From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

The report, coming from such a source, and accompanied by the fullest evidence, created a profound sensation in England. Meetings were held in all parts of the country to express the public indignation; and not only at the brutal Turks, but at their own government for the light and flippant way in which it had treated such horrors: the more so that among the powers of Europe, England was the supporter of Turkey, and thus might be considered as herself guilty, unless she uttered her indignant protest in the name of humanity and civilization.

But why should the people of Christian England wonder at these things, or at any act of violence and blood done by such hands? The Turk has not changed his nature in the four hundred years that he has lived, or rather camped, in Europe. He is still a Tartar and half a savage. Here and there may be found a noble specimen of the race, in some old sheik, who rules a tribe, and exercises hospitality in a rude but generous fashion, and who looks like an ancient patriarch as he sits at his tent door in the cool of the day. Enthusiastic travellers may tell us of some grand old Turk who is like "a fine old English gentleman," but such cases are exceptional. The mass of the people are Tartars, as much as when they roamed the deserts of Central Asia. The wild blood is in them still, with every brutal instinct intensified by religion. All Mussulmans are nursed in such contempt and scorn of the rest of mankind, that when once their passions are aroused, it is impossible for them to exercise either justice or mercy. No tie of a common humanity binds them to the rest of the human race. The followers of the Prophet are lifted to such a height above those who are not believers, that the sufferings of others are nothing to them. If called to "rise and slay," they obey the command without the slightest feeling of pity or remorse.

With such a people it is impossible to deal as with other nations. There is no common ground to stand upon. They care no more for "Christian dogs," nor so much, as they do for the dogs that howl and yelp in the streets of Constantinople. Their religious fanaticism extinguishes every feeling of a common nature. Has not Europe a right to put some restraint on passions so lawless and violent, and thus to stop such frightful massacres as have this very year deluged her soil with innocent blood?

The campaign in Servia is now over. An armistice has been agreed upon for six weeks, and as the winter is at hand, hostilities cannot be resumed before spring. Meanwhile European diplomacy will be at work to settle the conflict without another resort to arms. Russia appears as the protector and supporter of Servia. She asks for a conference of the six powers – England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Russia – a conference to decide on the fate of Turkey, yet from which Turkey shall be excluded. Already intimations are given out of the nature of the terms which Russia will propose. Turkey has promised reform for the protection and safety of her Christian populations. But experience has proved that her promises are good for nothing. Either they are made in bad faith, and are not intended to be kept, or she has no power to enforce them in the face of a fanatical Mohammedan population. It is now demanded, in order to secure the Christian population absolute protection, that these reforms shall be carried out under the eye of foreign commissioners in the different provinces, supported by an armed force. This is indeed an entering wedge, with a very sharp edge too, and driven home with tremendous power. If Turkey grants this, she may as well abdicate her authority over her revolted provinces. But Europe can be contented with nothing less, for without this there is absolutely no safety for Christians in any lands cursed by the rule of the Turk.

It is quite probable that the negotiations will issue in some sort of autonomy for the disaffected provinces. This has been already granted to Wallachia and Moldavia (which have been united under the name of Roumania), the result of which has been to bring quietness and peace. It has been granted to Servia. Their connection with the Porte is only nominal, being limited to the payment of an annual tribute; while even this nominal dependence has the good effect of warning off other powers, such as Austria and Russia, from taking possession. If this same degree of independence could be extended to Bulgaria and to Bosnia and Herzegovina, there would be a belt of Christian states, which would be virtually independent, drawn around Turkey, which would confine within smaller space the range of Moslem domination in Europe.

And yet even that is not the end, nor will it be the final settlement of the Eastern question. That will not be reached until some other power, or joint powers, hold Constantinople. That is the eye of the East; that is the jewel of the world; and so long as it remains in the hands of the Turks, it will be an object of envy, of ambition, and of war.

The late Charles Sumner used to say that "a question is never settled until it is settled right;" and it cannot be right that a position which is the most central and regal in all the earth should be held forever by a barbarian power.

There is a saying in the East that "where the Turk comes the grass never grows." Is it not time that these Tartar hordes, that have so long held dominion in Europe, should return into the deserts from which they came, leaving the grass to spring up from under their departing feet?

But some Christian people and missionaries dread such an issue, because they think that it is a struggle between the Russian and the Turk, and that if the Turk goes out the Russian must come in. But is there no other alternative? Is there not political wisdom enough in all Europe to make another settlement, and power enough to enforce their will? England holds Malta and Gibraltar, and France holds Algeria: cannot both hold Constantinople? Their combined fleets could sweep every Russian ship out of the Black Sea, as they did in the Crimean war. Drawn up in the Bosphorus, they could so guard that strait that no Russian flag should fly on the Seraskier or Galata towers. Why may not Constantinople be placed under the protection of all nations for the common benefit of all? But for this, the first necessity is that the Turk should take himself out of the way.

This, I believe, will come; but it will not come without a struggle. The Turks are not going to depart out of Europe at the first invitation of Russia, or of all Europe combined. They have shown that they are a formidable foe. When this war began, some who had been looking and longing for the destruction of Turkey thought this was the beginning of the end; enthusiastic students of prophecy saw in it "the drying up of the Euphrates." All these had better moderate their expectations. Admitting that the final end will be the overthrow of the Mohammedan power in Europe, yet this end may be many years in coming. "The sick man" is not dead, and he will not die quietly and peacefully, as an old man breathes his last. He will not gather up his feet into his bed, and turn his face to the wall, and give up the ghost. He will die on the field of battle, and his death-struggles will be tremendous. The Turk came into Europe on horseback, waving his scimitar over his head, and he will not depart like a fugitive, "as men flee away in battle," but will make his last stand on the shores of the Bosphorus, and fall fighting to the last. I commend this sober view to those whose minds may be inflamed by reading of the atrocities of the present war, and who may anticipate the march of events. The end will come; but we cannot dictate or even know, the time of its coming.

