Chapter II: Part 2

To one who watches attentively a thousand amusing and interesting little incidents detach themselves from the general confusion. Now it is a eunuch, who glares out of the corner of his eye at a young Christian dandy caught peering too curiously into the carriage of his mistress; a French _cocotte_, dressed in the latest fashion, who follows the gloved and bejewelled son of a pasha; a sergeant of cavalry in full-dress uniform, who, stopping short in the middle of the bridge, and, seizing his nose between two fingers, emits a trumpet blast loud enough to make one jump; or a quack, who, in return for some poor wretch’s piece of money, makes a cabalistic sign on his forehead supposed to restore his eyesight; here a large family-party, newly arrived, have gotten separated in the crowd: the mother rushes hither and thither, searching for her children, who, on their part, are weeping at the tops of their voices, while the men of the party try to mend matters by laying about them in all directions; a lady from Stambul passes by, and under pretence of adjusting her veil gets a good look at the train of a lady from Pera. Horses, camels, sedan chairs, carriages, ox-carts, casks on wheels, bleeding donkeys, skinny dogs, pass in a long file, dividing the crowd in two. Sometimes a big fat pasha _of the three horse-tails_ goes by in a magnificent carriage, followed on foot by a negro, his guard, and his pipe-bearer. The Turks all salute him, touching the forehead and the breast, while a throng of Mussulman beggars, horrible, meagre-looking wretches, with muffled faces and bare chests, hurl themselves at the carriage-windows, begging vociferously for alms. Eunuchs out of employment pass in groups of two and three or a half dozen at a time, with cigarettes in their mouths, easily distinguished by their corpulency, their long arms, and great black cloaks. Pretty little Turkish girls, dressed like boys in green trousers and red or yellow waistcoats, run and jump about with catlike agility, pushing their way through the crowd with soft little crimson-tinted hands; shoe-cleaners with their gilded boxes; wandering barbers, their stool and basin ready at hand; venders of water and Turkish sweetmeats can be seen in every direction, threading their way through the press and shouting out their wares and avocations in Greek and Turkish. At every step you meet a military uniform, officers in fiery and scarlet trousers, their breasts glittering with decorations; grooms of the Seraglio gotten up like generals in command of an army; policemen carrying whole arsenals at their belts; _zeibeks_, or free soldiers, wearing those enormous breeches with pockets behind which give them outlines like the Hottentot Venus; imperial guards with nodding white plumes on their helmets, and breasts covered with gold lace; city guards, who march about carrying handcuffs--Constantinople city guards! One might as well speak of people who had been charged with the duty of keeping down the Atlantic Ocean. One curious contrast is that which is found between the rich clothing on the one hand and the miserable rags on the other, between persons so laden down with the quantity and magnificence of their apparel as to look like walking bazârs and others who scarcely may be said to have any apparel at all. The nakedness alone is a noteworthy sight. Every tint of human skin can be found, from the milk-white Albanian to the jet-black slave from Central Africa or blue-black native of Darfur; breasts which look as though they would resound at a blow like a bronze vase or break in pieces like an earthenware pot; hard, oily, wooden surfaces, or shaggy like the hide of a wild boar; brawny arms tattooed with outlines of leaves and flowers or rude representations of ships under full sail, and hearts transfixed by arrows. All such particulars, however, as these cannot possibly be noted in the course of a single visit to the bridge. While you are trying to make out the designs tattooed on an arm, your guide is calling your attention to a Serb, a Montenegrin, a Wallach, an Ukrainian Cossack, a Cossack of the Don, an Egyptian, a native of Tunis, a prince of Imerezia. There is hardly time even to make a note of the different nationalities. It is as though Constantinople still maintained her former position as queen of three continents and capital of twenty tributary kingdoms. Yet even this would hardly account for the extraordinary features of that spectacle, and one amuses himself by fancying that some mighty deluge has swept over the neighboring continent, causing a sudden influx of immigration. An expert eye can still distinguish in that mighty human torrent the distinctive features and costumes of Caramania and Anatolia, of Cypress and of Candia, of Damascus and Jerusalem--Druses, Kurds, Maronites, Telemans, Pumacs, and Kroats, and all the innumerable variety of the innumerable confederations of anarchies extending from the Nile to the Danube and from the Euphrates to the Adriatic. Those in search of the beautiful and those with a craving for the horrible will find, equally, their wildest hopes surpassed. Raphael would have been in ecstasies, Rembrandt beside himself with delight. The purest examples of Grecian beauty and that of the Caucasian races appear side by side with snub noses and receding foreheads. Women pass with the look and bearing of queens, others who might pose as furies. There are painted faces and faces disfigured by disease and wounds, colossal feet and the tiny feet of the Circassian no longer than your hand; gigantic porters, great fat Turks, and negroes like dried-up skeletons, ghosts of human beings who fill you with horror and pity; every aspect of human life, extremes of asceticism and voluptuousness, utter weariness, radiant luxury, and wasted misery; and, still more remarkable than the variety of human beings, is that of the garments they wear. Any one with an eye for color would find himself in clover. No two persons are dressed alike. Some heads are enveloped in shawls, others crowned with rags, others decked out like savages--shirts and undervests striped or particolored like a harlequin’s dress; belts bristling with weapons, some of them reaching from the waist to the arm-pits; Mameluke trousers, knee-breeches, tunics, togas, long cloaks which sweep the ground, capes trimmed with ermine, waistcoats encrusted with gold, short sleeves and balloon-shaped ones, monastic garbs and theatre costumes; men dressed like women, women who seem to be men, and peasants with the air of princes; a ragged magnificence, an exuberance of color, a profusion of ornament, braid, fringe, frippery of all sorts; a childish and theatrical display of decoration, which makes one think of a ball given by the inmates of an insane asylum, who have decked themselves out with the contents of all the peddlers’ packs in the world.

