Chapter III: Part 3

When we had proceeded for some distance along the Grande Rue de Pera and nearly reached the end, we were startled by hearing a voice, quite close at hand, exclaiming in tones of thunder, “Adèle, I love thee! I love thee better than life itself! I love thee even as much as it is given to men to love upon earth!” We gazed at one another in astonishment. Where on earth did the voice come from? Looking about us, we discovered on one side of the street a wooden fence through the cracks of which a large garden could be seen filled with benches, and at the farther end a stage on which a troupe of actors were rehearsing the performance for the evening. A Turkish lady not far from us stood peeping in as well, and laughed with great enjoyment at the scene, while an old Turk, passing by, shook his head disapprovingly. Suddenly with a loud shriek the lady fled down the street; other women in the neighborhood echoed the shriek and turned their backs rapidly. What could have happened? Turning around, we beheld a Turk about fifty years old, well known throughout all Constantinople, who elected to go about the streets clad with the same severe simplicity which the famous monk Turi was so anxious to impose upon all good Mussulmen during the reign of Muhammad IV.; that is, stark naked from head to foot. The wretched creature advanced, leaping on the stones, shouting and breaking forth into loud bursts of laughter, followed by a crowd of ragamuffins making a noise like that of the infernal regions. “It is to be devoutly hoped that he will be promptly arrested,” said I to the doorkeeper of the theatre. “Not the smallest likelihood of anything of the sort,” replied he; “he has been going about like that for months.” In the mean while I could see people all the way down the street coming to the doors of the shops, women getting out of the way, young girls covering their faces, doors being shut, heads disappearing from the windows. And this thing goes on every day, and no one so much as gives it a thought!

* * * * *

On issuing from the Grande Rue de Pera we find ourselves opposite another large Mussulman cemetery shaded by groves of cypress trees and enclosed between high walls. Had we not been informed later on of the reason for those walls, we should certainly never have guessed it. They had evidently been quite recently erected, to prevent, it would seem, the woods consecrated to the repose of the dead from being converted into a trysting-spot where the soldiers from the neighboring artillery barracks were wont to meet their sweethearts. A little farther on we came upon the barracks, a huge, solid, rectangular structure, built by Shalil Pasha in the Moorish style of the Turkish Renaissance, its great portal flanked by light columns and surmounted by the crescent and golden star of Muhammad, and having balconies and small windows ornamented with carving and arabesques. In front of the barracks runs the Rue Dgiedessy, a continuation of the Grande Rue de Pera, on the other side of which stretches an extensive parade-ground; beyond that, again, are other suburbs. During the week this neighborhood is buried in the most profound silence and solitude, but on Sunday afternoons it is crowded with people and equipages, all the gay world of Pera pouring out to scatter itself among the beer-gardens, cafés, and pleasure-resorts which lie beyond the barracks. It was in one of these cafés that we broke our fast--the café _Belle Vue_, a resort of the flower of Pera society, and well deserving its name, since from its immense gardens, extending like a terrace over the summit of the hill, you have, spread out before you, the large Mussulman village of Fundukli, the Bosphorus covered with ships, the coast of Asia dotted over with gardens and villages, Skutari with her glistening white mosques--a luxuriance of color, green foliage, blue sea, and sky all bathed in light, which form a scene of intoxicating beauty. We arose at last unwillingly, and both of us felt like niggards as we threw our eight wretched sous on the counter, the bare price of a couple of cups of coffee after having been treated to that celestial vision.

THE GREAT FIELD OF THE DEAD.

Coming out of the Belle Vue, we found ourselves in the midst of the Grand Champs des Morts, where the dead of every faith except the Jewish are buried in distinct cemeteries. It is a vast, thick wood of cypress, sycamore, and acacia trees, in whose shadow are thousands of white tombstones, having the appearance, at a little distance, of the ruins of some great building. In between the trunks of the trees distant views are caught of the Bosphorus and the Asiatic coast. Broad paths wind in and out among the graves, along which groups of Greeks and Armenians may be seen passing to and fro. On some of the tombs Turks are seated cross-legged, gazing fixedly at the Bosphorus. One experiences the same delicious sense of refreshment and peace and rest, as on entering a vast, dim cathedral on some hot summer’s day.

We paused in the Armenian cemetery. The stones here are all large, flat, and covered with inscriptions cut in the regular and elegant characters of the Armenian language, and on almost every one there is some figure to indicate the trade or occupation of the deceased. There are hammers, chairs, pens, coffers, and necklaces; the banker is represented by a pair of weights and scales, the priest by a mitre, the barber has his basin, the surgeon a lancet. On one stone we saw a head detached from the body, which was streaming with blood: it was the grave of either a murdered man or else one who had been executed. Alongside it was stretched an Armenian, sound asleep, with his head thrown back.

