But, unfortunately for the success of this laudable intention, the Imperial poet has written none but love-ditties; and the young soldier chanced inadvertently to fix upon one in which an anxious suitor calls upon his mistress to reveal to him the beauty that he has hitherto beheld only in his dreams—he invokes the moon from behind the clouds that veil it—the hidden leaf from the heart of the rose where it is folded—and loses himself in hyperbole on the subject of the concealed loveliness on which he longs to look.
No wonder that the imprisoned Yasumi Hanoum listened until she believed that the Prophet’s paradise was opening about her—Nowonder that on the morrow a lock of hair as black as midnight fell at the feet of the minstrel, as he paced his accustomed beat;—and still less wonder that the white hand and the dark tress began to trouble the dreams of the gallant Moslem, and to bewilder his imagination.
He was smoking his evening chibouk seated on a low wicker stool at the door of the guard-room, when chancing to look up, he perceived a female rapidly approaching from the direction of the Emir’s house. There was nothing remarkable in such a circumstance, for the street was a great thoroughfare, and many women had traversed it during the day; and yet his attention was irresistibly attracted to the stranger; and as she reached his side, their eyes met:— “Shekiur Allah!—Praise be to God! I may speak to you at last;” murmured a low soft voice; “Perhaps I should not tell you that I love you, but who can war against fate?”
The deep dark eyes were averted—the light figure moved away—He had looked upon the Emir’s Daughter!
Prudence was at an end; and many a midnight hour did the young soldier spend beneath the latticed casement of the enamoured beauty. At length her adventurous hand raised the envious jalousie; and as the moonlight fell bright upon her, the lover looked upon the fair face which was destined never more to be forgotten; andfrom that moment he vowed that death alone should make him relinquish his suit.
But, alas! what hope could be indulged that a saintly Emir would bestow his daughter upon a soldier—upon an individual doubly obnoxious both from his profession, and from the fact that it had grown to power upon the ruin of the Janissaries? The youth asked, supplicated, and was answered with contempt and loathing.
But the tears of the fair girl when she learnt from his own lips the failure of his suit, only strengthened him in his determination of success; and having confided his adventure to a friend who was devoted to his interests, he resolved either to compel the consent of the Emir, or to incur the penalty of exile, rather than exist near the woman whom he loved without a hope that she could be his. Accordingly, having summoned half a dozen of his men, he informed them that he had a quarrel with the Emir which he was determined to decide; and instructed them to loiter about the house of the Priest, and should they hear any disturbance, to enter as if by accident; and, in the event of the Emir desiring them to seize their officer, and carry them before the Seraskier, to obey without hesitation.
This arrangement made, the lover once more intruded on the seclusion of the Priest, and withall the eloquence inspired by sincere affection, besought him to revoke his resolution, and to give him his daughter. But the haughty Emir only added insult to refusal; and the enraged suitor, casting back the injuries which were addressed to him, sprang towards the door that communicated with the harem, and vowed that he would force his way, and carry off his bride despite every Priest in Stamboul. The affrighted father, shrieking forth sacrilege and murder, clapped his hands, and a couple of stout slaves entered, to whom he issued orders to seize the madman, and put him forth; but the suitor was young and vigorous, and he had already beaten down one of his antagonists, when the soldiers, perceiving from the clamour that was going on above, that the critical moment had arrived, rushed up stairs, and demanded the occasion of the outcry.
The Emir, breathless with terror, and trembling with rage, only pointed to the lover, as he exclaimed; “To the Seraskier! To the Seraskier!Inshallàh!I will have justice.”
He was instantly obeyed. The soldiers surrounded their commander, and hurried him off, followed by the panting Priest; and in ten minutes more the whole party stood before the Seraskier.
The fateful moment had arrived; and the heart of the young man beat high with a thousand conflicting feelings as the Emir told his tale, and implored vengeance on the miscreant who had dared to beard him beneath his own roof, and to attempt a violation of his harem; but he was re-assured by the tone of the Pasha, as he turned towards him, when the angry father had ceased speaking, and bade him explain his motives for such unheard-of violence.
“Noble Pasha,” said the lover, “may your days be many!—I will hide nothing from you. I love this old man’s daughter; and I have asked her of him for a wife. I have won her heart, no matter where nor how; but may my hours be numbered if I pollute your ears with falsehood. He has spurned me with insult because I am a soldier—He has declared the uniform of the glorious Sultan (May his shadow ever lie long upon the earth!) to be the brand of obloquy and disgrace; and had I not loved the girl more than perhaps it is altogether seemly for a True Believer to love a woman, I should have given him back scorn for scorn. But I could not do this without regret; and it is through my own agency that I now stand before your Excellency, to plead my cause, and to teach this hoary Priest that the soldier of the Sultan is not to be taunted to his teeth, even by a white-turbaned Emir. I could not force myself into your presence, noble Pasha, to talk to you of awoman; and thus I played the part of a madman in order that I might be dragged hither as a culprit, and learn from your own lips whether the crescent upon my breast is to make me an outcast from society.”
“Did he indeed demand your daughter for his wife?” asked the Seraskier, as he removed the chibouk from his lips, and glanced towards the Priest. He was answered doggedly in the affirmative.
“Take heed, then, Emir”—pursued the Pasha, “This looks like disaffection to his Highness: (May his end be glorious!) See that the girl become the wife of this young man ere many days roll over your head, or the holy turban that you wear shall not protect you. What? is it for you, and such as you, to sow divisions among the subjects of the most gracious Sultan? Look to this ere it be too late.”
And as the baffled Emir turned away, the Seraskier bade one of his officers take steps to secure to the victorious suitor the rank of Captain; and to pay to him five thousand piastres from his (the Pasha’s) own purse, as a marriage present.
The step was a bold one, for it was the first instance in which an Emir’s daughter had ever been permitted to become the wife of a soldier. A thousand long-existing prejudices had hitherto rendered such an alliance impossible; and it was a great stroke of policy to break down the strong barrier of habit and fanaticism, and to create a bond of union between two jarring and jealous portions of the population.
Turkish Madhouses—Surveillance of Sultan Mahmoud—Self-Elected Saints—Lunatic Establishment of Solimaniè—The Mad Father—The Apostate—The Sultan’s Juggler—The Slave Market—Charshee.