Above the babel of sounds made by all this multitude one hears the piercing cries of the Greek newsboys selling newspapers in all languages under heaven, the stentorian tones of the porters, loud laughter of the Turkish women; the infantile voices of the eunuchs; the shrill falsetto of a blind beggar reciting verses from the Koran; the hollow-resounding noise of the bridge itself as it sways under this multitude of feet; the bells and whistles from a hundred steamboats, whose smoke, coming in great puffs, from time to time envelops the entire throng of passers-by. This vast concourse of people embarks in the boats which leave every moment for Skutari, the villages along the Bosphorus, and the suburbs on the Golden Horn; spreads out over the bazârs and mosques of Stambul, the suburbs of Fanar and Balat, to the most distant points on the Sea of Marmora; flows like an advancing tide in two great currents over the Frankish shore, to the right in the direction of the sultan’s palaces, to the left toward the ancient quarters of Pera, and, receding once more across the bridge, is fed by innumerable little streams flowing down the steep, narrow lanes and byways which cover the hillsides of both banks, connecting ten cities and a hundred villages, and binding together Asia and Europe in an intricate network of commerce, intrigue, and mystery, at the mere thought of which one’s mind becomes hopelessly confused.

One would naturally expect all this to make an amusing and enlivening spectacle, but it is quite otherwise: after the first sensations of excitement and wonder have died down the brilliant coloring begins to pale; it no longer wears the aspect of a gay Carnival procession, but humanity itself seems to be passing in review--humanity with all its miseries and follies, its infinite discord of clashing beliefs and irreconcilable customs, a pilgrimage of decayed races and humbled nations; a boundless tide of human misery; wrongs to be set right, stains to be washed out, chains to be broken; an accumulation of tremendous problems which blood alone, and that in torrents, is capable of solving--a sight at once overpowering and depressing. One’s interest, too, is rather blunted than aroused by the enormous number and variety of strange sights and objects. What sudden mysterious changes the mind is subject to! Here was I, not a quarter of an hour after reaching the bridge, leaning listlessly against the side, scribbling on the wooden beam with a pencil, and acknowledging, between my yawns, that Madame de Staël was pretty near the truth when she pronounced travelling to be the most melancholy of human pleasures.

STAMBUL.

In order to restore one’s equilibrium after the bewildering scenes of the bridge it is only necessary to follow one of the many narrow streets which wind up the hillsides of Stambul. Here there reigns a profound peace, and you may contemplate at your leisure those mysterious and evasive aspects of Oriental life of which only flying glimpses can be obtained on the other bank amid the noise and confusion of European manners and customs. Here everything is Eastern in its strictest sense. After walking for fifteen minutes the last sounds have died away, the crowds entirely disappeared; you are surrounded on every side by little wooden, brightly-painted houses, whose second stories extend out over the ground floor, and the third again over those; in front of the windows are balconies enclosed with glass and close wooden gratings, which look like little houses thrown out from the main dwelling, and lend to the city an indescribable air of secresy and melancholy. In some places the streets are so narrow that the overhanging parts of opposite houses nearly touch, and you walk for long distances in the shadow of these human bird-cages and literally beneath the feet of the Turkish women, who pass the greater part of the day in them, seeing nothing but a narrow strip of sky. All the doors are tightly shut, and the windows on the ground floor protected by gratings. Everything breathes of jealousy and suspicion; one seems to be traversing a city of convents. Sometimes the stillness is suddenly broken by a ripple of laughter close at hand, and, looking quickly up, you may discover at some small opening or loophole the flash of a bright eye or a shining lock of hair, which, however, instantly disappears; or, again, you surprise a conversation being carried on in quick, subdued tones across the street, which breaks off suddenly at the sound of your footsteps, and you continue your way wondering what thread of mystery or intrigue you may have broken in your passage. Seeing no one yourself, you have the consciousness of a thousand eyes upon you; apparently quite alone, you yet feel yourself to be surrounded by restless, palpitating life. Wishing, possibly, to pass unobserved, you tread lightly, walk rapidly, but all the same you are watched on all sides. So profound is the silence that the mere opening and shutting of a door or window startles you as though it were some tremendous noise. One might suppose that the aspect of these streets would become monotonous and tiresome, but it is not so. A mass of foliage out of which issues the white point of a minaret, a Turk dressed in red coming toward you, a black servant standing immovable before a doorway, a strip of Persian carpet hanging from a window, suffice to form a picture so full of life and harmony that one could stand gazing at it by the hour. Of the few persons who do pass by, none appear to notice you; only occasionally you hear a voice at your shoulder call out “_Giaour!_” (infidel), and turn just in time to see a boy’s head disappearing behind a window-shutter. Again, hearing a door being opened from within, you pause expectantly, fully prepared to see the favorite beauty of some harem come forth in full costume, instead of which an European lady in bonnet and train appears and, with a murmured _Adieu_ or _Au revoir_, walks rapidly away, leaving you open-mouthed with astonishment.

