Cities of the Dawn

There are few places naturally so picturesque – no city where the suburbs are so charming. One never wearies of Scutari, Gallipoli, washed by the splendid waters of the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, or those of that magnificent harbour, the Golden Horn, which extends eight miles, and affords an anchorage for a fleet of twelve hundred vessels. Indeed, whether viewed from sea or land, or from such a wonderful standpoint as the marble tower of the Seraskierat, Constantinople on its seven hills, divided as it were between Europe and Asia, presents a marvellous display of scenic beauty. You gaze on stately white palaces, surrounded by domes, towers, cupolas, standing amidst tier above tier of many-coloured dwellings, surrounded on all sides by graceful masses of dark cypresses and sombre pines. High above all rises the grand marble mosque of St. Sophia, resplendent with mosaics, and sending up heavenwards its lofty minarets, whence five times a day the cry of the muezzin calls the world to prayer. As you look and admire, you feel, with the poet,

‘That every prospect pleases,And only man is vile’ —

that is, ever since the Turk has been there. And thus it appears that Constantinople has been, socially and politically, a centre of abominations. It was in 1453 that Mahomet II. took it as his own, and it is there that the unspeakable Turk has ever since remained, and mainly in consequence of English diplomacy and the prodigal expenditure of English treasure and blood. The climax was reached in the days of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe – the Great Elchi, as he was termed. He insisted on reforms, and the Sultan granted them. He insisted that all religions should be equal in the eye of the law, and the precious boon was at once declared. Under the pressure of the Great Elchi, the Sultan issued a proclamation, stating his desire of renewing and enlarging the numerous improvements suggested in his institutions, with a view of making them worthy of the place which his empire held among civilized nations. He was anxious, he said, to promote the happiness of his people, who in his sight were all equal and equally dear. ‘Every distinction or designation tending to make any class of subjects of my empire inferior to any other class on account of their religion, language, or race shall be for ever effaced.’ No one was to be hindered in future on account of his religious creed; no one was to be compelled to change his religion. Such was the spirit of the famous hatti Humayun of 1856. Then came the Treaty of Paris, to destroy the influence of England in the East. The French cared nothing for Turkish reform, and have cared nothing ever since. Bulgarian atrocities, murder and massacre in Cyprus, murder and massacre on a larger scale in Armenia or wherever Armenians are gathered together – of these things the gay world of Paris takes little heed, except when an occasion offers to sneer at John Bull. What cares La Belle France, so long as it has its boulevards and theatres, for the deadly sufferings of any nationality? When did it ever fight for men and women dying by the thousand – ay, tens of thousands, under the despotic sway of a Sultan Abdul Hamid? France does not fight; its aim is to sneer at others and to glorify itself, to make better people as heartless, as cynical, as frivolous as itself. And are we much better – we, whose people, and nobles, and courtiers, and statesmen, and princes, have just done throwing themselves under the feet of the Czar? Yes, but John Bull can act when he has a mind – that is, when he has his inferiors to deal with. It was beautiful when we brought Greece on her knees over the Don Pacifico affair! How bitterly we made China pay for her attack on the Arrow! How we settled the would-be Sultan of Zanzibar! How we have smitten the Dervishes hip and thigh! When I was in Ceylon, I had an interesting interview with Arabi Pasha. I left him hoping, and that is what we all do as regards Turkish affairs – hoping for what never comes.

In the Dardanelles we make our first acquaintance with the Turk. He arrives in a small steamer, with a crew of men wearing the red fez, and at the stern of his boat floats the red flag of Turkey, bearing the crescent. He gives us permission to pursue our way past the forts on either side at the mouth and along the Dardanelles, at the entrance to which point are lying off on our right the far-famed plains of windy Troy. I see also a couple of ironclads, but of what nationality I cannot exactly make out. We are soon out of the Dardanelles, and at Gallipoli, the last town on the European side, and we enter the Sea of Marmora. In current language, Constantinople includes Stamboul, Galata, and its suburbs, which stretch up both sides of the Bosphorus. Galata, the mercantile and shipping quarter, occupies the point and slopes at the right-hand side of the Golden Horn.