We passed on next to the Mussulman cemetery. Here were to be seen the same multitude of little columns, either in rows or standing about in irregular groups, some of them painted and gilded on top, those of the women culminating in ornamental bunches of flowers carved in relief, many of them surrounded with shrubs and flowering plants. As we stood looking at one of them, two Turks, leading a child by the hand, passed down the path to a tomb some little distance off, on reaching which they paused, and, having spread out the contents of a package one of them carried under his arm, they seated themselves on the tombstone and began to eat. I stood watching them. When the meal was ended the elder of the two wrapped what appeared to be a fish and a piece of bread in a scrap of paper, and with a gesture of respect placed it in a hole beside the grave. This having been done, they both lit their pipes and fell to smoking tranquilly, while the child ran up and down and played among the trees. It was explained to me later that the fish and bread were that portion of their repast which Turks leave as a sign of affection for relatives probably not long dead; the hole was the small opening made in the ground near the head of every Mussulman grave in order that the departed may hear the sobs and lamentations of their dear ones left on earth, and occasionally receive a few drops of rose-water or enjoy the scent of the flowers. Their mortuary smoke concluded, the two pious Turks arose, and, taking the child once more by the hand, disappeared among the cypress trees.

PANKALDI.

On coming out of the cemetery we found ourselves in another Christian quarter--Pankaldi--traversed by wide streets lined with new buildings and surrounded by gardens, villas, hospitals, and large barracks. This is the suburb of Constantinople farthest away from the sea. After having seen which, we turned back to redescend to the Golden Horn. On reaching the last street, however, we came unexpectedly upon a new and strikingly solemn scene. It was a Greek funeral procession, which advanced slowly toward us between a dense and perfectly silent crowd of people packed together on either side of the street. Heading the procession came a group of Greek priests in their long embroidered garments; then the archimandrite wearing a crown upon his head and a long cape embroidered in gold; behind him were a number of young ecclesiastics clad in brilliant colors, and a group of friends and relatives, all wearing their richest garments, and in their midst the bier, covered with flowers, on which lay the body of a young girl of about fifteen dressed in satin and resplendent with jewels. The face was exposed--such a dear little face, white as snow, the mouth slightly contracted as if in pain, and two long tresses of beautiful black hair lying across the shoulders and breast. The bier passes, the crowd closes in behind the procession, which is quickly lost to sight, and we find ourselves standing, sobered and thoughtful, in the midst of the deserted street.

SAN DMITRI.

We now descended the hill, and, after crossing the dry bed of a torrent and climbing up the ascent on the other side, found ourselves in another suburb, San Dmitri. Here almost the entire population is Greek. On every side may be seen black eyes and fine aquiline noses; patriarchal-looking old men and slight, sinewy young ones; girls with hair hanging down their backs, and bright intelligent-looking lads, who disport themselves in the middle of the street among the chickens and pigs, filling the air with their musical cries and harmonious inflections. We approached a group of these boys who were engaged in pelting one another with pebbles, all chattering at the same time. One of them, about eight years old, the most impish-looking little rascal of the lot, kept tossing his little fez in the air, every few minutes calling out, “_Zito! zito!_” (Hurrah! hurrah!) Suddenly he turned to another little chap seated on a doorstep near by, and cried, “_Checchino! buttami la palla!_” (Checchino! throw me the ball). Seizing him by the arm as though I were a gypsy kidnapper, I said, “So you are an Italian?”--“Oh no, sir,” he answered; “I belong to Constantinople.”--“Then who taught you to speak Italian?”--“Oh that?” said he; “why, my mother”--“And where is your mother?” Just at that moment, though, a woman carrying a baby in her arms approached, all smiles, and explained to me that she was from Pisa, that she and her husband, an engraver from Leghorn, had been in Constantinople for eight years past, and that the boy was theirs. Had this good woman had a handsome matronly face, a turretted crown upon her head, and a long mantle floating majestically from her shoulders, she could not have brought the image of Italy more forcibly before my eyes and mind. “And how do you like living here?” I asked her. “What do you think of Constantinople on the whole?”--“How can I tell?” said she, smiling artlessly. “It seems to be like a city that--well, to tell you the truth, I can never get it out of my head that it is the last day of the Carnival;” and then, giving free rein to her Tuscan speech, she explained to us that “_the Mussulman’s Christ is Mahomet_,” that a Turk is allowed to marry four wives, that the Turkish language is admirable for those who understand it, and various other pieces of equally valuable information, but which, told in that language and amid those strange surroundings, gave us more pleasure than the choicest bits of news--so much so, indeed, that on parting we were fain to leave a small monetary expression of our esteem in the hand of the little lad, and exclaimed simultaneously as we walked off, “After all, there is nothing that sets one up so as a mouthful of Italian now and then.”

TOTAOLA.

Recrossing the little valley, we came to another Greek quarter, Totaola, where our stomachs gave us a hint that this would be a favorable moment in which to investigate the interior of one of those innumerable restaurants of Constantinople, all of which, built on the same plan, present the same extraordinary appearance. There is one huge room, which might on occasion be turned into a theatre, lighted, as a rule, only by the door through which you enter; around it runs a high wooden gallery furnished with a balustrade. On one side is an enormous stove at which a brigand in shirt-sleeves fries fish, bastes the roast, mixes sauces, and devotes himself generally to the business of shortening human life; at a counter on the other side another forbidding-looking individual serves out red and white wine in glasses with handles; in the middle and front of the apartment are low stools without backs and little tables scarcely higher than the stools, looking for all the world like cobblers’ benches. We entered with some slight feeling of hesitation, not knowing whether the groups of Greeks and Armenians of the lower orders already assembled might not evince some disagreeable signs of curiosity; on the contrary, however, no one deigned so much as to look at us. It is my belief that the population of Constantinople is the least inquisitive of any on the face of the globe. You must be the Sultan at least, or else promenade through the streets without any clothes on, like the madman of Pera, for people to show that they are so much as aware of your existence. Taking our seats in a corner, we waited some time, but, as nothing happened, we finally concluded that it must be the custom in Constantinopolitan restaurants for every one to look out for himself. Advancing then boldly to the stove, we each got a portion of the roast--Heaven only knows from what quadruped--and then, providing ourselves with a glass apiece of the resinous Tenedos wine, we returned to our corner, spread the repast out on a table barely reaching to our knees, and, with a sidelong glance at one another, fell to and consumed the sacrifice. After resignedly settling the account we walked out in perfect silence, afraid on our lives to open our lips for fear a bray or a bark should escape them, and resumed our walk in the direction of the Golden Horn, somewhat chastened in spirit.

