Chapter XVIII (1)

Mr Wowski, during his short sojourn at headquarters, was one day placed in an awkward position. In the south of France, we often met with large fierce dogs, which in country places we sometimes found ugly customers; though, in reality, not one in ten of them possessed the pluck of an English pug. Early one morning, I had to ride a little distance on duty. It was a cross country road, and Gingham favoured me with his company. While ambling along, we overtook Mr Wowski, who had started for one of his peregrinations on foot; and slackened our pace, to secure the pleasure of his society. Presently we came to a hamlet of some ten or a dozen houses, in passing which we were savagely attacked by a gang of formidable-looking dogs. Had Gingham and I been by ourselves, we should soon have been rid of the annoyance, by the mere act of passing on. But the real danger was our pedestrian companion's, whom the whole barking angry pack seemed determined to assail. One shaggy, powerful ruffian led the van; he might have sat to Schneider. His mouth, yawning like a sepulchre, reuttered a deep, sonorous yow--yow; his fangs stood out, ready for action; his eyes flashed fire; while, in size somewhere between a wolf and a jackass, he rushed right up to the unfortunate Wowski, whose only defence was a walking-stick. Wowski cut one, two--one, two--with just sufficient energy to keep off the foe, who contrived to maintain his nose in position, just an inch beyond the range of the sapling. He was backed up by the rest of the curs, who, barking and snarling, formed a semicircle, that threatened to hem in the hapless Wowski. Gingham and I could do nothing. I had only a switch; Gingham hadn't even that. Still the chief assailant, his back bristling like a wild boar's, and his tail swollen and ruffled like an angry cat's, pressed the attack; it was yow--yow on one side, and cut--cut on the other. He jumped, he circled, he ramped, he flew up in the air, spun round, and flew up again;--every moment I expected to see him fly at Wowski's throat. I noticed a woman looking out from the door of one of the cottages--called to her, and made signs--on which she thought fit to disappear. Wowski was now becoming pale and exhausted. "Shorten your stick," said I. He did so. The foe came nearer. "Now give him the full length." Wowski took the hint, and the big beast of a cur caught a crack on his muzzle--a regular smasher; instantly turned tail, and cut away with dismal yowlings. The whole pack, like so many humans, turned against him, and pursued; the great powerful brute was half-a-dozen times knocked over and worried, ere he found refuge in an outhouse. The woman now reappeared, armed with a broomstick; and followed into the shed, where a fresh succession of howls and yells announced a needful though tardy process of castigation. Wowski walked along with us, flourishing his stick; only wished it had been a lion! There may be really courageous dogs among the big-limbed monsters of this part of France; but, from my own observation, I should say the most part are a pluckless race. Indeed, an officer of the Guards, who had got out dogs from England, complained to me that they lost their courage on a foreign soil.

Gingham himself, a few days after, had a much more serious adventure.

We were on the march together, after a wet and stormy night. The morning was unsettled, but soon became sultry. Then followed a shower of hail. Gingham began to philosophise; thought he could explain the phenomenon of hail better than any one else. "It has been remarked," said I, "that hail is never formed, except where there are two strata of clouds, one over the other."

"True," said Gingham; "and some meteorologists have imagined that the hail is generated by the alternate action of the two strata, which action they suppose to be electrical."

"Curious, if true."

"Yes," said Gingham; "but I question the theory altogether. According to the best views of the subject which I have been able to form, the hail is produced simply by a current of very cold air, passing rapidly through hot air charged with vapour. Were the current less rapid, or less cold, the effect would be merely condensation, and we should have rain; but, being both cold and rapid in a high degree, the effect is congelation, and we have hail. The noise which so often accompanies hail-storms is the rush of this current of cold air. Currents of air, I admit, in the higher regions of the atmosphere, are usually mute. But, in this instance, the rush is rendered vocal by the hailstones. As to the two strata of clouds, they merely mark the superior and inferior limit of the intrusive current; and they are due to the action of the cold, there more modified, on the vapour. And as to electricity--"

Gingham's lecture was here interrupted by our reaching a river. The bridge having been destroyed by the enemy, we could cross only by fording; and just as we reached the ford, we saw some persons passing on mules and horses. Half way over appeared a small island, which was in fact only a bank of shingle, thrown up by some previous flood. We perceived, by those who preceded us, that the depth was sufficient to wet our boots, if we rode, as they did; and therefore it was resolved to pass in the cart. The river, though not at the moment swollen, was dark and rapid. It rushed sullenly on, with small whirlpools, but without a ripple; and murmurs were heard at intervals, hoarse and deep, which came not from its surface, but boomed up from the gloomiest and most profound recesses of its vexed channel and hollow banks. By the side, waiting for a passage, we found some slightly wounded soldiers, a party of four. These Gingham mounted at once into the cart; and I, calculating that with Joaquim the driver, Mr Wowski, and Gingham himself, there were now quite passengers enough by that conveyance, turned Sancho's head, and followed Coosey--who led the way across the stream, mounted on one horse, and leading another, while the cart brought up the rear. The cart, it appears, on reaching the island, stuck fast. Its wheels cut into the loose gravel; and there was no remedy, except for the passengers to alight. The wheels were then lifted by main force; and, time having been given for the whole party to remount, Joaquim drove on, and the remainder of the passage was effected. All those who had started from the opposite bank then got out, with one exception. Where was Gingham? My attention was first attracted by an angry shout from Coosey:

"You Joe King, you precious willain, vhy, if you han't a-been and left your master a-standin on the highland!"