Constantinople looks best at a distance. It is true here that distance lends enchantment to the view. Outside it glitters with magnificence. Inside it is foul and beastly, with pavements detestable to walk along or drive, with ruins at every corner, and with refuse lying to fester in the blazing sun all day long – certainly a remarkable illustration of what Lord Palmerston affirmed, that dirt was only matter in the wrong place. If you drive you are choked with dust, and the streets are by no means broad enough for the constant business and bustle. Enter the mosques, and you are astonished at their grandeur and the air of desolation and neglect all round. On the waters you miss the gay caique, now superseded by the steam-ferries, ever vomiting clouds of sulphurous smoke. In the city you see the tramcar, a very shabby one, doing a roaring trade. Down by the harbour you see the police, well armed and in small detachments, carefully guarding the streets. The men, with the exception of the red fez, mostly wear the European costume. The women you see in the streets are old and ugly, and, happily, veiled, so that you see nothing of their ugliness but the nose and eyes. Some of the little urchins and girls are very bright-looking, but I fancy they are mostly Greeks. The Turkish boy of the middle class seemed to me very heavy, but, however that may be, he develops into a fine man, with a grand dark face and powerful nose, and looks especially well when on his Arab steed – small, but active and strong, as if he were born to drive everyone before him. Alas! in his little shop he seems very listless and apathetic, but the man in the street is very pertinacious, and I have just bought an elegant walking-stick for half a crown, after being asked four shillings, which I hold to be the cheapest bargain I have made for some time.

We are quite mistaken in England as to the safety of walking the streets in Constantinople. I heard of a row last night, but by day the streets are quite as secure as they are in London. One thing that astonishes me is the utter ignorance of the people of what is going on outside respecting Turkish affairs, and the action, if any, of the diplomatists. You never hear a word on the subject. To sell seems to be the only aim of the Turk. The shops are prodigious. In London their owners would be a great middle class, and form an enlightened public opinion. Here they do nothing of the kind, and there is not a street that has a decent pavement nor a corner that is not a dunghill. There seems to be no attempt at improvement. The dogs – very much like Australian dingoes – bark and bite all day and howl all night. Confusion and decay seem to reign paramount. Now and then you come to an open space – as at the old slave-market, the mosques, and the Hippodrome, where a few trees, chiefly acacias, manage to live, and then you plunge into Holywell Street as it existed half a century back, and all is darkness and dirt again.

Constantinople seems to live chiefly on corn imported from Roumelia and Bulgaria; but they say they are going to open up Asia Minor by means of railways, and the wheat-grower there will then have his chance. There are few liquor-shops, but many for the sale of lemon-and-water and grapes and melons. In many a shop I see Sunlight Soap and the biscuits of Huntley and Palmer and Peek and Frean. The donkeys and horses have an awful time of it as they go along the narrow streets, with panniers on each side, which appear to get in everyone’s way. Then comes a rickety waggon, drawn by two big oxen, which seem as if they must grind the pedestrian to powder. Then follows the porter, perspiring and bending under his heavy load, and the aged crone, more or less veiled, as if she had – which she has not, unhappily – a glimpse of female charm to display. Now and then you meet a priest with his red-and-white turban and long brown robe, and if you make your way into a mosque – and they are all worth visiting – there, in a little wooden recess, seated cross-legged on an Indian mat, you will find a priest or devout layman by himself, repeating verses of the Koran. The mosques are grotesque outside, but inspiring from their size inside.