Notraveller who can string his nerves to the trial; or rather who will not suffer himself to be scared by the idea of a Turkish madhouse, should fail while at Constantinople, to visit the Timerhazè, or Lunatic Establishment, dependent on the mosque of Solimaniè. He will encounter nothing to disgust, and comparatively little to distress him; for all is cleanly, quiet, and almost cheerful. For myself, morbidly sensitive on such occasions, I shrank from the task which I was nevertheless resolved to achieve, until the eleventh hour; and my only feeling when I looked around me
“Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,”
“Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,”
“Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,”
“Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,”
in the Madhouse of Solimaniè, was one of intense relief, on finding that my own diseased fancy had so far outrun the reality.
It is, however, to the universal surveillance of Sultan Mahmoud that the unfortunates whotenant the building are indebted for the only comforts which they are still capable of enjoying; for but a few years ago they were unapproachable to the stranger, from the filthy and neglected state of both their cells and their persons. By an Imperial order, cleanliness and care have been secured to them; and the calm, and in many instances, affectionate manner, in which they conversed with their keepers, was a convincing proof that they were kindly treated. The Turks have, moreover, a superstitious reverence for the insane. They believe that the spirit has been recalled by itsGod, and the hallucinated being is regarded as almost saintly; a beatification, however, of which filth appears to be almost a concomitant part in the East; for whenever you encounter in the streets a wild-looking wretch, half Dervish, and half mendicant; so wretchedly filthy, that you dare not suffer him to come in contact with you as you pass him—with a beard matted with dirt, and elf-locks hanging about his shoulders, of which the colour is undistinguishable; ragged, swarming with vermin, and apparently half stupified with opium; should you, amid your disgust, make any inquiry as to his identity, you are told that he is a saint!
This extraordinary race of men (for there are numbers of them about the streets of Constantinople) are self-elected in their holiness; andtake up the trade as less ambitious individuals establish themselves in commerce. They affect absence of thought, concentration of mind, and having progressed gradually to a certain point, they finish with partial aberration of intellect; and this last may, in truth, be often real, for the years of unwashed and uncombed misery to which they condemn themselves are enough to produce madness. Ragged and wretched as I have described them, these miserable men are, nevertheless, objects of great veneration to the mass of the people; and the poorestcalmac, or porter, will seldom refuse hisparato one of these saintly mendicants.
The Lunatic Establishment of Solimaniè occupies an inner court of the mosque, whose centre is overshadowed by several magnificent plane trees, planted round a spacious fountain. Three sides of the court are furnished with arches, through which the apartments of the lunatics are entered, while each is ventilated by a couple or more of large grated windows; the number of patients in each cell never exceeding that of the windows. The most painful object connected with the scene, was the heavy chain and collar of iron worn by each of the lunatics, which kept up a perpetual clanking as the unfortunate moved in his restlessness from place to place within his narrow limits. The bedding was cleanly, comfortable, and profuse; and many of the tenants of the cells were eating melons, or smoking their chibouks, as tranquilly and as methodically as though they had been under a very different roof.
Among the whole number there was not one furiously mad, as is so frequently the case in Europe; and I was assured that such patients were extremely rare. Melancholy appeared to be the prevailing symptom of the disease among these hallucinated Osmanlis; a deep, but by no means sullen, melancholy; for very few of them refused to reply to an expression of interest or commiseration; and the feeling of social courtesy, so strong among the Turks, had in no one instance been destroyed, even by the total aberration of intellect which had prostrated every other bond of union between them and their fellow-men.
I have mentioned elsewhere the surpassing love of the Turks for their children; and I never saw a more beautiful illustration of parental affection than was exhibited by the first unfortunate before whose cell we paused. Several Greek ladies accompanied us; and the madman, whose head was pillowed upon his knees as we approached him, turned his dim, stony eyes upon each with a cold unconsciousness that was thrilling, until he met the soft, tearful gaze of a pale, delicate girl who was leaning upon my arm. When he caught sight of her he startedfrom his recumbent posture, and almost shrieked out his gladness as he exclaimed—“My child! my child! they told me that you had abandoned me, but I let them say on without a murmur, for I knew that you only tarried; and you are come at last—Why do you weep? I see you, and I am happy. I have not been alone—look here—” and he thrust his hand into his breast, and drew forth a dove which was nestling there; “I have held this upon my heart, and, as I slept, I dreamt that it was you.”
After a moment’s silence he resumed: “I would give you this trembling bird, for you are my child, and I love you; but it will not abandon me. It is my friend, my playfellow, my child when you are away. It will not leave me, though I am mad—And yet, why do they tell you that I am mad? It is not so—Do I not know you? Am I not your father? Is it because I am sorrowful that they have told you this?” And again the pale face was bowed down; and one heavy sob which seemed to rise from the very depths of a crushed spirit terminated the sentence. We hurried on—it was profanation to make a spectacle of such an agony—mindless though it was.
Nor was the next individual with whom we came in contact less painfully interesting. Strikingly handsome, and not above five-and-thirty, he had already passed four miserable years inthe Madhouse of Solimaniè. An Armenian by birth, and a Catholic by faith, he had been induced to embrace Mahomeddanism, but he had paid with his reason the price of his apostacy; and this one memory haunted him in his wretched lunacy. As we paused before the grating of his cell, he bowed his head upon his breast, and murmured out; “In Nomine Patri, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus, Amen.”
His look was fastened upon my father, and some faint and long-effaced image seemed to rise before him, for he smiled sadly, and extended towards him his white and wasted hand; nor could any other of the party succeed in diverting his attention. Twice, thrice, the same words were uttered, and always in an accent of the most thrilling anguish. Surely his sin will be expiated on earth, and forgiven at the last day!
Some were merry, and exhausted themselves in song and jest; and some, with a latent leaven of worldliness, asked alms, and laughed out their soulless joy as the coins which we flung to them rang on the stone-work of the window. The Juggler of Sultan Selim—He who had taught the great ones of the land to believe him gifted with a power more than human—He who had raised the laughter of amusement, and the exclamation of wonder—whose very presence had awakened mirth and merriment—He, too, washere—caged, and chained—the mad prisoner of three-and-thirty weary years!—the palest, the saddest, and the most silent of the whole miserable company. His beard fell to his girdle—his matted locks half concealed his haggard countenance—his hands were clasped upon his breast—and he did not turn his head as we approached him.