KASSIM PASHA.

A walk of ten minutes brought us once more into real Turkey, the great Mussulman suburb of Kassim Pasha, a city in itself, filled with mosques and dervishes’ monasteries, which, with its kitchen-gardens and shaded grounds, covers an entire hill and valley, and, extending all the way to the Golden Horn, includes all of the ancient bay of Mandsacchio, from the cemetery of Galata quite to the promontory which overlooks the Balata quarter on the other shore. From the heights of Kassim Pasha a most exquisite view is to be had. Beneath, on the water’s edge, stands the enormous arsenal of Tersâne; beyond it extends for more than a mile a labyrinth of dry-docks, workshops, open squares, storehouses, and barracks, skirting all that part of the Golden Horn which serves as a port of war. The admiralty building, airy and graceful, seeming to float upon the surface of the water, stands out clearly against the dark-green background of the Galata cemetery; in the harbor innumerable small steamboats and käiks, crowded with people, shoot in and out among the stationary iron-clads and old frigates of the Crimea; on the opposite bank lie Stambul, the aqueduct of Valens, bearing aloft its mighty arches into the blue heavens above, the great mosques of Muhammad and Suleiman, and innumerable houses and minarets. In order to take in all the details of this scene we seated ourselves in front of a Turkish café and sipped the fourth or fifth of the dozen or more cups of coffee which, whether you wish to or not, you are bound to imbibe in the course of every day of your stay in Constantinople. This café was a very unpretending place, but, like all such establishments--Turkish ones, that is--most original, probably differing but little from those very first ones started in the time of Suleiman the Great, or those others into which the fourth Murad used to burst so unexpectedly, cimeter in hand, when he made his nocturnal rounds for the purpose of wreaking summary vengeance upon venders of the forbidden beverage. What numbers of imperial edicts, theological disputes, and bloody quarrels has this “enemy of sleep and fruitfulness,” as it has been termed by ulemas of the strict school, “genius of dreams and quickener of the mind,” as the more liberal sects have it, been the cause of! And now, after love and tobacco, it is the most highly prized of all luxuries in the estimation of every poor Osman. To-day coffee is drunk on the summits of the Galata and Serasker towers; you find it on the steamboats, in the cemeteries, in the barber-shops, the baths, the bazârs. In whatever part of Constantinople you may happen to be, if you merely call out, “Café-gi!” without taking the trouble to leave your seat, in three minutes a cup is steaming before you.

THE CAFÉ.

Our café was a large whitewashed room, with a wooden wainscoting five or six feet high, and a low divan running around the four walls. In one corner stood a stove at which a Turk with a hooked nose was making coffee in little brass coffee-pots, from which he poured it into tiny cups, adding the sugar himself: this is the universal custom in Constantinople. The coffee is made fresh for every new-comer and handed to him already sweetened, together with a glass of water, which the Turk always drinks before approaching the cup to his lips. At one side hung a small looking-glass, and beside it a rack filled with razors: almost all the cafés in Constantinople are barber-shops as well, the head of the establishment combining these duties with those of leech and dentist, and operating upon his victims in the same apartment as that in which his guests are drinking their coffee. On the opposite wall hung another rack filled with crystal _narghilehs_, their long, flexible tubes wound around like snakes, and terra-cotta pipes with cherry-wood stems. Five Turks were seated on the divan thoughtfully smoking their _narghilehs_, and in front of the door three others sat upon very low straw-bottomed stools, their backs against the wall, side by side, with pipes in their mouths; a youth belonging to the establishment was engaged in shaving the head of a big, fat dervish clad in a camel’s-hair tunic. No one looked up as we took our seats, no one spoke, and, with the exception of the coffee-maker and the young man, no one made the slightest movement of any sort. The gurgling sound of the water in the _narghilehs_, something like the purring of cats, was all that broke the profound stillness. Every one gazed fixedly into vacancy, with faces absolutely devoid of all expression, like an assembly of wax figures. How many just such scenes as this have impressed themselves indelibly upon my mind! A wooden house, a cross-legged Turk, broad shafts of light, an exquisite far-away view, profound silence,--there you have Turkey. Every time I hear that word pronounced these objects rise up before me in the same way that one sees a canal and a windmill when any one mentions Holland.

PIALE PASHA.