In another street, entirely Turkish and silent, you are suddenly startled by the sound of a horn and the stamping of horses’ feet; turning to see what it means, you find it difficult to believe your eyes when a large car rolls gayly into sight over some tracks which up to that moment you had not noticed, filled with Turks and Europeans, with its officials in uniform and its printed tariff of fares, for all the world like a _tramway_ in Vienna or Paris. The effect of such an apparition, seen in one of those streets, is not to be described: it is like a burlesque or some huge joke, and you laugh aloud as you watch it disappear, as though you had never seen anything of the kind before. With the omnibus the life and movement of Europe seem to vanish, and you find yourself back in Asia, like a change of scene at the theatre. Issuing from almost any of these silent, deserted streets, you come out upon small open spaces shaded by one huge plane tree: on one hand there is a fountain out of which camels are drinking; on the other, a café in front of which a number of Turks recline on mats, smoking and gazing into vacancy; beside the door stands a large fig tree, up whose trunk a vine clambers, extending out over the branches and falling in waving garlands to the ground, and between whose leaves enchanting glimpses are caught of the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora dotted all over with white sails. The flood of light and the death-like stillness give these places a certain character, half solemn, half melancholy, which makes an indelible impression upon the mind: one is carried on and on, drawn, as it were, out of himself by a subtle sense of mystery which steeps the senses little by little, until he loses all idea of time and space and seems to float on a vague cloud of dreams.

From time to time you come upon vast barren tracts devastated by some recent fire; hillsides with a few houses scattered here and there, and grassy spaces between them, intersected with goat-paths; tops of hills from which can be seen hundreds of houses and gardens, streets and lanes, but not a living creature, a wreath of smoke, an open door, or the faintest indication of human life, until one almost begins to think himself alone in the midst of this immense city, and, thinking so, to become a trifle uncomfortable. But just follow one of those steep little streets down to the bottom, and in an instant the whole scene changes. You are now on one of the great thoroughfares of Stambul, flanked by splendid buildings, whose beauty almost defies your powers of admiration. On every side rise mosques, kiosks, minarets, arcades, fountains of marble and lapis lazuli, mausoleums of sultans glowing with arabesques and inscriptions in gold, their walls covered with mosaics, their roofs of inlaid cedar-wood, and everywhere that exuberance of vegetation which, pushing its way through gilded railings and scaling garden-walls, fills the air with the perfume of its blossoms. Here are met the equipages of pashas, aides-de-camp in full uniform, officials, employés, eunuchs belonging to great houses, and files of servants and parasites coming and going in a continual succession between the residences of the ministers: one recognizes the fact that he is in the metropolis of a great empire, and admires it in all its magnificence of display. The brilliant atmosphere and graceful architecture, the murmuring of the fountains, the bright sunshine and delicious coolness of the shade, all affect the senses like subdued music, and a hundred smiling images crowd through the mind. Following these thoroughfares, you emerge upon the large open squares, from which arise the mosques of the various sultans, before whose stately magnificence you pause in wondering awe. Each one of these mighty buildings forms the centre, as it were, of a small separate city, with its colleges, hospitals, stores, libraries, schools, and baths, whose existence is at first hardly suspected, so overshadowed are they by the huge dome which they encircle. The architecture, so simple in appearance when seen from a distance, now presents a mass of detail attracting the eye in all directions at once. There are little cupolas overlaid with lead, oddly-shaped roofs rising one above another, aërial galleries, enormous porticoes, windows broken by little columns, festooned archways, spiral minarets, lines of terraces with open-work carving, and capitals supported on stylobates, doorways and fountains covered with ornament, walls picked out in gold and every color of the rainbow--a mass of carving and fretwork, light, graceful, exquisite, across which the shadows chase each other from great oak and cypress trees and willows, while clouds of birds, issuing from the overspreading branches, fly in slow circles around the interiors of the domes, filling every corner of the immense edifice with harmony. And now, for the first time, you begin to be conscious of a feeling stronger and more underlying than a mere sense of the beautiful. These huge structures seem like the marble witnesses of an order of thought and belief altogether different from that in which you have been born and reared--the imposing framework of a hostile race and faith, testifying in a mute but expressive language of lofty heights and glorious lines to the might of a God who is not your God, and a people before whom your fathers have trembled, filling you with admiration not unmixed with awe, which, for a time at least, checks your curiosity and holds you at a distance.

Within the shady courtyards Turks may be seen at the fountains busied about their ablutions, peasants crouched at the foot of the great pillars, veiled women who pass with deliberate steps beneath the lofty arcades: over all there broods a profound quiet, a tinge of sadness and voluptuousness, whose source you try in vain to discover, exercising your mind as upon some enigma. Galata, Pera--how far away they seem! It is as though you were in another world alone, in a different age. This is the Stambul of Suleiman the Magnificent or Bayezid II., and you feel dazed and confused when, on turning away from the square and losing sight of the stupendous monument of the power of the Osmans, you find yourself once more confronted by the Constantinople of to-day, of wood, poverty, and decay, filled with dirt, wretchedness, and misery.