To a geologist like Gingham, the loose stones of the bank of gravel, shoved up by the force of the water from the depths of the stream, presented an attraction which banished every other thought from his mind. He had commenced picking up specimens the moment he alighted from the cart; and was so intent upon this pursuit, that he suffered the party to proceed without him. How they came to leave him behind can only be explained by supposing that each, as soon as he remounted, was occupied by the portion of the passage--it was ticklish work--that remained to be effected, and therefore began looking out ahead.

The moment Coosey spoke, I looked toward the island, and there, sure enough, was Gingham, still intent on stone-picking, and, to all appearance, utterly unconscious that the cart had left. The river, meanwhile, had risen considerably. Its course was more turbid and violent, its murmur louder and more continuous, and the island already smaller. We shouted to Gingham--there was need to shout. He looked up, and at once became aware of his position, which was evidently far from eligible. He appeared perfectly cool, but hesitated.

Suddenly, the water came down, in a sort of bank. It was less than a foot high; but the rise left Gingham with much less ground to stand upon, in the midst of the boiling flood. Large trunks of trees, plunging and careering, were now brought rapidly down the current; while the rush of the waters was like the roar of receding billows on a storm-vexed strand. Coosey was about to dash into the flood, which swept by the bank, boiling like a mill-stream. Had I not stopped him, the plucky little Londoner would soon have been carried away, prone and struggling on the angry torrent. He then sprang into the cart; but Gingham made signs to prohibit the attempt, or both cart and Coosey would probably have been lost. In our agony we tore off the cords from the boxes, tied them together, and fastened the end to a large stone, which Coosey attempted to pitch towards Gingham. It fell near him; but out of his reach, in deep water. While we were cautiously hauling it in, down came another freshet. The island was now in great part submerged; and Gingham stood on a mere strip of shingle, with the flood roaring down on each side. The stone was pitched again; and this time went truer than before, but was at once carried off into the deep water below. I again began to haul the line home. It had caught, and wouldn't come in. What could be done? Gingham, I really feared, was a lost man!

Down came another bank of water. Gingham had now scarcely standing-room. The water rushed rapidly by him, and I began to fear he might not long have a footing. At this critical moment, the trunk of a tree, with most of its branches broken off, but here and there a small bough still remaining, came right down towards Gingham, shearing, surging on the tumultuous waters, hung for a moment on the shallow, and then began moving on again with the current. Gingham stooped forward to seize it--he did well, it was his only hope--but lost his feet. He threw himself astride the timber, like Waterton on the crocodile's back, and was borne off from the island, still retaining his hold, though turned over and over by the violence of the current. I saw no hope. What could prevent his being carried away? Yet there was still a possibility of escape, though unforeseen. The trunk, carried a few yards down, was caught by an eddy, and swung round into the slack water below, where the current was broken by the bank on which Gingham had just been standing. There the huge log began slowly moving round in a circle, first ascending in a direction opposite to the stream, then descending again. On reaching the lowest point of the circle, the trunk, with Gingham upon it, was again caught by an eddy, and twirled round like a spindle; then, with solemn movement, began gradually to ascend again, describing the same circle as before. This second time, though, in going down, it reached a lower point ere it was again caught and twirled, by which law, it was clear, the third time it would go with the current. Manfully did Gingham still hold on, though so often under water; and now, for the third time, he and his log began slowly to move in an ascending orbit. A third time he reached the highest point; and a third time, to all appearance the last, he began--I often dream of it--to go down with the stream! We had given up all hope. Joaquim stood wringing his hands; Coosey was like a man distracted; even the crippled soldiers would gladly have given their aid, had any devisable expedient presented itself. There was no visible alternative; this time he must be carried away!--What's that? Something stirred at my feet! I looked down. There was again a little movement. The rope twitched, as if beginning to run out! My foot was on it, in an instant. The next, I and Coosey held it fast. The tree, in moving round and round, had fished hold, and disengaged it from the catch. "Pull away, pull away!" shouted the soldiers.--"Now run him up to the bank."--"Now's your time."--"Make haste!"

"Steady, Coosey, steady," said I. "Take time, or we shall loosen the hitch, perhaps break the rope."

We did not pull. We merely held on. The log and Gingham swung to the bank.