From there, skirting along the edge of a large Mussulman cemetery which extends from the top of the Kassim Pasha hill to Tersâne, we proceeded again in a northerly direction, and, descending into the valley, reached the little district of Piale Pasha, almost buried in her trees and gardens, and paused before the mosque from which the quarter takes its name. It is white and surmounted by six graceful domes; the courtyard is surrounded by arches supported on airy columns; there is a charming minaret, and surrounding the whole a circle of enormous cypress trees. At that hour all the neighboring houses were tightly closed, the streets empty, and even the courtyard of the mosque itself deserted; the drowsiness and heat of noonday brooded over everything, and, except for the dull buzzing of the insects, not a sound was to be heard. Looking at our watches, we found it wanted just three minutes to twelve o’clock, one of the Mussulman’s five canonical hours, at which the _muezzin_, appearing upon the gallery of every minaret, announces to the four quarters of the globe the religious formula of Islam. We were perfectly well aware that in all Constantinople there is not a minaret upon which, punctual as clockwork, the messenger of the Prophet does not appear at his appointed hour; at the same time we could hardly bring ourselves to believe that in that farthest outpost of the immense city, on that solitary, out-of-the-way mosque as well, and amid that profound silence and apparent desertion, the figure would rise up, the message be delivered. Watch in hand, I stood waiting with lively curiosity the stroke of the hour, glancing now at the minute-hand, now at the small doorway opening out on the gallery of the minaret, about as high from the ground as the fourth story of an ordinary house. Presently the minute-hand reaches the sixtieth little black speck: no one appeared. “He is not there,” said I.--“There he is,” replied Yunk; and, true enough, there he stood. The balustrade of the gallery concealed all his person but the face, of which the distance was too great to distinguish the features clearly. For a few seconds he stood perfectly motionless: then, closing both ears with his fingers and raising his face toward heaven, he chanted slowly, in high, piercing accents, solemnly, mournfully, the sacred words which at the same moment were resounding from every minaret in Africa, Asia, and Europe: “God is great! there is but one God! Mahomet is his Prophet! Come to prayer! come and be saved! God is great! there is none other! Come to prayer!” Then, proceeding a part of the way around the balcony, he repeated the same words toward the north, then to the west, and then to the east, and finally disappeared as he had come. At the same instant we caught the faint far-away tones of a similar voice in the distance, sounding like some one calling for help. Then all was still, and we two were left standing motionless and silent, with a vague feeling of hopelessness, as though those two voices had been addressed solely to us, calling upon us to fall down and pray, and with the disappearance of the vision we had been left alone in that still valley, like beings abandoned by God and man. No tolling or chime of bells has ever appealed to me so strongly, and I then understood for the first time why it was that Mahomet decided in favor of the human voice as a means of summoning the faithful to their devotions, rather than the ancient trumpet of the Israelites or tymbal of the Christians. He hesitated for some time before making up his mind, so that the entire Orient narrowly escaped wearing an aspect totally different from that of the present day. Had he selected the tymbal, which must inevitably have become a bell later on, it is very certain that the minaret would have gone, and with it would have disappeared for ever one of the most charming and distinctive features of both town and country in the East.

OK-MEIDAN.

Mounting the hill to the west of Piale Pasha, we reached a vast open plain from which there is a view of Stambul and the entire length of the Golden Horn from Eyûb to Seraglio Point, four miles of mosque and garden--a scene so overpoweringly beautiful that one is tempted to fall upon his knees as before some heavenly vision. On the Ok-Meidan (Place of Arrows) the sultans used formerly to practise shooting with the bow and arrow, after the custom of the Persian kings. A number of small stone obelisks and pillars scattered about irregularly bear inscriptions each to the effect that upon that spot some imperial arrow has fallen. The beautiful kiosk is still standing from whose tribune the sultan was wont to draw his bow; on the right were drawn up a long line of pashas and beys, living exclamation-points indicative of the admiration excited by their lord’s dexterity; to the left stood a group of twelve pages belonging to the imperial family, whose duty it was to run after and pick up the arrows, marking the spots on which they fell; hidden behind the surrounding trees and shrubbery a few venturesome Turks peeped out who had stolen thither to gaze fearfully upon the sublime countenance of the vicar of God; while in the tribune, in the attitude of some haughty athlete, stood the sultan Mahmûd, the mightiest archer of the empire, his flashing eye compelling the bystanders to avert their gaze, and that famous beard, black as the raven’s feathers of Mt. Taurus, gleaming afar against the white tunic all spotted with the blood of the Janissaries. All this has now changed and become utterly commonplace. The Sultan practises with a revolver in the courtyard of his palace, while Ok-Meidan is used by the infantry for target-practice. On one side stands a dervish monastery, on the other a solitary café, and the whole place is as melancholy and deserted as a steppe.

PIRI PASHA.