From the madhouse we proceeded to the slave-market; a square court, three of whose sides are built round with low stone rooms, or cells, beyond which projects a wooden peristyle. There is always a painful association connected with the idea of slavery, and an insurmountable disgust excited by the spectacle of money given in exchange for human beings; but, beyond this, (and assuredly this is enough!) there is nothing either to distress or to disgust in the slave-market of Constantinople. No wanton cruelty, no idle insult is permitted: the slaves, in many instances, select their own purchaser from among the bidders; and they know that when once received into a Turkish family they become members of it in every sense of the word, and are almost universally sure to rise in the world if they conduct themselves worthily. The Negroes only remain in the open court, where they are squatted in groups, until summoned to shew themselves to a purchaser; while the Circassians and Georgians, generally brought thereby their parents at their own request, occupy the closed apartments, in order that they may not be exposed to the gaze of the idlers who throng the court. The utmost order, decency, and quiet prevail; and a military guard is stationed at the entrance to enforce them, should the necessity for interference occur, which is, however, very rarely the case.
I expected to have had much to write on the subject of the slave-market, but I left it only with an increased conviction of the great moral beauty of the Turkish character. I am aware that this declaration will startle many of my readers; but I make it from a principle of justice. I knew that the establishment existed—I never thought of it without a shudder, nor shall I ever remember it without a pang; but I am, nevertheless, compelled to declare that I did not witness there any of the horrors for which I had prepared myself. The Turks never make either a sport or a jest of human suffering, or human degradation. Not a word, not a glance escaped them, calculated to wound the wretched beings who were crouching on the ground under the hot sunshine—They made their odious bargain seriously and quietly; and left the market, followed by the slaves whom they had purchased, without one act of wanton cruelty, or unnecessary interference.
I felt glad when, escaping from this painfulscene, bitter and revolting even under the most favourable aspect, we found ourselves in the Charshee, surrounded by all the glittering temptations of the East, and deep in the mysteries of tissues and trinkets. The morning had been a trying one, and I rejoiced to be enabled to divert my thoughts from the scenes through which we had passed. A thousand brilliant baubles were spread out before us—a thousand harangues replete with hyperbole were exhausted on us—all was bustle and excitement; and I forgot for a while the weeping father and the spirit-stricken apostate of Solimaniè.
The Castle of Europe—The Traitor’s Gate—The Officer of the Guard—Military Scruples—The State Prison—The Tower of Blood—The Janissaries’ Tower—Cachots Forcès—Guard-room—The Bow-string—Frightful Death—The Signal Gun—The Grand Armoury—Flourishing State of the Establishment—A Dialogue—The Barracks of the Imperial Guard—The Persian Kiosk—Courts and Cloisters—The Kitchen—The Regimental School—A Coming Storm—The Tempest—Dangerous Passage—Turkish Terror—Kind-hearted Caïquejhe—Fortunate Escape.
Havingobtained an order of admission from one of the Ministers, my father and myself started early one morning to visit the Fortress of Mahomet, commonly called by the Franks the Castle of Europe.
I have already stated elsewhere that this was the firstpied-à-terreof the Prophet on the European coast; and that the entire pile, forming the characters of his name, was erected in six days. The strength of the fortress is much greater than its peculiar construction would lead you to believe when seen from the sea; and it is altogether an object of extreme interest.
When our caïque touched the landing-place opposite the Traitor’s Gate, our dragoman landed to obtain the authority of the officer onguard, who was sitting on his low wicker stool at the door of the guard-house, which is built upon the shore of the Bosphorus at the foot of the exterior wall of the fortress; and his surprise on ascertaining our errand was so great, that he scarcely removed the chibouk from his lips, as he declared the impossibility of his admitting us into a stronghold, within which no Frank had hitherto set his foot—The first European Fortress of the Prophet—The prison of the Janissaries—The—— I know not what else he might have added, for, in the midst of his harangue, he suddenly remembered that one of the two applicants for admission on the present occasion was not only a Frank, but, worse still, a woman; and he was just beginning to reason upon the fact, when our dragoman stepped in with the announcement of our order.
His scruples were silenced at once, and he immediately very civilly sent a corporal and a soldier of the garrison to point out to us the different localities; and two most intelligent men they proved to be, who, having been two years on the castle guard, were perfectly competent to do the melancholy honours of the place.
The Traitor’s Gate is the only seaward entrance to the fortress; and, when we had stooped to pass its low, wide arch, we found ourselves in a large court, having on our right hand one of the four principal towers; and preciselythat which has hitherto served as a state prison for persons of distinction.
In the lower cell of this tower, which contains several ranges of dungeons, (none of them, however, subterranean), is a stone tunnel, descending deep into the sea; and beside its mouth is placed a block of marble, against which the victim knelt to receive the fatal stroke; when the severed head, and the gory stream that accompanied it, fell into the tunnel, and were carried by the current far beyond the walls of the fortress; the body, thus rendered irrecognisable, being afterwards thrown into the channel. A deep ditch passes near the entrance of this tower, which opens into an inner court; and, as we ascended a steep acclivity, and passed beside a ruined mosque, we traced the moat to the foundation of a second and lower tower, square in form, and castellated on the summit; distinguished by the fearful appellation of the “Tower of Blood!” The ditch opens immediately beneath a low archway, excavated in the foundation of the tower; and its use is similar to that of the tunnel in the lower prison, being intended to convey away to the sea all, save the bodies of the criminals executed within its walls, who were invariably the Aghas, or chiefs of the Janissaries, whom it would not have been safe to have dishonoured in the eyes of that formidable body, as it was customary to insult theremains of the less distinguished of their comrades.
In this ditch one of the soldiers informed us that near four hundred cases of ammunition had been discovered buried beneath the soil, for the private use of the Janissaries, in the event of their requiring such an auxiliary during any popular commotion; and it was singular enough that the deposit was revealed by the very individual who informed us of it, and who pointed out the spot where his pickaxe struck against the cover of one of the chests, when employed with a fatigue party to cleanse the moat from its accumulated filth.
Hence we ascended to the Janissaries’ Tower, the principal object of our curiosity. Built on the highest point of land within the walls, even from the base of this tower you command one of the noblest views in the world; having on one hand the whole stretch of the channel, to the opening of the Sea of Marmora; and on the other, the entrance to the Black Sea; the most sublime coup d’œil in the Bosphorus.
Here two additional attendants with lights were added to the party; and, having first visited a recess, or cell, in the masonry of the tower, which we entered by a low, narrow archway, that had been lately discovered, we stood within the secret magazine of the Janissaries, where they had built in upwards of six hundred casesof powder: and we then commenced our survey of the dungeons.