He was silent, almost exhausted. It was well there were hands to drag him ashore; for he was too far spent to land himself. Awhile he sat motionless on the bank. With eyes uplifted, and lips moving inaudibly, he was apparently returning fervent and heartfelt thanks to heaven, for his all but miraculous deliverance. Coosey, meanwhile, had rushed for some brandy, which he administered with great apparent benefit.

"Hadn't we better take you to the nearest cottage?" said I. "Here's one at hand."

"No, no," replied Gingham, gasping. "Get me into the cart."

We lifted him in. Coosey then let down the tarpaulin, and assisted his master in a thorough change of garments from head to foot. Presently, with solemn look, and an air of authority, Coosey got down from the cart.

"It's master's vishes," said he, "to be left, jist for a few minits, alone by his-self."

Gingham ere long made his appearance, shifted and dry; and, though still looking shakey and exhausted, remounted his horse. When I once saw him fairly across the saddle, and just as we were about to proceed, I turned with vindictive, with savage exultation, to take a parting view of the angry torrent. The island had disappeared. Where Gingham had stood there was now a small race of swift-following rollers, which subsided, below the ledge, in tumultuous undulations and foaming eddies, around a dark, deep fissure in the flood, which gaped like a grave. Ha! Is it so? The hungry waters yawn for their rescued prey, and brawl forth their disappointment in a lengthened moan! We continued our march.

"And as to electricity," said Gingham, resuming where he broke off, "it may, when hail is generated, be disengaged by the process, I admit. But that it is in any way the medium of producing the hail, I strenuously deny. Hail is sufficiently accounted for by the supposition of a current of cold air passing rapidly through warm air charged with vapour; and the same theory will solve all the phenomena."

To which theory I, not being so deep in the subject as Gingham, urged no objections. I remarked, however, that Mr Wowski, professedly a man of science, manifested not the least interest in the question; did not appear to have even an idea on the subject, let alone an opinion. In the late critical scene at the ford, though, he was eminently conspicuous; and, as far as skipping about, shrieking, and getting in the way, his assistance was invaluable.

We lost the little botanist sooner than we expected. A mail--joyful event!--arrived from England; and I was sent to the "Post Office" for our departmental letters. This was not part of my regular duty; but on the occasion in question I received express directions, and went accordingly. Found the post office, a cottage with a front garden. I could but admire the diligent and active exertions to meet the general anxiety of the army, by sorting and delivering the contents of the mail with the least possible delay. The whole lot, say three or four bushels, had been shot out in the middle of the room on the earthen floor. Newspapers, love letters, officers' letters, soldiers' letters, there they lay, and there they were left to lie. In the apartment were two persons, perhaps I ought to say personages. One sat on each side of the hearth; each had torn open a newspaper; and both were conning the news from England. I never saw two people more comfortable in my life. When I entered, neither of them raised his eyes, or took the least notice. They read on. I waited. Still they read. I so far presumed as to announce my mission--had come for the departmental letters. Paused for a reply--stood expectant. At length one of the illustrious two favoured me with an utterance, in a tone somewhat querulous though, and without looking off from his reading--"Three o'clock."

"What, gentlemen!" thought I, "only four hours hence? Why, at this rate, hadn't you better say three o'clock to-morrow?"

So thinking, (not saying,) I walked off. Just as I was going, the one who had not spoken rose. He followed me out, and came on walking by my side down the path toward the garden gate. I really was green enough to fancy he was doing the polite--_seeing_ me to the entrance; felt quite overwhelmed. Any approach, at headquarters to "the sweet courtesies of life"--it was something new! I began to deprecate--hoped he wouldn't. "Pray, sir, don't come a step farther. I can mount without assistance--can open the gate for myself." Without vouchsafing a reply, he began questioning.

"Know Mr Wowski?"

"Have known him for the last few days."

"What is he?"

"He professes himself a botanist, a man of science."

"What does he want at headquarters?"

"He states his object to be botanical research."

"_States_, you say; _professes_. Isn't he really a botanist?"

This was an awkward question, for I was beginning to have my doubts. I remained silent.

"You must answer."

"For the last two or three days I have felt it a question, I confess."

"Why?"

"He collects specimens, but doesn't preserve or arrange them. At dinner time he brings home a bundle of common herbs or grasses, which, next morning, he throws away. Then goes out again, and brings home another bundle like it. Don't think he knows much about botany."

"What's your opinion of him?"

"Have hardly known him long enough to form one. He seems decidedly, though, to have a military taste; takes great interest in the movements of the troops."

"Fond of going up steeples?"

"When we enter a place, I believe he makes that his first object; at least, whenever there is a steeple to the church."

"Ever see him making signals?"

"Never noticed anything of the kind."

"Know anything more about him?"

"He brought letters of introduction"--

"Oh, yes; I know all about that. Ever met him before you joined?"

"Can't say. First time we met at headquarters, thought I had heard his voice."

"Where?"