Descending from the Ok-Meidan toward the Golden Horn, we came to another little Mussulman quarter called Piri Pasha, possibly after the famous vizier of the time of the first Selim, who educated Suleiman the Magnificent. Piri Pasha faces the Jewish quarter of Balata, situated on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn. We met nothing as we passed through it except a few dogs and occasionally an old Turkish beggar; we did not regret this, however, as it gave us an opportunity to examine its construction at our leisure. It is a very curious fact that on entering any quarter of Constantinople, after having seen it from the water or some adjacent height, you invariably experience precisely the same shock of astonishment as on going behind the scenes of a theatre after having witnessed some beautiful spectacular effect from the stalls. You are filled with amazement to find that the combination of all these mean and ugly objects is what has just produced so charming a whole. I suppose there is no other city in the world whose beauty is so entirely dependent on general effect as Constantinople. Seen from Balata, Piri Pasha is the prettiest little village imaginable, smiling, radiant with color, decked with foliage, its charming image reflected in the Golden Horn like the features of some beautiful nymph, awakening dreams of love and pleasure in the breast. Enter it and the whole thing changes: you find nothing but rude, mean little houses colored like booths at a country fair, filthy courts looking like witches’ dens, groups of dusty fig and cypress trees, gardens littered with rubbish, narrow, deserted streets--dirt, misery, wretchedness. But run down the hillside, jump into a käik, and give half a dozen strokes with the oars, behold! the fairy city has reappeared, beautiful and fascinating as before.

HASKEUI.

Continuing along the shore of the Golden Horn, we descended into another suburb, vast, populous, wearing an entirely different aspect from the last, and where we saw quite plainly, after taking half a dozen steps, that we were no longer among Mussulmans. On all sides dirty children covered with sores were rolling about on the ground; bent, ragged old crones sat working with their skinny fingers in the doorways, through which glimpses could be caught of dusky interiors cluttered up with heaps of old iron and rags; men clad in long, dirty cloaks, with tattered handkerchiefs wound around their heads, skulked along close to the wall, glancing furtively about them; thin, meagre faces peered out of the windows as we went by; old clothes dangled from cords suspended between the houses; mud and litter everywhere. It was Haskeui, the Jewish quarter, the Ghetto of the northern shore of the Golden Horn, facing that on the other shore, with which, at the time of the Crimean War, it was connected by a wooden bridge, all traces of which have since disappeared. From here stretches another long chain of arsenals, military schools, barracks, and drill-grounds, extending nearly all the way to the end of the Golden Horn. But of these we saw nothing, our heads and our legs having given out equally. Of all that we had seen, there only remained a confused jumble of places and people; it seemed as though we had been travelling for a week, and we thought of far-away Pera with a slight sensation of home-sickness. At this point we should certainly have turned back had not our solemn compact made upon the bridge come into our minds, and Yunk, according to his helpful custom, revived my drooping spirits by chanting the grand march from _Aida_.

KALIJI OGHLU.

Forward, then! Traversing another Turkish cemetery and climbing still another hill, we found ourselves in the suburb of Kaliji Oghlu, inhabited by a mixed population. In this little city, at every street-corner, you come upon a new race or a new religion. You mount, descend, climb up, pass among tombs and mosques, churches and synagogues. You skirt gardens and cemeteries, encounter handsome Armenian women with fine matronly figures, slender Turkish ones who steal a look at you through their veils; all around you hear Greek, Armenian, Spanish--the Spanish of the Jews--and you walk on and on and on. “After all, you know,” we say to one another, “Constantinople must end somewhere.” Everything on earth has an end. We have been told so ever since we were children. On and on and on, and now the houses of Kaliji Oghlu grow fewer, woods begin to appear; there is but one more group of dwellings. Quickening our pace, we passed them by, and at last reached--

SUDLUDJI.

Merciful Heavens! what did we reach? Nothing in the world but another suburb, the Christian settlement of Sudludji, built on a hill surrounded by woods and cemeteries, the same hill at whose base was formerly one end of the only bridge which in ancient times connected the two banks of the Golden Horn. But this suburb, by a merciful providence, was actually the last, and our excursion had finally come to an end. Quitting the houses, we cast about us for some spot where we might seek a little much-needed repose. Back of the village there rises a bare, steep ascent, up which dragging our weary limbs, we found before us the largest Jewish cemetery in Constantinople. It is a vast open space, filled with innumerable flat gravestones, presenting the desolate appearance of a city destroyed by an earthquake, and unrelieved by a tree or flower or blade of grass, or even so much as a footpath--a desert solitude as depressing to look upon as the scene of some great disaster. Seating ourselves upon one of the tombs, we turned in the direction of the Golden Horn, and while resting our tired bodies feasted our eyes upon the superb panorama which lay spread out before us. At our feet lay Sudludji, Kaliji Oghlu, Haskeui, Piri Pasha, a chain of picturesque villages set in the midst of green gardens and cemeteries and blue water; to the left, the solitary Ok-Meidan and the hundred minarets of Kassim Pasha, and farther on the huge, indistinct outlines of Stambul; beyond, fading away into the distant sky, the blue line of the mountains of Asia; directly facing us on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn lay the mysterious quarter of Eyûb, whose gorgeous mausoleums, marble mosques, deserted streets, and shady inclines, dotted with tombstones, could be clearly distinguished from where we sat, rural-looking solitudes full of a melancholy charm; to the right of Eyûb lay still other villages covering the hillsides and peeping at their own reflections in the water; and then the final bend of the Golden Horn, lost to view between two lofty banks covered with trees and flowers.