Throughout the whole Tower, which is of great height, and contains seven ranges of cells, all of them tolerably lofty, there were but twocachots forcés, or dark dungeons; every apartment being furnished with a narrow, grated aperture for the admission of air and light, and a small marble cistern for containing water. I wished to explore one of the two, but was withheld by the soldiers, who assured me that, since the destruction of the Janissaries, no one had ventured to enter them, and that they might be, and probably were,oubliettes, where one false step would plunge me headlong to destruction.
Thus warned, I desisted reluctantly from my purpose; and, sooth to say, we were sufficiently surrounded by horrors, to be enabled to dispense with one more or less. Our next point was the guard-room; an extensive apartment, with a floor boarded transversely with narrow planks, forming a lattice-work, through which the guard could both see and hear the prisoner beneath; and roofed in the same manner. Having traced the tower nearly to its summit, we descended, and passing onward a few paces at its base, we found ourselves in a compartment of the covered way that connects the towers throughout the fortress; and which was furnished with largearched doorways on either side. Here, within a recess, hung an old Roman bow of such strength that no modern arm can bend it; and to this, as we were informed, the cord was attached used in strangling the condemned Janissaries. I confess that I thrilled less at the sight of this instrument of torture, than at the idea of the refinement of cruelty, which, in a locality replete with gloom, had selected such a spot for the work of death.
Hither was the victim dragged from his twilight cell. Here, where the fresh breeze of Heaven came lovingly to his forehead, quivering among the broad leaves of the wild fig-trees; and dancing on the sunlighted waters. Hither, where the bright day-beam shed over the world a light which to him was mockery! What had he to do with the fresh breeze and the genial beam? His knee was upon the earth, and the cord was about his neck. One gaze, one long, wild, withering gaze, while his executioners were busied with the fatal noose; one sigh, the deep concentrated inspiration of despair; a shriek, a struggle; the last grappling of the strong man with his murderers, and all was over; the cord was transferred from the throat to the feet of the victim; and they who were lately his comrades and his friends, seized the extremity of the fatal rope, and, dragging after them the yet quivering body, it was thus hurried ignominiouslydown the rough and steep stone stair which traverses the fortress, ere it arrived at the Traitor’s Gate.
But I will pursue the revolting image no further. As the mangled body was hurled into the sea, the long gun which occupies an embrasure near the entrance of the fortress was fired, to announce to the authorities at Constantinople that justice had been done upon the guilty.
Early morning and noon were the periods usually selected for these executions; and few are the individuals who have been long resident in Turkey, who can fail to remember the dismal report of the solitary gun as it came booming over the Bosphorus!
The few houses built within the walls of the fortress are surrounded by cheerful gardens, and are kept in tolerable repair. As we left the castle, we were politely accosted by the officer on guard, who inquired whether we desired to visit the fortress on the opposite coast, which was formerly used as a prison for the Bostangis, or Imperial Body Guard; the order with which we were furnished sufficing for both. But I had become so heart-sick among the dungeons of the Janissaries, that I prevailed on my father to decline the proposal; and we accordingly reembarked, and proceeded to the Grand Armoury at Dolma Batchè.
Here again we were obliged to avail ourselvesof our order, no female ever having been hitherto admitted within the gates of the establishment; but it was merely the delay of a moment, and, having passed the entrance, we stood within a spacious court forming the centre of the quadrangle, surrounded by the entrances of the several workshops, and furnished with an immense marble reservoir containing water for the supply of the artificers.
The greatest activity and order prevails throughout the whole establishment. Fifteen hundred men are constantly employed within the walls; and their wages vary from one to two shillings a day, according to the difficulty of the work, and their ability to execute it creditably. No distinction either of creed or nation operates against the reception of an artificer; Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Jews are alike eligible, if capable of performing their allotted duties; but the most difficult and finished branches of the different departments are almost universally confided to Armenian workmen, who are the best artificers of the East.
The nominal head of the establishment is a Turk, but he does not interfere beyond making a weekly survey to ascertain that all is progressing satisfactorily; while his deputy, who is an Armenian, enters into the detail of the labour, makes the contracts for timber and metal, paysthe workmen, and performs every other responsible duty. The number of firelocks completed daily, and sent across each evening to the Armoury within the walls of the Seraï Bournou, was stated to us to average seventy; but this was probably an exaggeration.
The musket-barrels are at present bored by hand-machinery, and between forty and fifty men are constantly employed at this labour alone; but a substantial and handsome stone edifice is now constructing in the immediate neighbourhood, under the superintendence, and according to the design, of an English architect, to which this branch of the establishment is to be transferred, and where the work is to be done by steam; by which means a great ultimate saving will be effected.
One of the muskets furnished with a spring bayonet was shown to us, which, although not equal in finish, and more heavy in form than those of Europe, was, nevertheless, very creditable to an establishment, that is yet comparatively in its infancy. I was much amused by the astonishment of a respectable old Turk who was superintendent of the finishing department, when he saw me engaged with my father in examining this musket. “What pleasure can a Frank woman find in looking at fire-arms?” he asked the Dragoman; “One of our females would be afraid to touch such a thing. Where does shecome from? and how came they to let her in here?” The reply of the interpreter surprised him still more.
“Mashallàh!” he exclaimed, approaching me with a look of comic earnestness. “Did the Pasha send her? Why, she is but a girl. How should she know how to write books better than our women who never do so?”
“Because your women are shut up”—replied the Dragoman.
The Turk nodded assent; “True enough, true enough; they cannot learn of the walls. The Franks see and hear, and travel over land and sea; and that is why they know more than we who remain at home, and ask no questions.”
I give this little dialogue, because it strikes me as being very characteristic. How often have I been reminded by the Turkish women that if I had learnt many things of which they were ignorant, I had taken a great deal of trouble to acquire them, while they had remained comfortably at home without care or fatigue.
From the Armoury we crossed over to the barracks of the Imperial Guard at Scutari, where my appearance created as much astonishment among the troops as though I had come to take the command of the garrison; and once more I was stopped by the officer on guard; but, as Achmet Pacha had prepared the Commandant for our visit, he was immediately summoned by the Dragoman, and received us with the greatest politeness.