As you go on and on the houses gradually lose their bright coloring, the vine-trellises disappear, moss creeps over the basins of the fountains, the mosques become small and mean, with wooden minarets and cracked, discolored walls, around which brambles and nettles have sprung up; ruined mausoleums, broken stairways, tortuous lanes choked with rubbish and reeking with damp; deserted quarters full of gloom, whose silence is unbroken save for the flapping of birds’ wings or the guttural cry of a muezzin calling out the word of God from some distant unseen minaret. On the face of no city in the world is written in such plain characters the nature of her people’s beliefs. Everything grand or beautiful comes from God, or the sultan--His representative upon earth. All the rest, being merely temporary, is not worthy of consideration and bears the stamp of an utter indifference to mundane things. This pastoral tribe has become a nation, but the instinctive love of nature, of a life of contemplation and idleness, is as strong among its people as ever, and has lent to their metropolis the look of an encampment. Stambul is not a city; she neither works nor thinks, nor does she create; civilization knocks at her doors, lays siege to her streets, and she dozes and dreams in the shadow of her mighty mosques and pays no heed. It is more like a city let loose, scattered, disfigured, representing rather the halt of a wandering race than the stronghold of an established state; a number of cities sketched in outline, an immense spectacular show, rather than a great metropolis, of which no just idea can be obtained without traversing every part.

Taking, then, for our starting-point the first hill, we are at that point of the triangle bathed by the Sea of Marmora. This is, so to speak, the crown of Stambul, an imposing district crowded with associations and filled with magnificent buildings. Here is the ancient Seraglio, occupying the site where arose first, Byzantium, with her acropolis and temple of Jupiter, and then the palace of the empress Placidia and the baths of Arcadius; here stand the mosques of St. Sophia and the Sultan Ahmed; and here is the At-Meidan, covering the space formerly occupied by the Hippodrome, where once, in the midst of an Olympus of marble and bronze and urged on by the frantic cries of a multitude clad in silk and purple, gilded chariots were driven furiously seven times around the course beneath the impassive gaze of the pearl-bedecked emperors. Descending the first hill into a shallow valley, we come upon the western walls of the Seraglio, marking the confines of ancient Byzantium,[A] and directly before us rises the Sublime Porte, containing the offices of the prime minister, foreign minister, and minister of the interior--silent, gloomy regions where seem gathered all the sombreness and melancholy of the fate of the empire.

[A] Other authorities place the walls of ancient Byzantium
considerably farther west than this point.--TRANS.

From here we ascend the second hill, where rise the Nûri Osmaniyeh mosque (Light of Osman) and the Burnt Column of Constantine, formerly surmounted by a bronze statue of Apollo, whose head was a likeness of the great emperor himself. This column marked the centre of the forum, and was surrounded by marble porticoes, triumphal arches, and statues. On the farther side of this hill opens the Valley of Bazârs, extending from the Bayezid mosque all the way to that of the Validêh Sultan, and including a huge labyrinth of covered streets filled with noise and confusion and crowded with people, from which you issue with your ears deafened and your head in a whirl.

Upon the summit of the third hill, overlooking both the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, stands the gigantic rival of St. Sophia, the mosque of Suleiman--_joy and glory of Stambul_, as it is called by the Turkish poets--and the marvellous tower of the minister of war, erected on the ruins of the ancient palace of the Constantines, at one time occupied by Muhammad the Conqueror, and converted later on into a seraglio for the old sultanas.

Between the third and fourth hills the enormous aqueduct of the emperor Valens stretches like an aërial bridge composed of two tiers of delicate arches, around which vines trail and clamber, falling in graceful festoons as far as the roofs of the houses crowded together in the valley beneath.

Passing under the aqueduct, we now ascend the fourth hill. Here, on the ruins of the celebrated church of the Holy Apostles, founded by the empress Helena and rebuilt by Theodosius, rises the mosque of Muhammad II., surrounded by schools, hospitals, and khâns. Alongside the mosque are the slave-bazâr, the baths of Muhammad, and the granite column of Marcian surmounted by a marble capital, on which is a cippus still ornamented with the imperial eagles. Near by is the Et-Meidan, where the famous massacre of the Janissaries took place.

Traversing another valley, likewise closely built up, we mount the fifth hill, surmounted by the mosque of Selim, near the site of the ancient cistern of St. Peter, now converted into a garden. Beneath us, along the shores of the Golden Horn, extends Fanar, the Greek quarter and seat of the Patriarch, where ancient Byzantium has taken refuge, the scene of the revolting carnage of 1821.

Descending into a fifth valley and ascending a sixth hill, we find ourselves upon the territory once occupied by the eight cohorts of Constantine’s forty thousand Goths, beyond the circuit of the earlier walls, which only embraced the fourth hill: this is the precise spot assigned to the seventh cohort, hence the name Hebdomon given to that quarter.

On the sixth hill may be seen still standing the walls of the palace[B] of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, where the emperors were formerly crowned, now called by the Turks Tekfûr Serai--Palace of the Princes. At the foot of the hill lies Balat, the Ghetto of Constantinople, a filthy quarter extending along the banks of the Horn as far as the city-walls: and beyond Balat is the ancient suburb of Blachernæ, where once arose the mighty palace with its gilded roofs, a favorite resort of the emperors, and famous for the sacredness of the relics contained in the church erected by the empress Pulcheria. Now the whole quarter is filled with decay and ruin and melancholy. At the Blachernæ begin the turreted walls which extend from the Golden Horn across to the Sea of Marmora, enclosing the seventh hill, on which stood the Forum of Arcadius, and where may still be seen the pedestal of the column of Arcadius--the largest and most eastern of the hills of Stambul, between which and the other six flows the little river Lycus, which, entering the city near the Charsiou[C] Gate, empties itself into the Sea of Marmora near the ancient gate of Theodosius.

