DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.
Reading edition
LIST OF PLATES.
To face Page
Portrait of Miss Pardoe, to face the Vignette
Palace of the Sweet Waters 6
Court of the Mosque of Eyoub 9
Eyoub 11
The Golden Horn, from the Cemetery of Eyoub 12
Cooling-room of a Hammām 15
Scene from above the New Palace of Beshik-Tash 17
The Bosphorus, from above Beshik-Tash, looking North 19
The Castles of Europe and Asia 21
Fountain near the Asian Valley of Sweet Waters, on the Bosphorus 22
Aqueduct of the Emperor Valens, near Pyrgo 24
Mausoleum of Solyman the Magnificent, and Roxalana 26
Interior of the Mausoleum of Sultan Solyman 27
Yeni Djami, or Mosque of the Sultana Validè 28
Great Avenue in the Tchartchi 29
The Armoury Bazār 31
A Scene in the Tchartchi 32
Kaïmac Shop in the Tchartchi 34
Fountain in Galata 37
View from Mount Bulgurlhu 39
Turkish Country Houses, on the Bosphorus 40
Mosque of Sultana Validè, from the Port 43
The Atmeidan, or Hippodrome 45
Court of the Mosque of Sultan Achmet 47
Column of Marcian 48
Cemetery of Scutari 50
Fountain at Scutari 53
Musicians at the Asian Valley of Sweet Waters 55
The Summer Palace at Beglier-Bey 57
Court and Fountain of St. Sophia 61
Interior of St. Sophia’s 63
View from the Ocmeidan 64
Column of Theodosius 66
Fountain and Square of St. Sophia 69
Third Court of the Seraï Bournou 70
Fourth Court of the Seraï Bournou 71
Fountain and Market at Top-hannè 72
The City Walls, descending to the Port 74
Top-Kapousi, or the Cannongate 76
Fountain and Mosque of Chazade 79
Mosque of Suleimaniè, from the Seraskier’s Tower 80
Interior of the Mosque of Suleimaniè 81
Mihrab of the Mosque of Suleimaniè 82
The Port of Constantinople 83
Entrance to the Black Sea, from the Giant’s Grave 84
The Bosphorus, opposite the Genoese Castle 85
Therapia, and the Giant’s Grave 86
Buyukdèrè, from the Giant’s Grave 88
Palace of Belisarius 89
The Seraglio Point 91
Yenikeuij, on the Bosphorus 92
Dolma-Batchè, from the Necropolis of Pera 94
A Bendt, in the Forest above Belgrade 96
Aqueduct of Valens, in the City 99
Cistern of Ben-Veber-Direg, or the Thousand and One 100
Yèrè-Batan-Seraï 103
Mosque of Bajazet, with the Seraskier’s Gate 106
Court of the Mosque of Bajazet 107
The Sea of Marmora, from the Seraskier’s Tower 109
Riven Tower, near the Top-Kapousi 110
Istenia, near Therapia 111
The Arsenal, from Pera 113
The Tower of Galata 115
The Floating Bridge 116
The Tchernberlè Tash, or Burnt Pillar 117
View from the Ferry at Scutari 118
Constantinople, from Scutari 121
Entrance to the Seven Towers 122
A Turkish Apartment, in the Fanar 125
The Mosque of Osmaniè, from the Slave-Market 127
The Petit Champ-des-Morts, Pera 130
Tomb in the Cemetery of Scutari 132
The Guz-Couli, or Maiden’s Tower 134
Bebec, on the Bosphorus 136
A Public Khan 138
Fort Beil-Gorod 142
Aqueduct of Baghtchè-Keuï 143
View through the Aqueduct of Baghtchè-Keuï 145
A Coffee-Kiosque, on the Port 147
Map of the Environs of Constantinople, with the Thracian Bosphorus 151
THE BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS.
“’Tis a grand sight, from off the ‘Giant’s Grave’, To watch the progress of those rolling seas Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave Europe and Asia.” Byron.
Every enjoyment of life has three distinct stages—anticipation—reality—and reminiscence; and it is more difficult than it at first appears to be, to decide on the comparative extent and value of each. Hope is the most extravagant and imaginative; action, the most engrossing and tangible; and memory, the most calm, and durable, and sober.
I feel this truth forcibly at a moment like the present, when, after having laid aside the pen with which, upon the glorious shores of the Bosphorus, I recorded the observations growing out of passing circumstances, and glowing with reality and action, I am once more called upon mentally to retrace my steps. For months before I visited the picturesque capital of Turkey, I had nourished visions as bright and as impalpable as the rainbow. I anticipated I knew not what—adventures as numerous and as romantic as those of the “Thousand and One Nights;” and I dreamt dreams impossible of accomplishment; not caring to inquire too curiously of my reason whether such things would be; but content to inhabit my cloud-land castle, and to look down from the unstable edifice in all the luxury growing out of my self-created images.