This magnificent barrack is nearly quadrangular, the centre of the fourth side being occupied by low workshops, and a noble gateway opening upon an exercise ground, at whose extremity on the edge of the rock overhanging the sea stands the Persian Kiosk of the Sultan. Nothing can be conceived more grand than the view from this graceful summer pavilion whence you command the port, the channel, the city of Constantinople, Pera, Galata, and every object of interest and beauty in the neighbourhood of the capital; the picturesque Seraï Bournou; and far, far away, the Sea of Marmora, and the dark mountains of Asia. The prevalence of northerly winds had prevented any vessel from entering the Golden Horn during the three preceding weeks, and a little fleet of about thirty merchant-men were lying at anchor under the very windows of the Kiosk, giving the last touch of loveliness to the scene spread out before us.
The whole interior extent of the barrack is furnished with arched cloisters along each story of the building; by which means a sufficient space is ensured for the purposes of drill and exercise during inclement weather. The cleanliness of the rooms was beautiful; and here, as elsewhere, we had occasion to remark the extremely orderly conduct of the troops.We were standing in the yard of a barrack containing five thousand men, and there was not sufficient noise to have annoyed an invalid. The barrack was constructed to accommodate fifteen thousand, but it is at present garrisoned only by four regiments, and a brigade of artillery, whose stabling is situated under the lower range of cloisters. The kitchen is fitted up with steam; and the steam-tables are of white marble, with which material the vegetable store is entirely lined. Meat and pillauf are furnished daily to the troops in ample quantities; and all their clothing is supplied by the government, while the sum allowed as pay, for the purchase of coffee, fruit, and similar luxuries, is greater than that given to Russian soldiers, who are moreover obliged to furnish themselves with several articles of clothing. The workshops were thronged; that of the shoemakers contained a hundred and sixty individuals, who were making shoes of every description, from the coarse slipper of the private, to the neatly-finished boot of the Pasha. Every member of the Imperial Guard is furnished from these workshops, and five hundred men are instructed in each trade, who relieve one another in the event of duty or sickness.
The Regimental School was a model of neatness and order, and the number of pupils very considerable; all the children of the Imperial Guard being expected to attend it, whatevermay be the rank of their fathers. Many of the sergeants and corporals were studying geography; and on a table in the centre of a second and smaller apartment, stood a handsome set of Newton’s globes. Of the imitative talent of the Turks I have already spoken; and on this occasion we were shown a map of Iceland, etched by a corporal of the guard, in as good style as any pen and ink drawing that I ever saw from the college at Sandhurst.
The arms, as I have already remarked to be universal with the Turkish troops, were in the most admirable order, and the stores containing clothing were well filled, and very neatly arranged. We declined visiting the Hospital, as three recent cases of Plague had occurred there; added to which we discovered certain threatenings in the sky which denoted a coming storm; and, as the passage from Scutari to Topphannè is, though comparatively short, extremely dangerous in the event of a sudden tempest, we spent half an hour with the Commandant in his apartment, where we partook of some exquisite sherbet, made from the juice of the green lemon; and hurried thence to the pier, laden with a basket of the delicious grapes and melons of Asia. But we had already lingered too long: the wind was blowing briskly from the Black Sea; and the distant shores were veiled in dense and heavy vapour.
We had just reached the Maiden’s Tower when the gust caught us. Of all the environs of the Bosphorus this is the most dangerous, for the current runs madly out into the Sea of Marmora; and the wind, released from the Asian mountains which hem it in to the point of Scutari, is suddenly set free in all its violence. Hence it arises that, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Maiden’s Tower, more caïques are wrecked during the year than in the whole of the channel; and there we were, every wave dashing angrily against the side of the frail boat, and pouring over us its foaming waters; the wind driving us down the current, and the Turkish boatmen scarcely able to ejaculate their “Mashallàhs!” and “Inshallàhs!” from the terror which made their teeth chatter in their heads.
It was a frightful moment. At one instant we made way; at the next we were carried back by the force of the current; we could not guess how the affair would terminate; but meanwhile the venerable old caïquejhe who pulled the after-oars, amid all his alarm sought to comfort me: “Tell her,” he said perpetually to the dragoman, “tell her that there is no danger; she is a woman, and the fear may kill her. My heart is sick and I can scarcely pull, for my hand trembles, and my breath fails; but console her—tell her that we shall soon be across the channel—that I will put her ashore somewhere—anywhere—tell her what you will, for she is a woman, and I pity her.”
But, grateful as I was for his consideration, I did not require comfort; I had already escaped from so many dangers at sea, that I never for a moment contemplated drowning on the present occasion; and I took some credit to myself for upholding the honour of my sex for courage in the eyes of the kind-hearted old Turkish caïquejhe. With considerable difficulty we at length made the pier at Topphannè, and, a voyage homeward being perfectly out of the question, we ascended the steep hill to Pera, wet and weary as we were; and passed the night under the roof of a worthy and hospitable Greek friend, listening to the wild gusts which swept down the channel, and congratulating ourselves on our escape from a danger as unexpected as it was imminent.
The Plague—Spread of the Pestilence—The Greek Victim—Self-Devotion—Death of the Plague Smitten—The Widow’s Walk—Plague Encampments—The Infected Family—The Greek Girl and her Lover—Non-Conductors—Plague—Perpetuators—Vultures—Melancholy Concomitants of the Pestilence—Carelessness of the Turks—The Pasha of Broussa—Rashness of the Poorer Classes—Universality of the Disease in the Capital.
Everyone who has even heard of Constantinople is aware that it is a city of Plague and Fires. Of the latter I have already spoken, although slightly; for it is a singular fact that, although several extensive conflagrations occurred during our residence in the East, not only in the Capital but in its environs, it never was our fortune to witness one.
Of the still more frightful visitation of the Plague, I could not perhaps make mention at a more fitting moment than the present (the commencement of September) when, contrary to the prognostics of thesoi-disantconversant in such matters, it has broken out with renewed violence in every direction. The Imperial Palace of Beglierbey is deserted in consequence of its having been visited by the Pestilence—The“Seven Towers” have become a Plague-Hospital for the Greeks. We presented ourselves with an order for admittance at the celebrated Seraglio at the Point, and found that here the scourge had preceded us, and that the gates were closed—Even Therapia, seated on the edge of the shore, and open to the healthful breezes from the Black Sea, is adding daily to the list of victims; and we were received by a friend at the extreme opposite end of the sofa on our return thence, (and even that reluctantly,) from a dread that we might prove to be Plague-conductors, and infect her family.