Constantinople is not the place to come to on a hot November day, and the commercial port is, I hold, utterly unfit for shipping. We have a good deal of diarrhoea on board, nor can you wonder, when you remember that into this one spot flows all the filth and sewage of Galata. It is worse than Naples; it is worse than Athens, and that is saying a good deal. Coleridge’s Cologne, with its numerous stenches, is nothing to it. If there be any truth in sanitary science, there must be an awful waste of life in these parts. Here we hear not a whisper of the Turkish crisis, or of the driving out of the Turk, ‘bag and baggage,’ as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe wrote fifty years before Mr. Gladstone adopted the celebrated phrase. Be that as it may, Constantinople gives you an idea of a densely-populated city. It is with real difficulty that you make your way anywhere. The fat official Turk, who dines in some gorgeous palace – and the place is full of them – and drives in his brougham and pair, may have an easy time of it; but the majority of the inhabitants, in their narrow shops and darkened houses, must have a bad time of it. I sigh for the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest. Under this pestiferous atmosphere and bright, blazing sun, it is impossible to do anything but sleep; but that is not easy in one’s small cabin, floating on this wide waste of sewage. There seems nothing to amuse the people. In the course of my peregrinations I met with but one minstrel, and he was far away. Next to the mosques, the coolest place I have yet visited is the new museum, with a fine collection of Greek and Roman and Egyptian antiquities; but I am no friend to a hurried visit to a museum, which leaves the mind rather confused and uninformed. As yet I have made no attempt to penetrate into the mysteries of the harem. For one thing, I am rather past that sort of thing. But if I may judge from what I have seen outside the harem, there can be but little to tempt one to enter within; and with the poet I exclaim, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’

I fancy we are most of us tired of Constantinople. To me it is a place where a little sight-seeing goes a long way. Our gallant captain, on the contrary, tells me that he could put in three months here very well. As it is, there are about 2,000 English here, to say nothing of naturalized Greeks and Maltese. I suppose Constantinople is not a bad place for a short residence. The hotels are good, and in some you may have a bedroom for four francs a day. Provisions are not dear, but house-rent is very expensive. The population of the place is dense, at which I wonder, as Constantinople seems to me the most unhealthy city I have ever seen. The only nuisances are the guides, who will persist in following you everywhere, and whose knowledge of English and of the things you really want to know is very limited. For instance, I passed two obelisks one day. I asked my guide about them. ‘They come from Egypt,’ was his reply. I could have told him as much myself.

If you need rest, seek it not in Constantinople, with its noisy crowds by day and its noisy dogs by night; seek it not in its narrow streets, where horses and asses and big bullocks, dragging along the most rickety of waggons, are ever to be seen; seek it not as you drive along its uneven and disgracefully-paved streets. The mosques are cool and spacious – there you may rest; but if there is a service, you are not permitted to remain unless you are a Mohammedan. One advantage of the mosques is that there is generally a large open space attached to them, where people can wash themselves and also hold a market. People seem to do much as they like, as they talk and smoke and play cards, and indulge in coffee or lemon-and-water. I have never yet seen a drunken man or – what is worse – a drunken woman, and yet an English lady, a clergyman’s wife, told me that she only went on shore once, and was so shocked that she resolved never to set foot in the place again. The people were so degraded; the poor porters were so overburdened; and, then, they were all such awful idolaters. I presume the lady knows nothing of parts of London where worse sights are to be seen every day.

The Bosphorus is beautiful beyond description. It beats the Rhine, it beats the American Hudson; indeed, it is the grandest panorama in the world. At its back rise the green wooded hills, and the front is lined with pleasant villas and palaces – white or yellow, built in Turkish fashion, with innumerable windows everywhere. There must be great wealth in the district to build and support such places. Everywhere there is a great appearance of religion. Go into a mosque any hour you will, and you see a priest or layman sitting in a quiet corner, fenced with a wooden rail, cross-legged, repeating the Koran. One of the oddest sights I saw in the grand Mosque of St. Sophia was that of an old-fashioned London clock. One of my troubles as I explored the mosque – the floor of which is lined with Indian matting – was to keep on my Turkish slippers. An attendant who followed me had to stoop down every minute to put them on, that I might not reveal the deck-shoes which I wore inside. A gentleman who had visited the mosque told me that on one occasion, when he took off a pair of new boots there which he was wearing, he never saw them again.

It is wonderful how cheap provisions are: beef, threepence a pound; bread, a halfpenny; grapes, a halfpenny; fowls for sevenpence; and mountains of melons everywhere. There is free education, and an abundant supply of schools. The labouring classes are well employed. The English here are chiefly merchants or agents or engineers. On our way back we pass that favourite resort of the Turkish holiday-makers – the Valley of Sweet Waters – and have a good view of the hospital at Scutari, built by Florence Nightingale – now utilized as barracks – and of the monuments in front of the cemetery in memory of the British officers and soldiers who died during the Crimean War.