[B] Prof. A. Van Millingen places the site of the Hebdomon Palace
on the shore of the Sea of Marmora, outside the walls, near
the village of Makri Keui; other authorities state that there
are unanswerable arguments in favor of this view.--TRANS.

[C] The Lycus enters the city near the Gate of Pusæus and empties
into the Sea of Marmora at Vlanga-Bostan.--TRANS.

From the walls of the Blachernæ we overlook the suburb of Ortajilar, inclining gently to the water’s edge and crowned with its many gardens; beyond it lies that of Eyûb, the consecrated soil of the Mussulman, with its charming mosques and vast cemetery shaded by a forest of cypresses and white with mausoleums and tombstones; back of Eyûb is the elevated plain which was formerly used as a military camp, and where the legions elevated the newly-made emperors upon their shields;[D] and beyond this, again, other villages are seen, their bright colors set in a framework of green woods and bathed by the farthermost waters of the Golden Horn.

[D] This ceremony more probably took place near Makri Keui on the
Sea of Marmora.--TRANS.

Such is Stambul, truly a divine vision. But when it is remembered that this huge Asiatic village surmounts the ruins of that second Rome, of that great museum of treasures stripped from all Italy, from Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, one’s heart sinks within him: the mere thought of such an accumulation of works of art makes one dizzy. And where are they now, those great arcades which traversed the city from wall to sea, those gilded domes and colossal equestrian statues which surmounted the mighty columns before baths and amphitheatres, those brazen sphinxes seated upon pedestals of porphyry, those temples and palaces which once reared their mighty façades of granite in the midst of an aërial throng of marble deities and silver emperors? All have disappeared or been changed past recognition. The equestrian statues of bronze have been recast into guns, the copper coverings of the obelisks converted into money, the sarcophagi of the emperors turned into fountains. The church of St. Irene is an armory: the cistern of Constantine[E] is a workshop; the pedestal of the column of Arcadius is occupied by a blacksmith; the Hippodrome is a horse-market; the foundations of the royal palaces are heaps of stones overgrown with ivy; the pavements of the amphitheatre, grass-grown cemeteries. A few inscriptions, half obliterated by fire or defaced by the simetars of the invaders, are all that remain to tell us that on these hills once stood the marvellous metropolis of the Empire of the East. And over all this mass of ruin and decay Stambul sits brooding, like some odalisque above a sepulchre, awaiting her hour.

[E] The Cistern Basilica, ascribed to Constantine the Great, is
still used for its original purpose. The Cistern Philoxenes
is occupied by silk-spinners.--TRANS.

AT THE HOTEL.

And now, if my readers will kindly accompany me back to the hotel, we will rest for a while. The greater part of what I have described thus far having been seen by my friend and myself on the very day of our arrival, one may easily imagine what a condition our brains were in as we wended our way toward the hotel at about nightfall. As we passed through the streets neither of us opened our lips, but on reaching our room we dropped on the sofa, and, facing about, asked each other simultaneously,

“Well, what do you think of it? How does it strike you?”

“Fancy my having come here to paint!”

“And I to write!”

And we laughed in each other’s faces with amused compassion.

Indeed, that evening and for many days after His Majesty Abdul-Aziz might have offered me a province in Asia Minor as a reward for a half-dozen lines of description of the capital of his state, and I could not have produced them, so true is it that you must get a little distance away from great objects before you can describe them, and if you wish to remember them correctly, you must first forget them somewhat.

And then how could one possibly do any writing in a room from whose windows could be seen the Bosphorus, Skutari, and the summit of the Olympus? The hotel was a sight in itself. At all hours of the day people of every country in the world were coming and going through the halls and corridors, up and down the stairs. Every evening twenty different nationalities were represented at table. I could not get the idea out of my head during dinner that I must be an envoy sent out by the Italian government, and that it devolved upon me to introduce some grave question of international importance with the dessert. There were many charming countenances of ladies; rough, uncombed artist heads; seamy adventurers lying in wait for your money; profiles like those of the Byzantine Virgin, lacking nothing but the golden nimbus; queer faces and sinister ones; and every day this motley company changed. At dessert, when every one was talking, it sounded like the Tower of Babel. On the day of our arrival we struck up an acquaintance with a party of Russians infatuated with Constantinople, and after that every evening, when we met at table, we would compare notes. Each one had visited some point of interest during the day and had some interesting experience to relate. This one had been to the top of the Serasker Tower, that one to the Eyûb cemetery; another had spent the day in Skutari; another was just back from a trip on the Bosphorus. The conversation glowed with vivid descriptions, life, color, and when one’s command of language failed him the delicious perfumed wines of the Archipelago were at hand to loose his tongue and stimulate him to fresh efforts. There were, it is true, some fellow-countrymen of mine there who made me furiously angry--moneyed idiots who from soup to dessert never left off abusing Constantinople, and Providence for bringing them there. There were no sidewalks, the theatres were badly lighted, there was no way of passing the evening--apparently they had come to Constantinople to pass their evenings. One of them having made the trip on the Danube, I asked him how he had liked the famous river, upon which he assured me that there was no place on earth where they understood so well how sturgeon should be cooked as on the Austrian Royal and Imperial line of steamboats! Another was a charming example of the lady-killer style of traveller, whose main object in going about the world is to make conquests, carefully recorded in a notebook kept for the purpose. He was a tall, lanky blond, liberally endowed with the greatest of the three gifts of the Holy Spirit. Whenever the conversation turned upon Turkish women, he would fix his eyes upon his plate with a meaning smile and take no part in it, except for an occasional word or two, when he would break off suddenly, taking a sip of wine as though he feared he had said too much. He always hurried into dinner a little behind time, with an important air suggestive of his having been unavoidably detained by the Sultan, and between the courses would busy himself in changing mysterious-looking little notes from one pocket to another, evidently intended to look like billetsdoux from frail fair ones, but which, oddly enough, bore the unmistakable stamp of hotel-bills.