To the honour of our common nature it may be stated that even this direful visitation tends at times to bring out some of the noblest qualities of which frail humanity is susceptible. If man may be pardoned a feeling of absorbing selfishness, it is surely in the hour when he has before him the prospect of one of the most frightful of all deaths; but, even in the short month which has elapsed since the disease deepened, examples have not been wanting of that utter absence of selfishness—that self-sacrifice for the security of others—which gives to the fate of the victim almost the character of martyrdom.
Only a day or two since, a poor Greek inhabitant of Therapia was suddenly attacked with sickness, and, thinking that he recognised the symptoms of the malady, he immediately proceeded to his cottage; and, stopping ere he touched the threshold, called to his wife, who, astonished on seeing him at so unwonted an hour, and struck by the change in his appearance, was about to approach him, when he desired her to stand back; and then, calmly telling her that he was unwell, though he knew not from what cause, and that he was unwilling during a time of Plague to run the risk of infecting his family, or of compromising his house, he desired her to throw him his furred pelisse. “If it be a mere passing sickness,” he added, as he prepared to depart, “it will only cost me a night in the open air—If it be the Plague, you will at least save our few articles of clothing, and the few comforts of the cottage—Recommend me to the Virgin and St. Roch.”
And thus he left his home; and wandered, weak and heart-sick, to the mountains. He felt that the brand was on him; and he went to die alone, he knew not how—whether as a wild and frantic maniac, gathering strength from the fever which would turn his blood to fire, and howling out his anguish to the winds of midnight, without one kind voice to comfort, or one fond hand to guide him, until at length he dropped down to die upon the damp earth—or, as a shivering and palsied wretch, fainting from thirst, and quivering with sickness, to gaze hour after hour from his bed of withered leaves, orparched-up turf, upon the blue bright sky, and the myriad stars, until they went out one by one as his sight failed, and his pulse ebbed——
On the morrow the wife hastened to the mountains with food, in search of her husband. She had not taught herself to believe that the Plague had touched him, and she feared that he might suffer from hunger. She led one of her children by the hand—his favourite child—and they were long before they found him—for although the young clear voice of the boy shouting out his name was borne far away upon the elastic air of the mountain, there was no answer to the call—alas! there could be none—the father lay cold and stiff in a gully of the rock,-the Plague-smitten had ceased to suffer!
The anguish of the unfortunate woman may be conceived—In her first agony she sprang towards the body, but the shriek of her child recalled her to a sense of her peril, and the fate that she would entail upon her little ones. The struggle was long and bitter; and at length she turned away with the weeping boy, and returned into the village to proclaim her widowhood.
I have already mentioned the fact of my having on one occasion inadvertently ridden into the midst of a Plague-encampment. Such occurrences are, however, rare; as, in the event of several families being compromised and sent to the mountains, there is generally a military guardstationed at every avenue leading to their temporary dwellings, to prevent the approach of strangers, and to form their medium of subsistence.
A melancholy tale was related to me by a lady at Therapia, who had watched from day to day the proceedings of one of these little mountain colonies through a telescope. It consisted of a miserable family; the father gray-haired and feeble, and the mother bent and palsied—The children died first, one by one, for the disease drank their young blood more eagerly than the chill stream which moved sluggishly through the veins of the aged parents; and at length the old couple were left alone.
They used to sit side by side for hours under a tree facing their village—the birth-place of their dead ones, whom they had put into the earth with their own hands—but within a week the childless mother sickened in her turn and the gray old man dragged a wretched mattress to the foot of the tree from beneath which his stricken wife had no longer power to move; and he held the water to her lips, and he put the bread into her grasp; but all his care availed her nothing—and with his lean and trembling hands he scratched her a grave under the shadows of the tree that she had loved in life; and, when the earth had hidden her from his sight, he lay down across the narrow mound to die in his turn. His worldly toils were ended!
Scarcely less affecting was the devotion of a young Greek girl, whose lover, smitten with plague, was conveyed to the temporary hospital at the Seven Towers. No sooner had she ascertained whither they had carried him, than without saying a word to her parents, who would, as she well knew, have opposed her design, she left her home, and presented herself at the portal of the infected fortress as the nurse of the young Greek caïquejhe who had been received there on the previous day. In vain did the governor, imagining from her youth, and the calm and collected manner in which she offered herself up an almost certain victim to the pestilence, that she was not aware of her danger, endeavour to dissuade her from her project. She was immoveable; and was ultimately permitted to approach the bedside of the dying sufferer.
Not a tear, not a murmur escaped her, as she took her place beside his pillow, and entered upon her desperate office. In the paroxysms of his madness, as the poison was feeding upon his strength, and grappling at his brain, he spoke of her fondly—he talked to her—he stretched forth his arms to clasp her—and then he thrust her from him as he yelled out his agony, and his limbs writhed beneath the torture of the passing spasm.
And she bore it all unshrinkingly; and even amid her misery she felt a thrill of joy as shediscovered that pain and madness had alike failed to blot her image from his memory. But there were moments less cruel than these, in which reason resumed her temporary sway, and the devoted girl was pressed to the fevered bosom of her fated lover; and in these, brief as they were, she felt that she was over-paid for all.
But the struggle even of youth and strength against the most baneful of all diseases could not last for ever—The patient expired in the arms of his devoted mistress; and as he breathed his last, bequeathed to her at once his dying smile, and the foul poison which was coursing through his veins. She saw him laid in his narrow grave; and then she turned away with the conviction that she, too, was plague-smitten!
She did not return to her home: but she stood a few paces from one of the companions of her youth, and bade her bear to her aged parents her blessing and her prayers: and this done she fled to the mountains, and sought out a solitary spot wherein to die—None knew how long she lingered, for she was never seen again in life; but her body was found a few days afterwards beneath a ledge of earth, in a doubled-up position, as though the last spasm had been a bitter one.
She who had sacrificed herself to smooth the last hours of him whom she had loved, perished alone, miserably, in the wild solitude of the Asian hills; and her almost Roman virtue hasmet with no other record than the brief one in which I have here attempted to perpetuate the memory of her devotion and her fate.
It seems as though men apprehended contagion in the very name of the plague, for they have adopted terms that render its repetition needless. Should you inquire for a family which has become compromised, you are told that “they are gone to the mountains,” and you understand at once that they are infected; and when numbers are daily dying about you, in reply to your desire to learn the amount of the evil, you are answered that there are so many, or so many “accidents.”