It is a relief to us all to get back into the Dardanelles and sail over the spot where Xerxes built his famous bridge, the narrow strait across which Leander swam nightly to visit his lady-love – a feat performed by our great poet Byron at a later age – and wander in fancy as we again catch sight of the plains of Troy, the spot where the Greek hero Protesilaus first struck the Trojan strand, and thus gave occasion to our Wordsworth to write his immortal poem – a poem that will be read and admired when all the puny poets of the present age are dead and forgotten. Out in the Ægean Sea the weather is almost cool and delightfully refreshing, just like a fine morning in spring at home. The first isle of any importance we make is Tenedos, behind which, on the mainland, lies Troas, visited by the Apostle Paul. To the north lies Besika Bay, where once the French and English fleets assembled prior to their passage of the Dardanelles, and where the British fleet, under Admiral Hornby, lay in 1887–88 during the Russo-Turkish War. Next we reach the ancient Lectum, the most westernly point of Asia, and get a glimpse of the beautiful island of Mitylene, the ancient Lesbos. Mitylene, on the east coast, is prettily situated, and does a considerable trade. There are few remains of the ancient city. The island has 115,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks.

CHAPTER VIII

SMYRNA

I write now from one of the most ancient cities in the world. There is a wonderful lot of ancient history in these parts. The mind quite staggers under the ever-accumulating load of facts and figures and legends. The Æolians, who founded on this site the first Greek city, claimed it as the birthplace of Homer. It was there that his poetry flourished; then, under the successors of Alexander, it became celebrated for its schools of science and medicine. Christianity early made its way into Smyrna, which has enjoyed the reputation of being one of the Seven Churches of Asia alluded to in Revelation. It was there that Polycarp suffered martyrdom, and it is there they still show you, or profess to show you, his tomb. Defended by the Knights of Rhodes, Smyrna fell when Timur, the terrible Mogul, appeared before it and put all that breathed to the sword. As it was, I felt satisfied and charmed with modern Smyrna, and did not climb the hill behind on which stands the ruins of a castle, and where brigands still lie in wait for the unwary traveller. Nor did I take the train to Ephesus, a run of nearly two hours, to wander under the hot sun and amidst the rough winds to see what remains, amidst bushes and rocks and cornfields, of ancient Ephesus – notwithstanding the fact that there Christian synods have been held, and that in a cave adjoining slept those marvellous Seven Sleepers; that there stood the temple of the goddess Diana, whose worshippers the great Apostle of the Gentiles woke up to cry excitedly for the craft by which they lived. It is a scene of desolation, which certainly does not repay the ordinary tourist the trouble of a visit.

But I revelled in Smyrna – one of the brightest, cleanest, and most prosperous cities under Turkish sway. Its white houses, chiefly hotels and restaurants and theatres, line the bay, with dense shipping in the forefront, while the mountains behind, up the slopes of which modern Smyrna is gradually planting herself, act as guard and shelter. At the time of my visit there stretched across the bay quite an imposing display of ironclads of all nations – American, English, Italian, French – and it made me shudder to think of them bombarding this scene of life and gaiety and spreading terror amongst its hard-working people. A tramway runs along the whole front of the city for about a couple of miles, and, as you stand thinking of the wonders of modern civilization, you hear a bell tinkle, and see half a dozen camels laden with sacks of grain striding past, generally led by a man on a donkey. Sometimes the donkey had no rider, and yet the patient camel followed all the same. It was intensely amusing: the contrast between the little donkey leading and the big camel behind. It set me thinking of the many parallel passages in modern history – of parties, Churches, States, led by donkeys. Smyrna has an enormous bazaar, into which it is easier to find one’s way than to get out. It has fine mosques and handsome Greek churches. It shelters the ships and people of all nations, but my chief delight was to watch the string of camels as they ever came and went. Even in the narrow passages of the bazaar there were the camels, and it was all you could do to get out of the way of these grand animals, for such they were.