"On our way up with treasure, we were opposed by the peasantry in passing the ferry at--"

"Yes, yes; I know. See him with them?"

"No; I heard a voice, though, which I afterwards thought was very like his."

"Then you didn't see him with them next day, I suppose, when they wounded the officer of your escort?"

"I saw nothing of him then; wasn't near enough to distinguish individuals."

"Oh, I suppose you don't use spectacles. Very well. Say nothing about this."

My questioner then returned to the cottage. He didn't say good morning; and, till I missed him from my side, I wasn't aware of his departure. Then, looking round, I saw him quietly opening the door and going in. Mr Wowski didn't come back to dinner, and we saw him no more. Whether he was arrested, or merely advised to botanise elsewhere, I never knew.

Following the movements of the army from place to place, we approached at length the banks of the Garonne, and the neighbourhood of Toulouse. We now halted for some days at the village of Seysses, where, better off than many of my fellow-campaigners, I enjoyed the luxury of a most enviable bed. On the earthen floor of my apartment was arranged a small stack of faggots. This was the bedstead. On the faggots was spread a lot of worn-out sacking, old clothes, and equally ancient blankets, which, with a very clean pair of sheets, constituted my bed. The first night, I was settling off for a snooze, when a commotion, like a small earthquake, disturbed my _prima quies_. Something was stirring, immediately under me! What can it be? Why, I can feel it! It's in the bed! What's that again? A mixture of squeaking and scrambling! Oh, rats. They had burrowed through the floor, had established themselves in the faggots, had eaten into the bedding, and there held their midnight revels. There they lived and bred, squeaked and grunted, wriggled and fought, scurried and cuddled, close under the sheet, undulating the whole surface of the bed. Presuming that they would let me alone if I let them alone, I again composed myself to sleep; and, so well was the truce kept on both sides, I had them every night for my bed-fellows. If the tumblification became intolerable, I had only to move, and in a moment all was hushed. When I was still, they stirred; but when I stirred, they were still.

Our last halting place, before we fought the battle of Toulouse, was Grenade, a small town, or large village, a few leagues below the scene of combat, on the left bank of the Garonne. Come, I'll just give you a short account of my entertainment in one more billet, and then we'll rush into the thick of the fight. Approaching Grenade, with the mingled multitude that follow an army, I was met by a French gentleman, who immediately addressed me, and entered into conversation like an old acquaintance. That's the best of the French. In five minutes we were intimate. He was a tall, hearty fellow, in age about five-and-twenty, with rosy cheeks, curly hair, broad shoulders, and prodigious development of the _poitrine_. Begged to know who and what I was--my age, name, rank, and family. Were my parents living? Had I brothers? A sister? Was I married or unmarried? Had I any intentions? Ever felt the tender passion? What was my pay _par mois_? Vilinton or Bonaparte, which did I consider the greater general? Ever fought a duel? Were the English merry or _tristes_? How did I like the French? But the French ladies? Which excelled in female beauty, France or England? Been in many battles? Was I Torrie or Ouigge? Would I accept of a billet in his _ménage_? By this time my inquisitive friend had turned, and we were walking on together towards Grenade. On our arrival there, he knocked at the door of a great stack of a house in the market-place. In five minutes Sancho was nuzzling a feed of oats in the stable, I was stropping and lathering in an elegant bedroom, and my servant was making love to Cookey in the kitchen. The fact is, when the news arrived that the English were walking in, my new friend had walked out, to secure an inmate to his mind, and I was the fortunate individual. The Parisians ridicule provincials, and so do the Cockneys. But let me tell both Cockneys and Parisians, they have nothing to boast above the rural gentry whom they respectively despise, in good breeding, in refinement, in cultivation, in bonhomie, in gentility, in anything that constitutes a dignified, simple, and likeable character. Happy family! Here, in one house, living together, and happy together, kind, hospitable, loving, and beloved, resided an aged father, a venerable mother, a charming daughter, three strapping sons--one married, with his lively little titbit of a wife, the pet of the household--two single, of whom my friend was the senior. There they dwelt together, in domestic harmony and peace. Yet there too, in that tranquil domicile, sorrow had found an entrance. A son was missing. It was the old story; you couldn't travel through France in those days, without hearing it a hundred times repeated. He had entered the army--entered Spain--and no one knew what had become of him. The family supper--what a meeting of friends, what a cheerful reunion! Each treated the other with marked attention and kindness, as though they were then first met after a long separation. The lady of the house, "madame," advanced in years, but sharp, quick, cheerful, and conversable, demanded from me a reply to the oft-repeated interrogatory, which were fairer, the English fair or the French. I tried to evade it. "No, no," said every voice at table; "Madame has asked. Monsieur must reply."--"Most willingly would I obey," said I, bowing till my nose touched the tablecloth; "but in your presence, madame, how can I decide without prepossession?" (_prévention?_) This compliment addressed to a dame of sixty-five, with gray hairs, and nothing of beauty but its vestiges, you will of course say was absurd, extravagant, and perfectly out of place. In England, I grant, it would be. But there, in France, where a compliment paid is a benefit conferred, and where civility, like a gift amongst ourselves, is always accepted as a token of goodwill, it was viewed with favour, and received with gratitude. The company, tickled, but delighted, raised a shout of applause; and madame herself, smirking and twinkling, made her acknowledgments with courtly elegance, as though I had conferred an obligation; while her lovely daughter, exclaiming, "Ah, maman!" flung her arms about her neck, with eyes full of tenderness and delight. In short, I was one of the family. In a week I quitted them with regret. The old gentleman made me a parting present of cigars; a small token of gratitude, he was kind enough to say, for the pleasure of my company; and that after I had been hospitably lodged, handsomely entertained, and fèted from first to last as if every day had been a jubilee.