Half asleep, exhausted in mind and body, we sat there, allowing our eyes to wander at will over the whole exquisite scene; put all we had done and seen to music, and chanted antiphonally a rigmarole of I don’t know what nonsense; discussed the history of the dead man upon whose tomb we were sitting; poked into an ant-hill with bits of straw; talked of all manner of foolish and irrelevant things; asked ourselves from time to time if it were really true that we were in Constantinople; reflected upon the shortness of life and vanity of all human desires, at the same time drawing in deep breaths of pleasure and delight; but away down in the bottom of our secret souls we each realized through it all that nothing on earth, no matter how charming and beautiful it may be, can quite satisfy a man, provided he does not while enjoying it feel in his the hand of the woman he loves.

IN A KAIK.

Toward sunset we descended to the Golden Horn, and, taking our places in a four-oared käik, had scarcely pronounced the word “Galata!” before the graceful little boat was already in mid-stream. Of all varieties of boats which skim over the surface of the water, there is certainly none so delightful as the käik. Longer than the gondola, but narrower and lighter, carved, painted, and gilded, it is without seats or rudder; you sit in the bottom upon a cushion or bit of carpet, only your head and shoulders visible above the sides; both ends are shaped alike, so that it can be propelled in either direction, and it is easily upset by any sudden movement. Shooting out from the shore like an arrow from the bow, it seems to fly like a swallow, barely touching the water; overtakes and passes all other craft, and disappears in the distance, its bright and varied colors reflected in the waves like a dolphin flying from its pursuer. Our oarsmen were a couple of good-looking young Turks dressed in white trousers, light blue shirts, and red fezzes, with bare arms and legs--a pair of lusty athletes of twenty or so, bronzed, clean, cheerful, and frank. At each stroke the boat bounds forward its whole length. Other käiks fly by, hardly seen before they are lost sight of; we pass flocks of ducks; large covered barges filled with veiled women; clouds of birds circle over our heads; from time to time the tall sea-grass shuts out everything from view.

Seen thus from the other end of the Golden Horn and at that hour, the city presents an entirely new aspect. The Asiatic coast, owing to the bend of the shore, is entirely hidden, Seraglio Point shutting in the Golden Horn as though it were a great lake. The hills on either bank seem to have grown larger, and Stambul, far, far away, is a blending of delicate blues and grays, huge and indistinct. Like an enchanted city, it seems to float upon the water and lose itself among the clouds. The käik flies on; the two banks recede, inlet after inlet, grove after grove, suburb after suburb; our surroundings widen out. The colors of the city grow dim, the horizon seems to be on fire, the water is full of purple and gold reflections; on and on, until at last a profound lethargy steals over us, a sense of boundless content, in which we remain silent and happy, until finally the boatman is obliged to call in our ears, “_Monsù! arrivar!_” before we can arouse ourselves sufficiently to know where we are.

THE GREAT BAZÂR.

After giving a superficial glance over all of Constantinople, including both banks of the Golden Horn, it seemed now time to penetrate into the heart of Stambul, to explore that world-embracing, perpetual fair, that hidden city, dim, mysterious, crammed with associations, wonders, and treasures, which, extending from the Nùri Osmaniyeh to the Serasker hill, is called The Great Bazâr.

We will start from the square in front of the Validêh Sultan mosque. Here the epicurean reader may like possibly to pause long enough to inspect the Baluk Bazâr, that fish-market famous ever since the days of thrifty old Andronicus Palæologus, who, we are told, met the entire culinary expenses of his court with the profits made from fish caught only along the walls of the city, where, indeed, they are still most plentiful, and, seen on one of its principal days, the Baluk Bazâr would afford as succulent and tempting a subject for the author of the _Ventre de Paris_ as one of those well-covered tables one sees in old Dutch pictures. The venders, almost without exception Turks, are drawn up all around the square behind their fish, which are spread out on mats stretched upon the ground or else on long tables, around which a crowd of customers and an army of dogs fight for precedence. Here may be found the delicious mullet of the Bosphorus, four times the size it attains to in our waters; oysters from the island of Marmora, which the Greeks and Armenians alone understand how to cook properly, broiling them on the live coals; sprats and tunnies, the salting of which is an industry confined almost entirely to the Jews; anchovies, which the Turks have learned how to put up in the Marseillaise fashion; sardines, with which Constantinople provides the entire Archipelago; the _loufer_, that most delicious of all the Bosphorus fish, which is caught by moonlight; mackerel from the Black Sea, which make seven invasions successively into the waters of the city, accompanied by a noise so loud that it can be heard in the towns on both shores; the colossal _isdaurid_; enormous sword-fish; turbots, or, as they are called by the Turks, _kalkau-baluk_; shellfish, and a thousand and one other varieties of the smaller kinds of fish which dart and frisk about from one to the other of the two seas, chased by dolphins and _falianos_, and preyed upon by innumerable kingfishers, from whose very mouths the booty is often snatched by the _piombini_.

Cooks from great houses, old Mussulman bons-vivants, slaves, and young employés from the various restaurants surround the tables, examine the fish with a meditative air, bargain in monosyllables, and walk off, each carrying his purchase suspended by a bit of twine, grave, taciturn, self-contained as though it were the head of an enemy. By mid-day the square is deserted and the venders have repaired to the various cafés in the neighborhood, where they will sit with their backs against the wall and the mouthpiece of a narghileh between their lips, in a sort of waking sleep, until sunset.

