When The Ladies Of
The Seraglio Come To That Bazaar With Their Cortege Of Infernal
Black Eunuchs, Strangers Are Told To Move On Briskly.
I saw a bevy
of about eight of these, with their aides-de-camp; but they were
wrapped up, and looked just as vulgar and ugly as the other women,
and were not, I suppose, of the most beautiful sort.
The poor
devils are allowed to come out, half-a-dozen times in the year, to
spend their little wretched allowance of pocket-money in purchasing
trinkets and tobacco; all the rest of the time they pursue the
beautiful duties of their existence in the walls of the sacred
harem.
Though strangers are not allowed to see the interior of the cage in
which these birds of Paradise are confined, yet many parts of the
Seraglio are free to the curiosity of visitors, who choose to drop
a backsheesh here and there. I landed one morning at the Seraglio
point from Galata, close by an ancient pleasure-house of the
defunct Sultan; a vast broad-brimmed pavilion, that looks agreeable
enough to be a dancing room for ghosts now: there is another
summer-house, the Guide-book cheerfully says, whither the Sultan
goes to sport with his women and mutes. A regiment of infantry,
with their music at their head, were marching to exercise in the
outer grounds of the Seraglio; and we followed them, and had an
opportunity of seeing their evolutions, and hearing their bands,
upon a fine green plain under the Seraglio walls, where stands one
solitary column, erected in memory of some triumph of some
Byzantian emperor.
There were three battalions of the Turkish infantry, exercising
here; and they seemed to perform their evolutions in a very
satisfactory manner: that is, they fired all together, and charged
and halted in very straight lines, and bit off imaginary cartridge-
tops with great fierceness and regularity, and made all their
ramrods ring to measure, just like so many Christians. The men
looked small, young, clumsy, and ill-built; uncomfortable in their
shabby European clothes; and about the legs, especially, seemed
exceedingly weak and ill-formed. Some score of military invalids
were lolling in the sunshine, about a fountain and a marble summer-
house that stand on the ground, watching their comrades' manoeuvres
(as if they could never have enough of that delightful pastime);
and these sick were much better cared for than their healthy
companions. Each man had two dressing-gowns, one of white cotton,
and an outer wrapper of warm brown woollen. Their heads were
accommodated with wadded cotton nightcaps; and it seemed to me,
from their condition and from the excellent character of the
military hospitals, that it would be much more wholesome to be ill
than to be well in the Turkish service.
Facing this green esplanade, and the Bosphorus shining beyond it,
rise the great walls of the outer Seraglio Gardens: huge masses of
ancient masonry, over which peep the roofs of numerous kiosks and
outhouses, amongst thick evergreens, planted so as to hide the
beautiful frequenters of the place from the prying eyes and
telescopes.
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