One place that I visited much interested me. It was the Sailors’ Rest on the quay, a fine room with a library and reading-room, where the sailors come and go, and where they are supplied with refreshments of a non-intoxicating character, carried on in connection with the Greek Evangelical Alliance, founded in Smyrna in 1883. Depression in business, and consequent poverty and other causes, such as the declining number of British merchants who come to Smyrna, ousted, I presume, by more enterprising rivals, and troubles in the interior, have hindered the work, which, however, is successfully carried on. The average attendance last year was: Sunday morning service, 83; afternoon, 59; Tuesday prayer-meeting, 41; Gospel service at the Rest, 50. At the Sunday-school the average attendance has been about 60. Owing to the shifting population of Smyrna, many of the church members have become scattered in many lands. The bitterest enemies of the work are the members of the Orthodox Greek Church, who have no sympathy with an Evangelical Alliance of any kind, and care not a rap for the union of the Churches. As an illustration, take the following: ‘In 1895 it was expected that the official permit for the building of a chapel on a site assigned by Government would be granted to the Evangelicals. In fact, in the middle of January permission was granted for the opening of the school, but the local authorities, desiring to avoid any possible outbreak on the part of ‘the Orthodox,’ tried to bring about a friendly compromise. It was all in vain, the Orthodox declaring that they would listen to no terms unless the Evangelicals were entirely thrust out from the central quarter of the town, and that they would never allow the chapel to be built or the site prepared for it. Thus foiled, the Evangelicals opened their school, but ‘the Orthodox’ attacked the building with stones, defacing it almost entirely, and quite destroying all the furniture within. The result was that the Evangelicals had to commence their labours anew elsewhere. After two months’ labour the ire of the Orthodox was again aroused; they drove out the workmen, pulled down part of the walls, and finally remained masters of the situation. It is true that fifteen of the Orthodox were imprisoned, but the Evangelicals were advised to leave the situation also, and to remove to some other site more acceptable to their opponents. This advice the Evangelicals refused to accept, and, after a long delay, by the personal efforts and goodwill of the new Turkish Governor the building was restored. Orthodoxy seemed to be a sad stumbling-block in the way of good work everywhere. The Sailors’ Rest at Smyrna may be much aided by British Christians, both by presents of books or by pecuniary contributions. During the last year it seems that 229 visits have been paid to ships, 64 bags of books sent out, 20 pledges taken. I fear there is a good deal of drunkenness in Smyrna. Seven thousand six hundred visits have been made in the year by sailors to the Rest, 797 have attended the meetings, 676 Bibles, Testaments, and portions have been given away, and many were the letters sent home by sailors from the Rest. It seems to me that it might be kept open a little later at night with advantage, as I find it is the fashion to keep many of the drinking-shops open all night. The work among the Greeks has been reviving, and it is regarded as hopeful. The meetings are well attended, and especially so the Wednesday evening meeting in the Corner Room at the Rest. This meeting is described as the fishing-net of the Greek work, as many of those who became regular attendants at the other services held in the American Chapel began at the Rest. At Smyrna our American fellow-passengers hear the result of the Presidential contest in America, and greatly rejoice. Their country is saved – at any rate, this time. Local lines of steamers run from Smyrna to Messina and Beirut, touching at all the important coast towns and at several of the islands, at which we have a peep, such as Cos, the birthplace of Hippocrates; Halicarnassus, where Herodotus was born, and where stood the famous mausoleum, one of the wonders of the world; and Rhodes, far-famed. But we may not tarry even in order to gratify such a laudable curiosity; no, not even at Cyprus, which has prospered so much under English rule. It is enough for us to have explored Smyrna, a city which in every way, as regards cleanliness in the streets and the absence of abominable smells, is a great improvement on Constantinople. It has a population of nearly half a million, of which less than one-fourth is Moslem, and more than half Greek. There are large Armenian and Jewish colonies, that of the Jews, of course, being the most squalid, unhealthy and debased. The town is governed by a municipality. Europeans are under the jurisdiction of their consuls. Its gas lights beamed on us brilliantly as we steamed out in the dark into the open sea. The one nuisance of Smyrna are the boys, who go to learn English at the schools taught by the missionaries, and these persistently pester you to be taken on as guides. The professional guides are nuisance enough, but these boys are infinitely worse.