Those cigars! Oh, those cigars! I never smoked the like of those cigars! They beat General Thouvenot's out of the field. They were at least three years old--nearer two pounds of them than one. You may have smoked a good cigar. You may have smoked an old cigar. But these united the two qualities; they were both old and good. The military son had brought them with him from Spain, and left them on his return to the army. The gift of them to me, then, implied a melancholy sentiment; _he_ could not want them. This was expressed by the father, in making the present. It was touching--it was perfectly French. They had one fault, only one; a fault from which no old cigars are free. They were gone too soon; they burned out like tinder. But oh! while they were burning, how shall I describe the sensation! Sensation? It was more than that; it was mental elevation; a vision, a trance, a transfer to the regions of hope, imagination, and enchantment. Every-day nature became prismatic. Matter-of-fact sparkled with variegated lamps. Pledget might have smoked, and fancied himself a poet. Each cigar a tranquillising stimulant, a volatile anodyne, excited, and while it excited soothed, every faculty of the soul; fancy, sentiment, recollection, anticipation, and stern resolve. But ah, my cigar is out! A few puffs have sufficed! Too soon, too soon, it begins to burn my nose! Its last, its dying odours are hurried away by the envious breeze; and the visions which they inspired are gone like a beautiful dream!

A MONTH AT CONSTANTINOPLE.[3]

[3] _A Month at Constantinople._ By ALBERT SMITH. London: 1850.

Books of travel in the region which modern tourists particularly designate as "the East," and which may be considered to comprise Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, do not, as a class, very forcibly challenge our sympathy and criticism. The best horse may be ridden to death; and no country, however rich in associations and peculiar in its characteristics, however remarkable in configuration and interesting by its traditions, can yield continual fresh pastures to literary travellers, when they descend upon it like a swarm of locusts instead of dropping in at reasonable intervals. Time must be allowed for change and reproduction, or repetition and exhaustion will be the inevitable result. The East, moreover, as a theme for book-wrights, has not only been overdone, but, in many instances, very badly done. People have gone thither with the preconceived idea of publishing, on the strain for the marvellous, the romantic, and the picturesque; and, disdaining the common-sense course of setting down what they saw and giving their real and natural impressions, they have gilt and embellished, like a coach-painter at a sheriff's carriage, till they forced upon us the conviction that they cared more for glitter than for truth. Some, piquing themselves on diplomatic acumen, have filled their volumes with politics, and settled all manner of Eastern questions much to their own satisfaction, and greatly to the weariness of their readers; and these form perhaps the most intolerable of the many classes into which Oriental travellers are subdivisible, but which we shall not here further enumerate, preferring to turn to the examination of the latest Eastern tour that has issued from the English press and found its way to our critical sanctum.

Mr Albert Smith's name, well known within sound of Bow-bells, is far from unfamiliar to a large circle of dwellers without that populous circumference. We cannot affirm that we have read all his numerous works, but with some of them we are acquainted, and we are disposed to think him one of the most amiable and praiseworthy of the school of popular humorists to which he belongs. His jokes are invariably good-humoured and inoffensive--without being on that account deficient in point. He does not wrap radicalism up in fun, as cunning grandmothers envelop sickly drugs with marmalade; nor has his flow of gaiety a sour and mischievous under-current. Neither does he belong to the gang of facetious philanthropists whose sympathies are so exclusively granted to the indigent and miserable, that they have nothing left but gall and bitterness for those of their fellow-creatures who wear a decent coat, and have the price of a dinner in its pocket. A gentleman of most versatile ability, he is by turns dramatist, journalist, essayist, naturalist, novelist, correspondent of a London paper, critic of the ballet, a writer of songs and a manufacturer of burlesque. Such a host of occupations naturally entails the necessity of a little relaxation; and accordingly, in the summer of last year, Mr Smith laid down his pen, shook the sawdust from his buskins, and started for the Mediterranean. As far as Malta we have not ascertained how it fared with him, but of his subsequent proceedings he has informed us in a volume which we had little idea of reviewing when first we learned its expected appearance, but whose perusal has convinced us that it deserves such brief notice as the crowded state of our pages in these busy days will permit us to bestow upon it. We have already implied our opinion that it takes a skilful hand to write an amusing book on so hackneyed a text as a visit to Constantinople. Mr Smith has surmounted the difficulty in an easy and natural manner; and, whilst telling things just as they appeared to him, without affectation or adornment, he has contrived to give an agreeable freshness and originality to a subject which we really deemed threadbare and exhausted.