When I was subsequently dwelling in the “City of the Sultan,” and that reality had succeeded to anticipation, much of the mist of romance, indeed, rolled away; but the fair face of the landscape suffered little from its absence, for Constantinople needs no aid from the imagination to make it one of the brightest gems in the diadem of nature: its clear calm sky, its glittering sea, its amphitheatre of thickly-peopled hills, its geographical position, its political importance, and, above all, its surpassing novelty, tend to make every day and every hour in that gorgeous scene, and under that sunny sky, a season of intense enjoyment; while the varying character of the native population, constituted as it is of such anomalous materials—the truthful Turk, the wily Greek, the stately Armenian, and the timid Jew—coupled with the blended air of mystery and of magnificence which pervades the whole locality, suffice to render the Turkish metropolis a sojourn of unwearied and exciting delight: and when, favoured by circumstances which seemed to shape themselves to my wishes in a manner to make me doubt whether the spells of fairy-land were indeed all broken, I was enabled to penetrate to the very centre of Turkish society, and to domesticate myself both with princes and peasants, I found that the fallacies which had evaporated, would have been but a sorry exchange for the reality that remained; and I gave the advantage to the fact over the anticipation.
And now, once more, when the heat and the hurry of the expedition are over, when the pride and the pageantry have passed away, and that I am preparing to live over again that brief period of delight—conjured back, as by magic, in gazing on the extraordinarily faithful and admirable sketches which lie upon my table in “merrie England,” from the pencil of Mr. Bartlett,—I am tempted to believe that my hour of real enjoyment has arrived; an hour which I may prolong or multiply at my pleasure, by memories of scenes well known, and individuals vividly remembered—of beauty and of luxury, of legend and of song. I look back upon my residence at Constantinople and its environs as upon a bright vision, which I am glad to have an opportunity of calling up once more, and investing with tangibility: and thus I feel that I am now, perhaps, enjoying the true and enduring privilege of the traveller, as I turn from one graphic sketch to another, and recall the circumstances and incidents which have tended to impress each spot upon my memory; while I am compelled to doubt if the romance of anticipation, or the fatigue and risk of positive residence, indeed outweighed the quiet memories which throng about me to-day, and people my cheerful apartment with by-gone brilliant shapes, and scenes never to be forgotten.
The great charm of Constantinople to an European eye exists in the extreme novelty, which is in itself a spell; for not only the whole locality, but all its accessories, are so unlike what the traveller has left behind him in the West, that every group is a study, and every incident a lesson; and he feels at once the necessity of flinging from him a thousand factitious wants and narrow conventional prejudices, and of looking calmly and dispassionately upon men and scenes wholly dissimilar to those with which he had previously been acquainted.
Nor is even this all; for the march of expediency has been so rapid, and the mania for reform so active during the reign of the present Sultan, that the most extraordinary changes are constantly taking place, not only in the habits and feelings of the people, but in the very aspect of their city. The beautiful remains of Moorish architecture, so essentially Oriental in their character, are giving place to European innovation; the heavy, drooping, convoluted roofs of the fountains are disappearing, to make room for light iron railings; and the bright frescoes and painted screens of the wooden palaces are superseded by columns of sculptured marble; an anomaly sufficiently startling to convince the traveller that it is only a first step towards the total extinction of that peculiar and fairy-like species of architecture which renders the vicinity of the Bosphorus so unlike every other locality, that it appears to be rather the embodyment of a “Midsummer night’s dream,” than a mere earthly landscape.
If it be indeed desirable to
“Catch the living manners as they rise,”
it can be no less so to preserve a record of the past. There is a fine moral in the representation of things that have passed away, if it be read aright. We gaze on the pictured glories of Tyre and Sidon, of Nineveh and Carthage, and the lesson is a salutary one. In after-years, in like manner, when the Constantinople of to-day shall have become changed, (as it surely will,) into a mere city of European palaces, and marts, and manufactories, it will be a reposing place for the spirit to dwell upon the semblance of that which it once was, while Turkey was yet (ostensibly at least,) an independent Empire, with a distinct faith, and feeling, and principle of existence; ere the progress of events, political as well as moral, swept away, with the unsparing besom of reform, the web which the spider of antiquity had woven about “the palaces of the Caliphs.”