To reach the Great Bazâr we take a street opening out of the fish-market, so narrow that the projecting parts of the opposite houses almost touch one another; on either side are rows of low, ill-lighted tobacconist shops, that “fourth support of the tent of voluptuousness,” coming after coffee, opium, and wine, or “the fourth of pleasure’s couches,” as it is sometimes called. Like coffee, tobacco has been blasted by imperial edicts and denounced by the _mufti_, with the usual result of adding fresh zest to its use and making it a fruitful source of tumult and punishment; and now this entire street is devoted to traffic in it alone. The tobacco is displayed upon long shelves in pyramids and round piles, each one surmounted by a lemon. All kinds are to be found here: _latakia_ from Antioch; Seraglio tobacco as fine and smooth as spun silk; tobacco for pipe and cigarette of every grade of strength and flavor, from that smoked by the gigantic porter of Galata to that used by the indolent _odalisques_ of the Seraglio to put them to sleep. There is the _tombeki_, so powerful that it would set the head of even a veteran smoker spinning did its fumes not reach his mouth first purified by the water of the narghileh, and which is kept in glass jars like a drug. The tobacconists are all Greeks or Armenians, with ceremonious manners, somewhat inclined to give themselves airs. The customers assemble before the shops in groups. Many of them are employés of the various foreign ambassadors or of the Seraskerat, and occasionally one sees some personage of importance. It is a great place for gossip of all kinds; politics are discussed; the doings of the great world talked over; and merely to walk through this little, retired, aristocratic bazâr leaves a strong impression upon one’s mind of the joys to be obtained from conversation _and_ tobacco.

We now pass beneath an old arched doorway festooned with vines, and come out opposite a large stone edifice, from which opens a long, straight, covered street lined with dimly-lighted shops and filled with people, packing-boxes, and heaps of merchandise. Entering this, we are immediately assailed by an odor so powerful as to fairly knock one down: this is the Egyptian Bazâr, where are deposited all the wares of India, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, which later on, converted into essences, pastilles, powders, and ointments, serve to color little hands and faces, perfume apartments and baths and breaths and beards, reinvigorate worn-out pashas, dull the senses of unhappy married people, stupefy smokers, and spread dreams, oblivion, and insensibility throughout the whole of the vast city. After going but a short distance in this bazâr your head begins to feel dull and heavy, and you get out of it as fast as you can; but the effect of that hot, close atmosphere and those penetrating odors clings long to your clothing, and remains for all time in your memory as one of the most vivid and characteristic impressions of the East.

After escaping from the Egyptian Bazâr you pass among a crowd of noisy coppersmiths’ shops, Turkish restaurants, from which issue endless nauseous smells, and all manner of wretched booths, shops, and stands, dark little dens containing trash of all sorts, and finally come to the Great Bazâr itself, not, however, before you have been obliged to defend yourself from a vigorous attack.

About a hundred feet from the main entrance there lie in ambush like so many cutthroats the agents or middlemen of the merchants and the agents of the agents. These fellows are so well up in their business that at a single glance they learn not only that this is your first visit to the bazâr, but usually make so clever a guess as to your nationality that they rarely make a mistake in the language which they first address you in.

Approaching, fez in hand, they proceed, with an engaging smile, to offer their services.

There usually then follows a conversation something like this: the traveller, declining the proffered service, remarks,

“I do not propose to make any purchases.”

“Oh, sir, what difference does that make? I only want to show you the bazâr.”

“I don’t care to see the bazâr.”

“But I will escort you gratis.”

“I don’t wish to be escorted gratis.”

“Very well; then I will just go to the end of the street with you, merely to give you certain points, which you will find very useful some other day when you come to buy.”

“But suppose I don’t want to even hear you talk about buying?”

“Very well, then, let us talk about something else. How long have you been in Constantinople? Is your hotel comfortable? Have you gotten permits to visit the mosques?”

“But when I tell you that I don’t want to talk about anything--that I wish, in short, to be alone--”

“All right; then I will leave you alone, and follow a dozen steps behind you.”

“But why should you follow me at all?”

“Merely to prevent you from being cheated in the shops.”

“But I tell you I am not going into the shops.”

“Well, then, to save you from annoyance on the street.”

And so you must finally either pause to take breath and collect your ideas, or else yield and allow him to accompany you.