It was on board the _Scamandre_, French Mediterranean mail-steamer, that Mr Albert Smith left Malta on an August evening of the year 1849, bound for Constantinople. The weather was fine and the sea smooth as a lake, and there could be no reasonable apprehension of shipwreck even for the crazy French vessel, whose last voyage, save on rivers or along coast, this was intended to be. But although somewhat rickety, of very moderate speed, and not particularly clean externally, the interior accommodations of the Scamandre were by no means bad. And the cabin passengers presented an amusing medley of nations and characters. There were French milliners, striving to pass themselves off as governesses, an elderly French actress from the St James's theatre, a brace of Marseilles bagmen, an enterprising Englishman bent upon smuggling muskets into Hungary, a young Irish officer who had thrown up his commission in the British service to campaign with Bem and Kossuth, and who must have arrived at his destination just as the war reached its end. There was also Mr Sophocles, an intelligent Greek professor from an American university, on his way home after twenty years' absence, and sundry persons unnamed, making about twenty in all, and Mr Smith himself, who, we venture to say, was not the least active and efficient in beguiling the tedium of a week's voyage in a slow steamboat, and who gives us an extremely amusing account of his fellow-passengers and their proceedings. Travelling quite as a citizen of the world, without pretension or care for luxuries, now footing it across the Alps with knapsack on shoulder, then a deck passenger from Genoa to Naples, availing himself of the smooth when it offered, but taking the rough readily when it came, sleeping sometimes on boards for want of a bed, with the knapsack aforesaid for a pillow--Mr Smith seems to have carried through the whole of his ramble those best of travelling companions, imperturbable good humour, and a determination to be pleased with everything and everybody. It is accordingly with all possible indulgence that he views the little foibles of his fellow-passengers per Scamandre, and there is not an atom of acid in the dry humour with which he parades them for the entertainment of his readers. Indeed, before the week's voyage is over, we begin to feel quite intimate with the motley company--to view with indulgence Mademoiselle Virginie's barefaced flirtations with the French commissary, and to sympathise with the good-tempered American, who, having had the misfortune to engage his berth in the first-class cabin--a sort of extra-magnificent place, whose chief distinction from the second class consists, as on German railways, in a heavy additional charge--preferred now and then dining with the less aristocratic inmates of the second cabin, "to know what was going on." There is no place like shipboard for betraying people's habits and peculiarities: everybody is more or less in deshabille; and such a group as that on the Scamandre is a mine to a shrewd observer. Mr Smith kept his eyes and ears wide open, as is his wont, and little escaped him. We select the following specimen of his strictures on foreign habits.

"I should be very sorry to class foreigners, generally, as a
dirty set of people when left to themselves; but I fear there
is too much reason to suppose that (in how many cases out of
ten I will refrain from saying) a disrelish for a good honest
plunging wash is one of their chief attributes. It requires but
very little experience, in even their best hotels, to come to
this conclusion. I do not mean in those houses where an influx
of English has imposed the necessity of providing large jugs,
baths, and basins; but in the equally leading establishments
patronised chiefly by themselves. In these, one still perceives
the little pie-dish and milk-jug, the scanty doily-looking
towel, and the absence of a soap dish; whilst it would be
perfectly futile to ask for anything further. So, on board
the Scamandre, this opinion was not weakened. They dipped a
corner of a little towel, not in the basin, but in the stream
that trickled from the cistern as slowly as vinegar from any
oyster-shop cruet, and dabbed their face about with it. Then
they messed about a little with their hands; and then, having
given a long time to brushing their hair, they had a cigarette
instead of a tooth brush, and their toilet was complete. This
description does not only apply to the Scamandre passengers, but
to the majority of their race, whom I afterwards encountered
about the Mediterranean."

We have a vivid recollection of the consternation of an amiable and numerous French family, in whose house a friend of ours once was domiciled, on finding that he each morning required, for his personal use, more fresh water than sufficed for their entire daily consumption, internal and external. Doubtless the worthy people indulged, every eight days or so, in a warm bath; but they had no notion of such a thing as diurnal ablutions above the waist or below the chin, and they shrugged and grinned monstrously at the eccentricity of the Englishman who commenced the day by a general sluice, whereas they rarely thought of washing even their fingers till they dressed for their ante-prandial promenade. And when our friend was laid up, some time later, with a smart twinge of gout, provoked by too liberal use of a very different liquid from water, the entire family, from the elderly father down to the youngest of the precocious juveniles, gave it as their unqualified opinion, that the ailment proceeded from their inmate's rash and obstinate indulgence in the ungenial and, in their opinion, extremely superfluous element.