That end, I firmly believe, will be the exodus of the Turks from Europe. Not that the people as a body will depart. There is not likely to be another national migration. The expulsion of a hundred thousand of the conquering race of the Osmanlis – or of half that number – may suffice to remove that imperious element that has so long kept the rule in Turkey, and by its command of a warlike people, been for centuries the terror of Europe. But the Turkish power – the power to oppress and to persecute, to kill and destroy, to perpetrate such massacres as now thrill the world with horror – must, and will, come to an end.

In expressing this confident opinion, I do not lay claim to any political wisdom or sagacity. Nor do I attach importance to my personal observations. But I do give weight to the judgment of those who have lived in Turkey for years, and who know well the government and the people: and in what I say I only reflect the opinion of the whole foreign community in Constantinople. While there I questioned everybody; I sought information from the best informed, and wisdom from the wisest; and I heard but one opinion. Not a man expressed the slightest hope of Turkey, or the slightest confidence in its professions of reform. One and all – Englishmen and Americans, Frenchmen and Germans, Spaniards and Italians – agreed that it was past saving, that it was "appointed to die," and that its removal from the map of Europe was only a question of time.

So ends the year 1876, leaving Europe in a state of uncertainty and expectancy – fearing, trembling, and hoping. The curtain falls on a year of horrors; on what scenes shall the new year rise? We are in the midst of great events, and may be on the eve of still greater. It may be that a war is coming on which will be nothing less than a death-struggle between the two religions which have so long divided the lands that lie on the borders of Europe and Asia, and one in which the atrocities now recorded will be but the prelude to more terrible massacres until the vision of the prophet shall be fulfilled, that "blood shall come up to the horses' bridles." But looking through a long vista of years, we cannot doubt the issue as we believe in the steady progress of civilization – nay, as we believe in the power and justice of God.

We may not live to see it, and yet we could wish that we might not taste of death till our eyes behold that final deliverance. Is it mere imagination, an enthusiastic dream, that anticipates what we desire should come to pass?

It may be that we are utterly deceived; but as we look forward we think we see before many years a sadly impressive spectacle. However the tide of battle may ebb and flow, yet slowly, but steadily, will the Osmanlis be pushed backward from those Christian provinces which they have so long desolated and oppressed, till they find themselves at last on the shores of the Golden Horn, forced to take their farewell of old Stamboul. Sadly will they enter St. Sophia for the last time, and turn their faces towards Mecca, and bow their heads repeating, "God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet." It would not be strange that they should mourn and weep as they depart. Be it so! They came into that sacred temple with bloodshed and massacre; let them depart with wailing and sorrow. They cross the Bosphorus, and linger under the cypresses of Scutari, to bid adieu to the graves of their fathers; then bowing, with the fatalism of their creed, to a destiny which they cannot resist, they turn their horses' heads to the East, and ride away over the hills of Asia Minor.

1

She came in fifteen hours after us, and the Celtic twenty. The German ship reached Southampton two days later.

2

"The bleak wind of MarchMade her tremble and shiver,But not the dark arch,Nor the black flowing river.Mad from life's history,Glad to death's mysterySwift to be hurledAnywhere, anywhere,Out of the world"

3

Lest any of my saving countrymen should think this a sacrifice of precious jewels, it should be added that the cunning old Venetians, with a prudent economy worthy of a Yankee housekeeper, instead of wasting their treasures on the sea, dropped the glittering bauble into a net carefully spread for the purpose, in which it was fished up, to be used in the ceremonies of successive years.

4

The note is on the opening lines of the fourth Canto:

"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,A palace and a prison on each hand,"– in explanation of which the poet says:

"The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The State dungeons, called 'pozzi,' or wells, were sunk into the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment or cell upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known as the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductor tells you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years."

5

Perhaps roulette and rouge et noir are two separate games. I dare say my imperfect description would excite the smile of a professional, for I confess my total ignorance in such matters. I only describe what I saw.

6

"E'en at the base of Pompey's statue,Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell."

7

This pretence of being a prisoner is so plainly a device to excite public sympathy, that it is exaggerated in the most absurd manner. A lady, just returned from the Rhine, tells me that in Germany the Catholics circulate pictures of the Pope behind the bars of a prison, and even sell straws of his bed, to show that he is compelled to sleep on a pallet of straw, like a convict! The same thing is done in Ireland.

8

I give his age as put down in the books, where the date of his birth is given as May 13, 1792; although our English priest tells me that the Pope himself says that he is eighty-five, adding playfully that "his enemies have deprived him of his dominions, and his friends of two years of his life." My informant says that, notwithstanding his great age, he is in perfect health, with not a sign of weakness or decay about him, physically or intellectually. He is a tough old oak, that may stand all the storms that rage about him for years to come.

9

This is not a jest. The King said with perfect truth that the chief revenue of Greece was derived from the plum-puddings of England and America, the fact being that the currants of Corinth (which indeed gives the name to that delicious fruit) form the chief article of export from the Kingdom of Greece – the amount in one year exported to England alone, being of the value of £1,200,000. The next article of export is olive oil.

10

Italy, it will be remembered, joined the Allies against Russia in the latter part of the Crimean war.