Every respectable house, and every public establishment, has in its court, or its outer hall, a small wooden erection, precisely like a sentry box raised on rollers, into which you are obliged to enter during a period of plague, before you are admitted into the interior of the building; and where you stand upon a latticed flooring, while aromatic herbs are burnt beneath, whose dense and heavy vapour soon envelops you in a thick smoke, which is said to prevent contagion.
Every competent authority declares the disease to be propagated by contact; and it is singular to see the care with which every individual passing along the public streets avoids all collision with his fellow-passengers. The lower order of Turks are the greatest sufferersfrom the plague, in consequence of the filthy personal habits of the men employed as street-porters and labourers; their law only requiring them to wash their hands and feet before entering their mosques, or repeating their prayers; while I have good authority for stating that this class of individuals purchase an inner garment of dark and coarse material, which they retain day and night without removing it, until it falls to pieces.
If filth be a plague-conductor, it is not, consequently, surprising, that great numbers of these persons are invariably carried off during the year; and the same cause doubtlessly accounts for the excessive mortality among the Jews; who frequently increase the spread of the evil by possessing themselves of the garments of the plague-victims, which they buy secretly from the relatives; reckless, in the event of a good bargain, of the fatal consequences which may ensue alike to themselves and to others.
This may appear to be an excess of madness almost incredible; but it is, nevertheless, an incontrovertible fact.
I know not whether it be a common occurrence for vultures to haunt the environs of the city during the prevalence of plague, but it is certain that we never saw one until its commencement; and that before we left they were to be met with in numbers, in the very centreof the shipping, preying upon the offal that had been flung into the port, or winging their heavy flight along the mountains, as though scenting their revolting banquet.
There is, to me, something frightful in the terror with which, in a season of virulent pestilence, each individual avoids all human contact, and looks upon his best friends as vehicles of destruction.—In the shrinking of relatives from each other, and the unwonted selfishness of usually free and generous spirits. Nor is the sensation a comfortable one, with which you remember that you are yourself considered as infected, and treated with distrust accordingly; and in moments of depression find yourself speculating in your own mind the probability of the fear being well-grounded. Does your head ache?—It is a symptom of plague—Are you sick and faint from heat?—It is even thus that the pestilence frequently declares itself in the first instance—If you take cold upon the Bosphorus, you have laid the corner-stone of the malady—and over-fatigue may induce the exhaustion which lends strength to the incipient evil. It is impossible to describe the effect of this continual necessity for caution: but even this is trifling beside the constant dread of contact with infection. It is vain to affect a mad courage leading you to set at defiance these accumulated dangers; there are moments when an unconquerable dread will creep over the heart, and sicken the spirit.
There are many who do not fear death; but they are habituated to associate it in their minds with an accustomed home, and watching friends, and anxious tenderness; all accessories tending to soften the pang of disease, and to smooth the path of dissolution—Few are they who could contemplate calmly the death-hour of the plague-smitten—the hunted from his home—haunting the hills in his polluted solitude; and contaminating the pure air of Heaven by the fetid breathings of pestilence—shrieking out his madness to the mocking moon,—and dying in his despair on the bare earth; a loathsome thing, to which even a grave is sometimes denied!
And yet, terrible as is the picture which I have drawn almost despite myself, it is surprising how little caution is observed by the Turks to escape from so direful a visitation. They have an absurd superstition that all True Believers who die, either by the hand of the Sultan, or by the visitation of the plague, go straight to Paradise, and to the arms of the Houri, without the intervention of any purgatorial quarantaine; and they account very satisfactorily for the infrequency of plague-cases among the Franks, by declaring that Allah does not love them sufficiently to grant them so desirable a privilege; without troubling themselves to remark the precautions taken by Europeans to prevent the spread of the disease, all of which are utterly neglected by the natives of the country. It is indeed astonishing how blindly the Orientals run the greatest risks, in the most unnecessary and apparently wilful manner.
The Pasha of Broussa was informed by his family physician that hisChiboukjhe, or pipe-bearer, who had been in his service from his boyhood, and to whom he was much attached, had discovered symptoms of plague, which would render it necessary for his Excellency to take such precautions as might tend to ensure the safety of the other members of his family; and accordingly he gave immediate orders for the removal of the harem to a village in the mountains; and ordered all the linen of the inmates of the salemliek to be washed, and their woollen clothing carefully aired and fumigated, ere it was transported thither, together with the male members of his establishment.
The Chiboukjhe, hearing of the intended removal of the household, begged to see his master once more ere he left the city; and the Pasha complied with his request without scruple, as a couple of yards intervening between the plague-patient and his visitor are sufficient to prevent contagion. But the kind-hearted Pasha had not calculated upon his own powers of resistance; and, when the favourite domestic upbraided him with his cruelty in leaving him to die alone, and recalled to his memory a score of circumstances in which he had proved his attachment and devotedness to the welfare of his master; the Pasha, with a recklessness perfectly incomprehensible, ordered that fresh linen should be put upon the patient: that his own garments should be destroyed and replaced by new ones; and that he should be forthwith comfortably placed in an araba, and conveyed to the village whither all the rest of the establishment had been previously removed.
The order was obeyed; and the infected man arrived on the evening of the second day at the mountain-retreat, bringing with him the deadly disease which was rapidly sapping his life-blood. Four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed when the favourite wife of the Pasha, a beautiful girl of sixteen, expired, in a fit of raging madness, upon her cushions: the pestilence had wrought so rapidly in her young and delicate frame that no time had been afforded for precaution or help; the weak blindness of the Pasha had sacrificed his wife, compromised his house, and endangered the whole family. He rushed from one apartment to another like a maniac, but the bolt had fallen; and at midnight his youngest child lay a corpse on its dead mother’s bosom.
They were buried hurriedly beneath the tall trees of the garden; and the earth was butnewly scattered over their graves when another of the Pasha’s wives breathed her last—Suffice it that in the space of ten days, out of a harem consisting of nineteen persons, there remained only an aged negress and two infant children; while the salemliek had also suffered severely, although not in the same proportion.
I could pile anecdote on anecdote upon the same melancholy theme, but my heart sickens as I record them; and that which I have just narrated will sufficiently demonstrate the improbability of this terrific scourge ever being expelled the country by the precautionary measures of the natives. On the subject of the plague the Turks appear to possess neither prudence nor judgment. Their belief in predestination deepens their natural want of energy; and thus the malady is suffered to run its deadly course almost unchecked, and to sweep off its thousands yearly, amid pangs at which humanity shudders.