"Athens in six hours," Mr Smith observes, is rather quick work; but he nevertheless found he could see in that time nearly as much of it as he wished. The Scamandre allowed but a day, and certainly he made good use of the brief halt. At Athens, as in Switzerland and on the Rhine, he found the ubiquitous _Murray's Handbook_ the great authority and certificate of the native competitors for custom. A skirmish with clubs and boat-hooks--the former brought evidently in anticipation of the contest--took place amongst the fancy-ball-looking boatmen, in white petticoats and scarlet leggings, who crowded in light skiffs round the foot of the steamer's ladder. In the intervals of the fight a dialogue was carried on in English, more or less broken.

"'I say, sir! here, sir! Hotel d'Orient is the best. Here's the
card, sir--old palace--Murray says ver good,' cried one of the
costumes.

"'Hi!' screamed another; 'don't go with him, master--too dear!
Come with me?'

"The parties were immediately engaged in single combat.

"'Hotel d'Angleterre à Athènes, tenu par Elias Polichronopulos
et Yani Adamopulos,' shouted another, all in a breath. I copy
the names from the card he gave me, for they were such as no one
could remember.

"'Yes, sir; good hotel,' said his companion. 'Look in Murray,
sir--page 24--there, sir; here, sir; look, sir!'

"'Who believes Murray?' asked a fellow in plain clothes, with a
strong Irish accent.

"'You would, if he put your house in the Handbook,' replied
another."

By considerable display of mental and physical energy, a few of the passengers at last got into a boat and gained the quay of the Piræus. _Grog's-shop_ was written on the shutter of a petty coffee-house, and a smart-looking Albanian stepped up, and proffered his services in excellent English. He had lived in London, he said: was a subject of Queen Victoria, and had the honour of being set down in Murray, page 25. With such recommendations, who could refuse the guidance of Demetri Pomorn? Not Mr Smith and his party, evidently, for they immediately engaged him for the day, hired a shabby vehicle from an adjacent cab-stand, and started on their hot and dusty road to Athens, thence about five miles distant. There they killed the lions, ate quince ices, bought Latakia tobacco, dined at the Hotel d'Orient _à l'Anglaise_, with Harvey sauce and pale ale, off English plates and dishes, and pulled on board again at night, to the tune of _Jim Crow_, played by an Anglified violin in one of the "grog's-shops" aforesaid. At five in the morning sleep was at an end, thanks to the clanking, stamping, and bawling upon the steamer's deck, and Mr Smith left the cabin, to reconnoitre and breathe fresh air. Some deck passengers had come on board at Athens; amongst others, a poor Albanian family, bound to Smyrna to pack figs. They were miserable, broken-spirited looking people, but picturesque in spite of their poverty; a melon or two and some coarse bread composed their entire stores for the voyage. This, however, was of no great duration, for at daybreak the next morning the passengers per Scamandre were told they were off Smyrna.

"It was very pleasant to hear this--to be told that the land I
saw close to us was Asia, and that the distant slender spires
that rose from the thickly clustered houses were minarets--that
I should have twelve hours to go on shore, and see real camels,
fig-trees, scheiks, and veiled women! And yet I could scarcely
persuade myself that such was the case--that the distant
Smyrna--of which I had only heard, in the Levant mail, as a
remote place, burnt down once a-year, where figs came from--was
actually within a good stone's throw of the steamer."

The travellers' expectations were more than realised. "I do not believe," says Mr Smith, "that throughout the future journey any impressions were conveyed more vivid than those we experienced during our first half hour in the bazaars of the sunny, bustling, beauty-teeming Smyrna." The appearance of a party of foreigners, and of the well-known face of the _valet-de-place_, caused a stir amongst the dealers, one of whom accosted Mr Smith in good English.

"'How d'ye do, sir; very well? that's right. Look here, sir;
beautiful musk purse; very fine smell. Ten piastres.'

"A piastre is worth twopence and a fraction.

"'How did you learn to speak English so well?' I asked.

"'All English gentlemen come to me, sir,' he said, 'and I learn
it from the ships, and from the Americans. Shake hands, sir;
that's right. Buy the purse, sir?

"'How much is it?' asked one of our party.

"'Six piastres,' replied the brother of the merchant, who also
spoke English, but had not heard the first price.

"'And you asked me ten!' I said to the other.

"'So I did, sir,' he replied with a laugh; 'then, if I get the
other four, that's my profit--eh? But what's four piastres to
an English gentleman?--nothing. It's too little for him to know
about. Come--buy the purse. What will you give?'

"'Five piastres,' I answered.

"'It is yours,' he added directly, with a hearty laugh, throwing
it to me.

"'What a merry fellow you are!' I observed.

"'Yes, sir; I laugh always; very good to laugh. English
gentlemen like to laugh, I know; laugh very well. Look at his
turban--laugh at that.'