But one certainly does run across all sorts of queer subjects in the hotels of those cosmopolitan cities: no one would believe it without seeing for himself. For instance, there was a young Hungarian there, about thirty years old, a tall, nervous fellow with a pair of diabolical eyes and a quick, feverish way of talking. After acting for some time as private secretary to a rich Parisian, he had enlisted among the French Zouaves in Algiers, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Arabs, and, escaping later from Morocco, had made his way back to Europe, where he hastened to The Hague, hoping to receive an appointment as officer in the war with the _Achins_; failing in this, he determined to enlist in the Turkish army, but while passing through Vienna on his way to Constantinople for that purpose he had gotten mixed up in some affair about a woman. In the duel which ensued he had received a ball in his neck, the scar from which could still be seen. Unsuccessful at Constantinople as well, “What,” said he, “is there left for me to do?--je suis enfant de l’aventure. Fight I must. Well, I have found the means of getting to India;” and he brought out a steamer ticket. “I shall enlist as an English soldier: there is always some fighting going on in the interior, and that is all I care for. Killed? Well, what if I am? My lungs are all gone, anyhow.”

Another queer creature was a Frenchman whose life seemed to have been one prolonged struggle with the postal authorities all over the world. He had lawsuits pending with the post-office departments of Austria, France, and England; he wrote protesting articles to the _Neue Freie Presse_, and fired off telegraphic messages of defiance to every post-office on the Continent; not a day went by without his having some noisy altercation at a window where mail was received or distributed; he never, by any chance, received a letter on time or wrote one that reached its destination. At table he would give us an account of all his misfortunes and consequent disputes, invariably winding up with the statement that the postal system had been the means of shortening his life.

Then there was a Greek lady with a strange, wild look and very curiously dressed: she was always alone, and every day would start suddenly up in the middle of dinner and leave the table after making a cabalistic sign over her plate whose significance no one was ever able to make out.

I have never forgotten, either, a good-looking young Wallachian couple, he about twenty-five, she just grown, who only appeared one evening: it was an undoubted case of elopement, for if you looked fixedly at them they both turned red and appeared uneasy, and every time the door opened they jumped as though they were on springs.

Let me see: what others can I remember? Hundreds, I suppose, were I to give my mind to it. It was like a magic-lantern show.

On the days when the steamers were due my friend and I used to find the greatest amusement in watching the new arrivals as they came into the hotel, exhausted, confused, some of them still under the influence of the approach to Constantinople--countenances which seemed to say, “What world is this? What on earth have we dropped into?” One day a boy passed us, that instant landed; he was entirely beside himself with joy at having actually reached Constantinople, the culmination of his dreams, and was squeezing his father’s hand between both his own in an ecstasy of delight, while the father, equally moved by the sight of his son’s happiness, was saying, “Je suis heureux, de te voir heureux, mon cher enfant.”

We used to pass the hot part of the day gazing out of our windows at the Maiden’s Tower, which rises up, white as snow, from a solitary rock in the Bosphorus just opposite Skutari, and while we told each other stories about the legend of the young prince of Persia who sucked the poison from the arm of the beautiful sultana bitten by a snake, a little fellow of five years old would chatter across at us from the window of an opposite house, where he appeared every day at the same hour.

Everything about that hotel was queer: among other things, we would run every evening against one or two doubtful-looking characters hovering around in front of the entrance. They evidently gained a livelihood by providing artists’ models, and, taking every one for a painter, would assail all who came and went with the same low-voiced inquiries: “A Turk? A Greek? An Armenian? A Jewess? A Negress?”

CONSTANTINOPLE.

But suppose, now, we turn our attention again to Constantinople itself, and wander about as unrestrainedly as birds of the air? It is a place where one may give free rein to his caprices. You can light your cigar in Europe and knock the ashes off in Asia, and, getting up in the morning, ask yourself what part of the world it would be pleasant to visit during the day, with two continents and two seas to choose from. Saddled horses stand waiting for you in every square; boats with their sails spread are ready to take you anywhere you may choose to go; steamboats lie at every pier awaiting nothing but the signal to depart; kâiks manned with rowers and skiffs fitted with sails crowd the landing-places; while an army of guides, speaking every language of Europe, is at your disposal for as long a time as you may want any of them. Do you care to hear an Italian comedy? see the Dancing Dervishes? listen to the buffooneries of Kara-gyuz, the Turkish Punchinello? be treated to the licentious songs of the Parisian café chantant? watch the gymnastic performances of a band of gypsies? listen to an Arabian story-teller? attend a Greek theatre? hear an _imam_ preach? see the Sultan pass on his way to the mosque? You have but to say what you prefer and it is ready at hand. Every nationality is at your service--Armenians to shave you, Hebrews to clean your shoes, Turks to row your boat, negroes to dry you after the bath, Greeks to bring your coffee, and one and all to cheat you. Perhaps you are heated from your walk? here are ices made from the snows of Olympus. Thirsty? you can drink the waters of the Nile as the Sultan does. Should your stomach be a little out of order, here is water from the Euphrates to set it straight, or, if you are nervous, water from the Danube. You can dine like the Arab of the desert or a gourmand of the _Maison dorée_. If you want to doze and drowse, there are the cemeteries; to be stirred up and excited, the bridge of the Validêh Sultan; to dream dreams and see visions, the Bosphorus; to pass Sunday, the Archipelago of the Princes; to see Asia Minor, Mt. Bûlgurlû, the Golden Horn, the Galata Tower, the world, the Serasker Tower. It is, above all, a city of contrasts. Things which we never think of connecting in our minds are seen there at a single glance side by side.

