As We Went From Galata To Pera Up A Steep
Hill, Which Newcomers Ascend With Some Difficulty, But Which A
Porter, with a couple of hundredweight on his back, paces up
without turning a hair, I thought the wooden houses
Far from being
disagreeable objects, sights quite as surprising and striking as
the grand one we had just left.
I do not know how the custom-house of His Highness is made to be a
profitable speculation. As I left the ship, a man pulled after my
boat, and asked for backsheesh, which was given him to the amount
of about twopence. He was a custom-house officer, but I doubt
whether this sum which he levied ever went to the revenue.
I can fancy the scene about the quays somewhat to resemble the
river of London in olden times, before coal-smoke had darkened the
whole city with soot, and when, according to the old writers, there
really was bright weather. The fleets of caiques bustling along
the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look
at: in Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry-
boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed. Here the
caique is still in full perfection: there are thirty thousand
boats of the kind plying between the cities; every boat is neat,
and trimly carved and painted; and I scarcely saw a man pulling in
one of them that was not a fine specimen of his race, brawny and
brown, with an open chest and a handsome face. They wear a thin
shirt of exceedingly light cotton, which leaves their fine brown
limbs full play; and with a purple sea for a background, every one
of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering picture.
Passengers squat in the inside of the boat; so that as it passes
you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with
their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of
expression which the sucking of a tobacco-pipe is sure to give to a
man.
The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of
craft. There are the dirty men-of-war's boats of the Russians,
with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds
of passengers to the villages; the melon-boats piled up with
enormous golden fruit; His Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve
men bending to their oars; and His Highness's own caique, with a
head like a serpent, and eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that
goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon. Ships and
steamers, with black sides and flaunting colours, are moored
everywhere, showing their flags, Russian and English, Austrian,
American, and Greek; and along the quays country ships from the
Black Sea or the islands, with high carved poops and bows, such as
you see in the pictures of the shipping of the seventeenth century.
The vast groves and towers, domes and quays, tall minarets and
spired spreading mosques of the three cities, rise all around in
endless magnificence and variety, and render this water-street a
scene of such delightful liveliness and beauty, that one never
tires of looking at it. I lost a great number of the sights in and
round Constantinople through the beauty of this admirable scene:
but what are sights after all? and isn't that the best sight which
makes you most happy?
We were lodged at Pera at Misseri's Hotel, the host of which has
been made famous ere this time by the excellent book "Eothen," - a
work for which all the passengers on board our ship had been
battling, and which had charmed all - from our great statesman, our
polished lawyer, our young Oxonian, who sighed over certain
passages that he feared were wicked, down to the writer of this,
who, after perusing it with delight, laid it down with wonder,
exclaiming, "Aut Diabolus aut" - a book which has since (greatest
miracle of all) excited a feeling of warmth and admiration in the
bosom of the god-like, impartial, stony Athenaeum. Misseri, the
faithful and chivalrous Tartar, is transformed into the most quiet
and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more gentlemanlike in
manner and appearance than most of us who sat at his table, and
smoked cool pipes on his house-top, as we looked over the hill and
the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens shining
in the blue. We confronted Misseri, "Eothen" in hand, and found,
on examining him, that it WAS "aut Diabolus aut amicus" - but the
name is a secret; I will never breathe it, though I am dying to
tell it.
The last good description of a Turkish bath, I think, was Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu's - which voluptuous picture must have been painted
at least a hundred and thirty years ago; so that another sketch may
be attempted by a humbler artist in a different manner. The
Turkish bath is certainly a novel sensation to an Englishman, and
may be set down as a most queer and surprising event of his life.
I made the valet-de-place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to
have a dragoman in one's service) conduct me forthwith to the best
appointed hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at
Tophana, and into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the
cooling-room of the bath.
The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted
gallery running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery
to another, ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue
cloths, for the use of the frequenters of the place. All round the
room and the galleries were matted inclosures, fitted with numerous
neat beds and cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true
believers smoking, or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state.
I was led up to one of these beds, to rather a retired corner, in
consideration of my modesty; and to the next bed presently came a
dancing dervish, who forthwith began to prepare for the bath.
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