Smith Looked At
These Wonders Quite Unmoved; And I Was Surprised At His Apathy; But
He Had Been At Smyrna Before.
A man only sees the miracle once;
though you yearn over it ever so, it won't come again.
I saw
nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan the next time we came to Smyrna, and
had some doubts (recollecting the badness of the inn) about landing
at all. A person who wishes to understand France or the East
should come in a yacht to Calais or Smyrna, land for two hours, and
never afterwards go back again.
But those two hours are beyond measure delightful. Some of us were
querulous up to that time, and doubted of the wisdom of making the
voyage. Lisbon, we owned, was a failure; Athens a dead failure;
Malta very well, but not worth the trouble and sea-sickness: in
fact, Baden-Baden or Devonshire would be a better move than this;
when Smyrna came, and rebuked all mutinous Cockneys into silence.
Some men may read this who are in want of a sensation. If they
love the odd and picturesque, if they loved the "Arabian Nights" in
their youth, let them book themselves on board one of the
Peninsular and Oriental vessels, and try one DIP into
Constantinople or Smyrna. Walk into the bazaar, and the East is
unveiled to you: how often and often have you tried to fancy this,
lying out on a summer holiday at school! It is wonderful, too, how
LIKE it is: you may imagine that you have been in the place
before, you seem to know it so well!
The beauty of that poetry is, to me, that it was never too
handsome; there is no fatigue of sublimity about it. Shacabac and
the little Barber play as great a part in it as the heroes; there
are no uncomfortable sensations of terror; you may be familiar with
the great Afreet, who was going to execute the travellers for
killing his son with a date-stone. Morgiana, when she kills the
forty robbers with boiling oil, does not seem to hurt them in the
least; and though King Schahriar makes a practice of cutting off
his wives' heads, yet you fancy they have got them on again in some
of the back rooms of the palace, where they are dancing and playing
on dulcimers. How fresh, easy, good-natured, is all this! How
delightful is that notion of the pleasant Eastern people about
knowledge, where the height of science is made to consist in the
answering of riddles! and all the mathematicians and magicians
bring their great beards to bear on a conundrum!
When I got into the bazaar among this race, somehow I felt as if
they were all friends. There sat the merchants in their little
shops, quiet and solemn, but with friendly looks. There was no
smoking, it was the Ramazan; no eating, the fish and meat fizzing
in the enormous pots of the cook-shops are only for the Christians.
The children abounded; the law is not so stringent upon them, and
many wandering merchants were there selling figs (in the name of
the Prophet, doubtless) for their benefit, and elbowing onwards
with baskets of grapes and cucumbers.
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