, and looking very like men that had been turned back by the Royal Humane Society as being incurably drowned. Supporting our sick, we climbed up shelving steps and threaded many windings, and at last came up into the main street of Pera, humbly hoping that we might not be judged guilty of plague, and so be cast back with horror from the doors of the shuddering Christians.

p. 29Such was the condition of our party, which fifteen days before had filed away so gaily from the gates of Belgrade. A couple of fevers and a north-easterly storm had thoroughly spoiled our looks.

The interest of Mysseri with the house of Giuseppini was too powerful to be denied, and at once, though not without fear and trembling, we were admitted as guests.

p. 30 CHAPTER III

CONSTANTINOPLE

Even if we don’t take a part in the chant about “mosques and minarets,” we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chant about the harbour; we can say, and sing, that nowhere else does the sea come so home to a city; there are no pebbly shores—no sand bars—no slimy river-beds—no black canals—no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the place from the deep waters. If being in the noisiest mart of Stamboul you would stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those cypresses opposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus; if you would go from your hotel to the bazaars, you must go by the bright, blue pathway of the Golden Horn, that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You are accustomed to the gondolas that glide among the palaces of St. Mark, but here at Stamboul it is a 120-gun ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and in old times would send forth the chief of the State to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan. She comes to his feet with the treasures of the world—she bears him from palace to palace—by some unfailing witchcraft she entices the breezes to p. 31follow her [31] and fan the pale cheek of her lord—she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his garden—she watches the walls of his serai—she stifles the intrigues of his ministers—she quiets the scandals of his courts—she extinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives all one by one. So vast are the wonders of the deep!

All the while that I stayed at Constantinople the plague was prevailing, but not with any degree of violence. Its presence, however, lent a mysterious and exciting, though not very pleasant, interest to my first knowledge of a great Oriental city; it gave tone and colour to all I saw, and all I felt—a tone and a colour sombre enough, but true, and well befitting the dreary monuments of past power and splendour. With all that is most truly Oriental in its character the plague is associated; it dwells with the faithful in the holiest quarters of their city. The coats and the hats of Pera are held to be nearly as innocent of infection as they are ugly in shape and fashion; but the rich furs and the costly shawls, the broidered slippers and the gold-laden saddle-cloths, the fragrance of burning aloes and the rich aroma of patchouli—these are the signs that mark the familiar home of plague. You go out from your queenly London—the centre of the greatest and strongest amongst all earthly dominions—you go out thence, and travel on to the capital of an Eastern Prince, you find but a waning power, and a faded splendour, that inclines you to laugh and mock; but let the infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can p. 32restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with seemly reverence and awe.

It is the firm faith of almost all the Europeans living in the East that plague is conveyed by the touch of infected substances, and that the deadly atoms especially lurk in all kinds of clothes and furs. It is held safer to breathe the same air with a man sick of the plague, and even to come in contact wi