Skutari is the starting-point for the caravans for Mecca, and also for the express trains for Brusa, the ancient metropolis; the Sofia railroad passes close by the mysterious walls of the old Seraglio; Catholic priests bear the Holy Sacrament through the streets escorted by Turkish soldiers; the common people have their festivals in the cemeteries; life and death, sorrow and rejoicing, follow so close upon one another’s heels as to seem all a part of the same function. There are seen the movement and energy of London side by side with the lethargic inertia of the East. The greater part of existence is led in public before your eyes, but over the private side of life there hangs a close, impenetrable veil of mystery; under that absolute monarchy there exists a liberty without bounds.

It is impossible, for several days at least, to get a clear impression of anything: it seems every moment that if the disorder is not quelled at once a revolution must break out. Every evening you feel, on reaching your lodgings, as though you had just returned from a long journey, and in the morning ask yourself incredulously if Stambul can really be here, close at hand. There seems to be no place where you can go to get your brain a little clear; one impression effaces another; you are torn by conflicting desires; time flies. You think you would like to spend the rest of your life here, and the next moment wish you could leave to-morrow. And when it comes to attempting a description of this chaos--well, there are moments when you are strongly tempted to bundle together all the books and papers on your table and pitch the whole thing out of the window.

ALONG THE GOLDEN HORN.

It was not until the fourth day after our arrival that my friend and I attempted to introduce anything like method into our sightseeing. We were on the bridge quite early in the morning, still uncertain as to how we would spend the day, when Yunk proposed that we should make our first regular expedition with tranquil minds and a well-defined route for purposes of study and observation. “Let us,” said he, “explore thoroughly the northern bank of the Golden Horn, if we have to walk till nightfall to do it; we can breakfast in some Turkish restaurant, take our noonday nap under a sycamore tree, and come home by water in a käik.” The suggestion being accepted, we provided ourselves with a stock of cigars and small change, and, after glancing over the map of the city, set forth in the direction of Galata.

If the reader really cares to know anything about Constantinople, I am afraid he will have to make up his mind to go too, with the clear understanding, however, that whenever he finds himself getting bored he is at perfect liberty to leave us.

GALATA.

On reaching Galata the excursion begins. Galata is situated on the hill which forms the promontory between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, the former site of ancient Byzantium’s great cemetery. It is now the “city” of Constantinople. Its streets, almost all of them narrow and tortuous, are lined with restaurants, confectioners’, barbers’, and butchers’ shops, Greek and Armenian cafés, business-houses, merchants’ offices, workshops, counting-houses--dirty, ill-lighted, damp, and narrow, like the streets in the lower parts of London. A hurrying, pushing throng of foot-passengers comes and goes all day long, now and then crowding to right and left to make room in the middle of the street for the passage of porters, carriages, donkeys, or omnibuses. Almost all the business conducted in Constantinople flows through this quarter. Here are the Bourse, the custom-house, the offices of the Austrian Lloyd and the French express company, churches and convents, hospitals and warehouses. An underground railroad connects Galata and Pera. Were it not for the ever-present turban or fez, one would hardly know he was in the East at all. On every side is heard French, Italian, and Genoese. The Genoese are, in fact, almost on their native soil here, and are still somewhat inclined to assume the airs of proprietors, as in the days when they opened and closed the harbor at their will and replied to the emperor’s threats with volleys from their cannon. Of this ancient glory, however, nothing now remains except a few old houses supported on great pilasters and heavy arches, and the ancient edifice which was once the residence of the Podesta.

Old Galata has almost entirely disappeared. Thousands of squalid houses have been razed to the ground to make room for two wide streets, one of which mounts to the summit of the hill toward Pera, while the other runs parallel with the sea-wall from one end of Galata to the other. My friend and I took the latter, seeking refuge from time to time in some shop or other when a huge omnibus rolled by, preceded by Turks stripped to the waist, who cleared the street by means of long sticks, with which they laid about them. At every step some fresh cry assailed the ear, Turkish porters yelling, “_Sacun ha!_” (Make room!); Armenian water-carriers calling out, “_Varme su!_” and the Greek, “_Crio nero!_” Turkish donkey-drivers crying, “_Burada!_” venders of sweetmeats, “_Scerbet!_” newsboys, “_Neologos!_” Frankish cab-drivers, “_Guarda! guarda!_”

After walking for ten minutes we were completely stunned. Coming to a certain place, we noticed with surprise that the paving of the street suddenly ceased: it had evidently been removed quite recently. We stopped to examine the roadway and discover, if possible, some reason for this eccentricity, when an Italian shopkeeper, seeing what we were about, came to the rescue and satisfied our curiosity. This street, it seemed, led to the Sultan’s palace, and a few months previously, while the imperial cortège was passing along it, the horse of His Majesty Abdul-Aziz stumbled and fell. The good Sultan, much annoyed by this circumstance, commanded that the pavement should be removed all the way from the spot where the accident occurred, to the palace; which of course had been done. Fixing upon this memorable spot as the eastern boundary of our walk, we now turned our backs upon the Bosphorus and proceeded, by a series of dark, crooked little streets, in the direction of the

TOWER OF GALATA.