"He directed our attention to an old Turk, who was going by with
a most ludicrous and towering head-dress. It was diverting to
find him making fun of his compatriot."

The mode of dealing, which in Christian Europe is stigmatised as Jewish--the system, namely, of asking thrice the value and twice what the seller means to take--is received, and by no means discreditable, in Turkish bazaars. The only way to purchase in such places, without being imposed upon, is at once to offer half the price demanded. This is met with a refusal; you walk away, the merchant calls you back, and you then offer him twenty per cent less than before. This plan Mr Smith, having picked up experience at Smyrna, put in practice at Constantinople, and generally found to answer.

Fig-packing, camels, and the slave-market are the three things which at Smyrna first attract the curiosity of the traveller from the West. Of the first-named, Mr Smith gives us a picturesque account. In the shade of a long alley of acacia and fig trees the packers were seated--Greeks by nation, and the women very handsome. "They first brought the figs from the warehouses, on the floor of which I saw hundreds of bushels, brought in on camels from the country. They were then pulled into shape, this task being confided to females; and after that sent on to the men who packed them. They gathered six or seven, one after the other, in their hand, and then wedged them into the drum, putting a few superior ones on the top, as we have seen done with strawberries." We have already mentioned that our sharp-sighted and lively traveller is somewhat of a naturalist, and here he favours us with the result of his observations upon the camel. That uncouth, but useful hunchback has been belauded and vaunted in prose and verse to such an exaggerated extent that we are quite tired of hearing of his virtues, and feel much indebted to the author of _A Month at Constantinople_ for exhibiting his failings after the following fashion:--

"Your camel is a great obtainer of pity, under false pretence.
He can be as self-willed and vicious as you please; and his
bite is particularly severe: when once his powerful teeth have
fastened, it is with the greatest difficulty that he is made
to relinquish his hold. The pitiful noise too, which he makes,
as small natural historians remark, upon being overladen,
is all sham. It proceeds from sheer idleness, rather than a
sense of oppression. With many camels, if you make pretence
to put a small object on their back--a tile or a stone, for
instance--whilst they are kneeling down, they begin mechanically
to bellow, and blink their eyes, and assume such a dismal
appearance of suffering and anguish, that it is perfectly
painful for susceptible natures to regard them. And yet, when
their load is well distributed and packed, they can move along
under seven hundredweight."

But we must get on to Constantinople. Often as the magnificent spectacle has been described that bursts upon the view as you round Seraglio Point and glide into the Golden Horn, it yet would seem affected or eccentric of a traveller who writes about Constantinople were he to neglect recording the impression made upon him by that singularly lovely panorama. Mr Albert Smith's description is to the purpose, and we like it the better for the complete absence of that magniloquence in which so many tourists have indulged when discoursing upon the beauties of Stamboul. Probably no city in the world presents so great a contrast as Constantinople, when seen from a short distance and when examined in detail. Floating on the blue waters of the Bosphorus, the wondering stranger gazes upon a fairy spectacle of domes, and minarets, and cypress groves, of graceful palaces and stately mosques, gilded wherries and gaily-attired crowds. A few minutes elapse: the grave custom-house officials in their handsome barge have received the sixpenny bribe which exempts his luggage from examination; he lands at the Tophanné Stairs, and enters the steep lane that leads up to Pera, and in an instant the illusion is dissipated:--

"I felt," says Mr Smith, who readily avails himself, and in
this instance very happily, of a theatrical comparison, "that
I had been taken behind the scenes of a great 'effect.' The
Constantinople of Vauxhall Gardens, a few years ago, did not
differ more, when viewed in front from the gallery and behind
from the dirty little alleys bordering the river. The miserable,
narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare did not present one redeeming
feature--even of picturesque dreariness. The roadway was paved
with all sorts of ragged stones, jammed down together without
any regard to level surface; and encumbered with dead rats,
melon-rinds, dogs, rags, brickbats, and rubbish, that had fallen
through the mules' baskets, as they toiled along it. The houses
were of wood--old and rotten; and bearing traces of having been
once painted red. There was, evidently, never any attempt made
to clean them, or their windows or doorways. Here and there,
where a building had been burnt, or had tumbled down, all the
ruins remained as they had fallen. Even the better class of
houses had an uncared-for, mouldy, plague-imbued, decaying
look about them; with grimy lattices instead of windows, on
the upper stories, and dilapidated shutters and doors on the
ground-floors."

It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed, to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts, a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person, would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople." With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the other--the usual weapons of defence--he prosecuted his wanderings most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar, a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a delightful _réveil-matin_.

"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a
market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted
against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they
could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first
astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images.
The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at
Tophanné--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole
eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople
appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other,
without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking,
growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and
continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard
at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and
woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same
tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like
tranquillity was restored."

The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion; some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades; but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern. Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.