There is nothing about the exterior of the Great Bazâr to either attract the eye or give the faintest idea of what it is within. It is an immense stone edifice in the Byzantine style, irregular in form and surrounded by high gray walls, lighted by means of hundreds of small lead-covered domes in the roof. The principal entrance is through a high, vaulted doorway of no architectural pretensions. Outside, in the neighboring streets, no sounds can be heard of what is going on within, and half a dozen steps away from the entrance one might easily believe that only silence and solitude reigned within those prison-like walls; once inside, however, this delusion is quickly dispelled. You find yourself not in a building at all, but in a labyrinth of streets with vaulted roofs, lined with columns and carved pilasters--a veritable city, with mosques and fountains, thoroughfares and open squares, pervaded with the dim, subdued light of the forest, where no ray or gleam of sunshine ever penetrates, and thronged with immense crowds of people. Every street is a bazâr, generally leading out of the principal thoroughfare--a street covered by a roof composed of white and black stone arches and decorated with arabesques like the nave of a mosque. Processions of horses, camels, and carriages pass up and down the dimly-lighted streets, in the midst of the throng of foot-passengers, with a deafening, reverberating noise. On all sides attempts are being made by word and gesture to attract your attention. The Greek merchant hails you with loud, imperious voice, while his Armenian rival, by far the greater knave of the two, assumes a modest, retiring manner, addressing you in soft, obsequious tones; the Jew murmurs gently in your ear; while the Turk, silent and reserved as ever, squats on a cushion in his doorway and contents himself with addressing you solely with his eye, leaving the results to Fate. Ten voices appeal to you at once: “Monsieur! captain! caballero! signore! eccelenza! kyrie! milor!” Down every cross-street you catch glimpses of new vistas, long lines of columns and pilasters, corridors, other streets opening out of these again, arcades and galleries, confused far-off views of new bazârs, shops, merchandise suspended on the walls and from the roofs, bustling merchants, heavily-laden porters, figures of veiled women, noisy groups, which constantly form, dissolve, and form again--a mingling of sights, sounds, colors, and movement to set one’s head in a whirl. The confusion, however, is only apparent: in reality, this enormous mart is arranged with as much system and order as a barracks, and it takes but a few hours for one to become sufficiently at home in it to find his way to any object without difficulty or the help of a dragoman. Every separate kind of merchandise has its own especial quarter, its little street, corridor, and square; there are a hundred small bazârs opening one into another like the rooms in some vast suite of apartments, and each bazâr is at the same time a museum, a promenade, a market, and a theatre, in which you can look at all without buying anything, can drink your cup of coffee, enjoy the open air, chat in a dozen different languages, and make eyes at the prettiest girls to be found in the East.

Dropping at random into any one of these bazârs, half a day goes by without your so much as knowing it: take, for instance, the bazâr of stuffs and costumes. Here are displayed such a dazzling array of beautiful and rare objects that you at once lose your head, to say nothing of your purse, and the chances are that, should you in any unguarded moment be tempted to satisfy some small caprice, you will end by having to telegraph home for assistance. You pass between pyramids and heaps of Bagdad brocades; rugs from Caramania; Brusa silks; India linens; muslins from Bengal; shawls from Madras; Indian and Persian cashmeres: the variegated fabrics of Cairo; gold-embroidered cushions; silken veils striped with silver; striped blue and red gauze scarfs, so light and transparent as to look like clouds; stuffs of every variety of color and design, in which blue and green, crimson and yellow, all the colors which disagree most violently, are combined and blended together in a harmony so perfect and exquisite that you can only gaze in open-mouthed admiration; table-covers of all sizes upon whose background of red or white cloth are outlined intricate silken designs of flowers, verses from the Koran, and imperial monograms, which it would take a day to examine, like a wall in the Alhambra. Here one has as good an opportunity to see and admire, one by one, each of the various articles which go to make up the costume of a Turkish lady as though it were the alcove of a harem, from the green or orange or purple mantles which are thrown over everything in public down to the silken chemise, gold-embroidered kerchief, and even the satin girdle upon which no eye of man other than that of the husband or eunuch is ever allowed to fall. Here may be seen red-velvet caftans edged with ermine and covered with stars; yellow satin bodices; trousers of rose-colored silk; white damask undervests thickly covered with gold flowers; wedding veils sparkling with silver spangles; little greencloth jackets edged with swan’s down; Greek, Armenian, Circassian costumes of a thousand fantastic shapes, so thickly covered with ornamentation as to be as hard and glittering as breastplates; and mixed in with all this magnificence the sombre, commonplace, serviceable stuffs of England and France, producing much the same effect upon the mind as would the sight of a tailor’s bill introduced into the pages of a volume of poems. If there is a woman anywhere in the world whom you care for, you cannot walk through this bazâr without longing to be a millionaire or else feeling the passion for plunder blaze up within you, if only for a moment.

To free yourself from these unhallowed desires you have but turn a little to one side and you find yourself in the pipe-bazâr, where the soul is gently conducted back to more tranquil pastures. Here you come upon collections of cherry, maple, rosewood, and jessamine pipes, and of yellow amber mouth-pieces from the Baltic Sea, polished until they shine like crystal, and of every grade of color and transparency, some of them set with diamonds or rubies; pipes from Cæsarea, their stems wrapped with silk and gold thread; tobacco-pouches from Lybia decorated with many-colored lozenges and gorgeous embroidery; silver, steel, and Bohemian glass narghilehs of exquisite antique shapes, engraved and chased and studded with precious stones, their morocco tubes glittering with rings and gilding, all wrapped in raw cotton and under the constant surveillance of two glittering eyes whose gaze never wavers; but let any one short of a vizier or a pasha who has spent years in bleeding some province of Asia Minor approach, and the pupils dilate in such a manner as to cause the modest inquiry as to the price to die away upon one’s lips. Here the purchaser must be some envoy of the sultana anxious to present a slight token of her appreciation to the pliable grand vizier; or a high court dignitary, who on assuming the cares of his new office is obliged, in order to maintain his dignity, to expend the sum of fifty thousand francs upon a rack of pipes; or a newly-appointed foreign ambassador who on departing for some European court wishes to take to its royal master a magnificent memento of Stambul. The Turk of modest means gazes mournfully upon these treasures and passes by on the other side, paraphrasing for his consolation that saying of the Prophet, “The flames of the infernal regions shall rage like the bellowing of the camel in the stomach of him who shall _smoke a pipe_ of gold or silver.”