The city of Galata is shaped like an open fan, of which the tower, placed on the crest of the hill, represents the pivot. This tower is round, very lofty, dark in color, and terminates in a conical point formed by a copper roof, directly beneath which runs a line of large glazed windows, forming a sort of gallery enclosed with glass, where a lookout is kept night and day ready to give warning of the first appearance of fire in any part of the immense city. The Galata of the Genoese extended as far as this tower, which stands on the exact line of the walls which once divided it from Pera--walls of which at present no trace remains;[F] nor is the present tower the same as that ancient Tower of Christ, erected in memory of the Genoese who fell in battle, having been rebuilt by Mahmûd II., and prior to that restored by Selim III.,[G] but it is none the less a monument to the glory of Genoa, and one upon which no Italian can gaze without feeling some pride at the thought of that handful of soldiers, merchants, and sailors--haughty, audacious, proud, stubborn--who for centuries floated the flag of the mother republic from its summit and treated with the emperors of the East as equals.

[F] A few traces of these walls may still be seen near the Galata
Tower.--TRANS.

[G] The Galata Tower, called in the Middle Ages the Tower of
Christ or of the Cross, was built in 1348, probably on
the foundations of an earlier Byzantine tower ascribed to
Anastasius Dicorus, and in the present century was repaired
by Mahmûd II.--TRANS.

Immediately beyond the tower we came upon a Mussulman cemetery.

THE GALATA CEMETERY.

This is called the Galata Cemetery. It is a great forest of cypress trees, extending from the summit of the hill of Pera all the way down the steep declivity, nearly to the edge of the Golden Horn, and casting its thick shadows over myriads of little stone and marble pillars--inclining at every angle and scattered irregularly over the hillside. Some of these are surmounted by round turbans on which may be seen traces of coloring and inscriptions; others are pointed at the top, many lie prone upon their sides, while from others the turbans have been cut clean off, making one fancy that they belong to Janissaries, whom, even after death, Sultan Mahmûd took occasion to degrade and insult. The greater part of the graves are merely indicated by square mounds of earth, having a stone at either end, upon which, according to Mussulman belief, the two angels Nekir and Munkir take their seats to judge the soul of the departed. Here and there may be seen small enclosures surrounded by a low wall or railing, in the middle of which stands a column surmounted by a huge turban, and all around it other smaller columns: this is the grave of some pasha or person of distinction buried in the midst of his wives and children. Footpaths wind in and out among the graves and trees, crossing and recrossing one another in all directions from one end of the cemetery to the other. A Turk seated in the shade smokes tranquilly; boys run about and chase each other among the tombs; here and there cows are grazing, and a multitude of turtle-doves bill and coo among the branches of the cypress trees; groups of veiled women pass from time to time; and through the leaves and branches glimpses are caught of the blue waters of the Golden Horn streaked with long white reflections from the minarets of Stambul.

PERA.

Coming out of the cemetery, we passed once more close to the base of the Galata Tower and took the principal street of Pera. Pera lies more than three hundred feet above the level of the sea, is bright and cheerful, and overlooks both the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. It is the “West End” of the European colony, the quarter where are to be found the comforts and elegancies of life. The street which we now followed is lined on both sides with English and French hotels, cafés of the better sort, brilliantly lighted shops, theatres, foreign consulates, clubs, and the residences of the various ambassadors, among which towers the great stone palace of the Russian embassy, commanding Galata, Pera, and the village of Fundukli on the shore of the Bosphorus, for all the world like a fortress.

The crowds which swarm and throng these streets are altogether unlike those of Galata. Hardly any but stiff hats are to be seen, unless we except the masses of flowers and feathers which adorn the heads of the ladies: here are Greek, Italian, and French dandies, merchant princes, officials of the various legations, foreign navy officers, ambassadors’ equipages, and doubtful-looking physiognomies of every nationality. Turkish men stand admiring the wax heads in the hairdressers’ windows, and the women pause open-mouthed before the showcases of the milliners’ shops. The Europeans talk and laugh more loudly here than elsewhere, cracking jokes in the middle of the street, while the Turks, feeling themselves, as it were, foreigners, carry their heads less high than in the streets of Stambul.

As we walked along my friend suddenly called my attention to the view, behind us, of Stambul. Sure enough, there lay the Seraglio hill, St. Sophia, and the minarets of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed, all faintly veiled in blue mist--an altogether different world from the one in which we stood. “And now,” said he, “look there!” Following the direction of his finger, I read the titles of some of the books displayed in the window of an adjacent stationer’s shop--_La Dame aux Camelias_, _Madame Bovary_, _Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme_--and experienced so curious a sensation at the rapid and violent contrast thus presented that for some moments I was obliged to stand quite still in order to adjust my ideas. At another time I stopped my companion to make him look in a wonderful café we were passing. It was a long, wide, dim corridor, ending in a large open window, through which we beheld, at what seemed to be an immense distance, Skutari flooded with sunlight.