Another circumstance which must tend to perpetuate the pestilence in the East, exists in the fact that, when the local authorities have ascertained the existence of plague in a dwelling, the house becomes what is termed “compromised;” and after the family of the smitten has been ejected, and sent to the mountains, it is painted throughout its whole interior, cleansed, and fumigated; a process which, owing to the riskincurred by the individuals employed in the work, and the species of quarantaine to which they are subjected during its continuance, is sufficiently expensive to deter the poorer portions of the population from declaring the presence of the disease in their families; as, combined with their forty days of exile in the mountains, during which time they are, of course, unable to earn any thing for the future support of the survivors, it subjects them to want and misery, which they seek to evade by running a greater, but, as they fondly hope, less certain risk. They trust to theirfelech, or constellation, that the infection will not spread, and are undoubtedly, in many cases, the more readily induced to do this, that they have at least the melancholy satisfaction of closing the eyes of their dead, and of seeing them expire amid their “household gods;” instead of knowing that their last hour was one of despairing abandonment, as well as of acute agony; and having to search for their bodies in the desolate spots to which their wretchedness might have driven them.
It has been ascertained that atmospherical changes have no influence on the plague. It rages amid the snow-storm as virulently as beneath the scorching suns of summer. Diet does not affect it—The street-porter, living upon black bread, and fruit frequently immature, andthe Effendi, whose tray is spread with culinary delicacies, are alike liable to be smitten.
Its origin and its cure are both unknown—It is the hair-suspended sword ever ready to do its work of death; and none can foretell the moment in which the blow may come.—It chases the haughty Sultan from his Palace; and the labourer from his hut—It is in the close and thickly-peopled streets of the city, and on board the majestic vessels that ride the blue waves of the Bosphorus—And there is not a sojourner in the East who can forget the first occasion on which, when he asked the meaning of the gloom that hung upon men’s brows, and the mysterious murmur that ran through the crowd on a new outbreak of the malady, he was answered by some passer-by,—“It is the Plague!”
There can be no doubt that at the present time,9the pestilence has spread farther and faster than it might otherwise have done from the extreme scarcity, indeed, I may almost say, want of water in the Capital. The poorer classes, whose means render them unable to purchase this necessary of life at an exorbitant price from the individuals who established an extemporaneous trade, by freighting their caïques with water at the European villages on the Channel, and vending it in the city, being necessitated to make use of foul and stagnant pools for the purposeof preparing their food; and to dispense almost entirely with a beverage generally taken to excess by both sexes.
As the wells and tanks of the nearest hamlets failed, the water-sellers extended their voyages even to Therapia; and their demands became comparatively extravagant. Men watched the clouds in vain—the sun set in a blaze of gold and purple; and morning broke in blushes from behind the Asian mountains—the noon-day sky was blue and bright—not a vapour passed across its beauty—and no rain fell. Women crowded about the fountains in the vain hope that each moment the exhausted spring might well out afresh—Children wept, and asked vainly for their accustomed draught; the marble basins of the city remained empty, and the bright sunbeams played upon the smooth surface of the glittering stone.
On the Asian shore, the waters had not yet failed; and the famous fountain of Scutari, fed by a mighty volume descending from the dusky mountain of Bulgurlhu, still poured forth its flashing stream; but, from some superstition, whose nature I was unable to ascertain, the authorities did not permit the transfer of water from the Asiatic to the European shore; and this noble fountain, which would have supplied all the wants of the city, was suffered to flow on, and waste its stream in the channel.
I shall not easily forget the constant succession of busy human beings, who, from day-dawn to dusk, thronged the mouth of a well not a hundred paces from our residence at Yenikeuÿ. Every cistern in the lower quarter of the village had become exhausted; but this solitary well, fed from a mountain source, still held out; and it was only by the necessity of lengthening the ropes to which the buckets were affixed, and the consequent increase of labour required to raise them, that any diminution of the water could be perceived.
Children of ten or twelve years of age could no longer, as heretofore, accomplish this portion of the household toil: nor would they, even had their strength sufficed to the effort, have been able to make it: for as the demand for water increased on all sides, the battle was truly to the strong at the village well. Men who met as friends, and greeted each other kindly as they approached it, strove and struggled for precedence, until they at length parted in wrath, and frequently with blows; while the owners of the neighbouring cottages, to whose exclusive use this spring had hitherto been considered sacred, murmured in vain at the intrusion on their privileges, and were fain to strive and struggle like the strangers.
The reason adduced by the Greeks for the abundance of water in this well, was the sanctity conferred on it by the priesthood at the close of the previous vintage; when they had made a solemn procession to its mouth, and flung in a handful of small silver coins, contributed for the purpose by the poorer inhabitants of the village, a small vase of holy water, and a pinch of consecrated salt!
While the drought was at its height, a community of Turning Dervishes made a pilgrimage to the Sweet Waters; where the Barbyses, always a very inconsiderable stream, had shrunk to half its accustomed volume; and there, having previously prostrated themselves in prayer, they performed their evolutions round the principal cistern of the valley; and at a certain point of the ceremony flung into the air small vessels of red clay, fresh from the potter’s hands, while, as they fell back, they besought that every empty tank might overflow, and every goblet be filled.
The spectacle was a very striking one; and it was followed by the observance of another yet more touching. At dusk the village children, walking two and two, and each carrying a bunch of wild flowers, drew near the cistern in their turn; and sang, to one of the thrilling melodies of the country, a hymn of supplication; while at the conclusion of each stanza, they scattered a portion of the blossoms over the shattered fragments of the vases flung into the basin by the Dervishes.
Nothing could be more affecting! Man, shrinking under a consciousness of his unworthiness, put his prayer into the mouth of innocent infancy; as though he trusted to the supplication uttered by pure lips and guileless hearts, when he dared not hope for mercy through his own agency. Every evening during the drought, that “linked chain” of childhood repaired to the same spot, and raised the same song of entreaty to an all-powerful Creator; and the echoes of the Valley flung back the infant voices of the choir as they swelled upon the wind of evening with a pathos which affected me to tears. It was only on the day preceding that of our departure from Constantinople that the prayer was answered; and, as the light vapoury rain fell upon the parched and yawning earth, my thought instantly reverted to the infant choristers of the Sweet Waters; whose artless hymn may be freely translated as follows:—
HYMN OF THE TURKISH CHILDREN.