Politically vigorous

With these threefold sources of corruption—war, slavery, false belief — the Roman empire, so magnificent without, was a rotten fabric within. Politically vigorous, morally it was diseased. Never perhaps has the world witnessed cases of such stupendous moral corruption, as when immense power, boundless riches, and native energy were left as they were then without object, control, or shame. Then, from time to time, there broke forth a very orgy of wanton strength. But its hour was come. The best spirits were all filled with a sense of the hollowness and corruption around them. Statesmen, poets, and philosophers in all these last eras were pouring forth their complaints and fears, or feebly attempting remedies. The new element had long been making its way unseen, had long been preparing the ground, and throughout the civilised world there was rising up a groan of weariness and despair.

For three centuries a belief in the existence of one God alone, in whom were concentrated all power and goodness, who cared for the moral guidance of mankind, a belief in the immortality of the soul and its existence in another state, had been growing up in the minds of the best Greek thinkers. The noble morality of their philosophers had taken strong hold of the higher consciences of Rome, and had diffused amongst the better spirits throughout the empire new and purer types. Next the great empire itself, forcing all nations in one state, had long inspired in its worthiest members a sense of the great brotherhood of mankind, had slowly mitigated the worst evils of slavery, and paved the way for a religious society. Thirdly, another and a greater cause was at work guided tours turkey.

Overruling Creator

Through Greek teachers the world had long been growing familiar with the religious ideas of Asia, its conceptions of a superhuman world, of a world of spirit, angel, demon, future state, and overruling Creator, with its mystical imagery, its spiritual poetry, its intense zeal and fervent emotion. And now, partly from the contact with Greek thought and Roman civilisation, a great change was taking place in the very heart of that small Jewish race, of all the races of Asia known to us the most intense, imaginative, and pure: possessing a high sense of personal morality, the keenest yearnings of the heart, and the deepest capacity for spiritual fervour.

In their midst arose a fellowship of devoted brethren, gathered around one noble and touching character, which adoration has veiled in mystery till he passes from the pale of definite history. On them had dawned the vision of a new era of their national faith, which should expand the devotion of David, the spiritual zeal of Isaiah, and the moral power of Samuel into a gentler, wider, and more loving spirit.

How this new idea grew to the height of a new religion, and was shed over the whole earth by the strength of its intensity and its purity, is to us a familiar tale. We know how the first fellowship of the brethren met; how they went forth with words of mercy, love, justice, and hope; we know their self-denial, humility, and zeal; their heroic lives and awful deaths; their loving natures and their noble purposes; how they gathered around them wherever they came the purest and greatest; how across mountains, seas, and continents the communion of saints joined in affectionate trust; how from the deepest corruption of the heart arose a yearning for a truer life; how the new faith, ennobling the instincts of human nature, raised up the slave, the poor, and the humble to the dignity of common manhood, and gave new meaning to the true nature of womanhood; how, by slow degrees, the church, with its rule of right, of morality, and of communion, arose; how the first founders and apostles of this faith lived and died, and all their gifts were concentrated in one, of all the characters of certain history doubtless the loftiest and purest — the unselfish, the great-hearted Paul.

Common school work in old Stamboul

They organize and superintend and teach common schools and kindergartens. Whether in this common school work in old Stamboul, or in the College for Girls at Scutari the missionary women strongly draw their scholars to admire and to seek likeness to the great model and ideal of Christian character. A girl once taught in one of these schools is always the devoted friend of her teachers, and this fact, alone, ensures to her something at least of steady growth; for she will be borne in mind and will receive kindly words and helpful suggestion, by letter if she has removed to a distant place, up to the very end of her life.

Methods devised by the missionary women attract in the Sunday school. They inspire the native men and women who help as teachers so that none shall go away from the Bible lesson without some new seed-thought fixed in their minds to grow and bear fruit in other scenes. One illustration of the pervading quality of their influence was furnished by their work at Constantinople after the massacre of 1S96. Two thousand families were found to be destitute, having been bereaved, and also stripped of their household goods. Money to keep alive these sufferers quickly came from England and America private ephesus tours, and the missionary ladies were at once in the midst of them. They sought out the needy; they investigated and reported upon their real wants; and they did hard work in distributing clothing, food, and especially materials for work whereby broken families might support themselves.

The attempt to encourage a despairing people

The attempt to encourage a despairing people to believe it worth while again to work for a living, to inspire them with energy to persist in the face of cold, dogged hostility that thought to thwart their efforts to find work, and finally to send to the ends of the earth in order to find market for the wares which the discouraged people began to produce, formed a steady drain upon the sympathy and patience and ingenuity of all who engaged in the work. But through these and similar efforts a great deliverance from de-moralization and even death was made effective to a bewildered and ruined people.

In this summary of general missionary effort at Constantinople we may see how varied in form and how beneficent and persuasive in effect it may be if it is impelled, not by sectarian narrowness, but by the broad purpose of seeking to let the people see the loveliness of Jesus Christ and their own need of Him. It needs no seer’s vision to discover that work like this, supported by that of an uncontroversial but thoroughly Christian press, has quite as much of influence on the life of the masses as the Christian College. It may give direction to the thoughts and tastes and aims of individuals through the whole immense region which looks to Constantinople for guidance in questions of thought and of taste. Shape the thoughts and the aims of individuals and you have done much to fix the destiny of the masses of which they are a part.

European colony without really knowing

With rare exceptions the result of this state of affairs is that the Turk, if in official position, rubs shoulders with the best part of the European colony without really knowing one of them, or if he is in common life he merely looks at them afar off. In either case the European with whom the Turk comes into real contact is the profligate one—the one who to whom the Turk might perhaps teach morals, or else it is the half-blood Levantine who poses as a European on the strength of his right to wear a hat. The idea of the Western civilization received by the Turk from either of these is that it centres about wine, women, and the roulette table. If he had before no tendency to haunt the drinking houses and brothels of Pera, the Turk gets the impulse to do so from the “ Europeans ” whom he has met, and that very rapidly makes an end of him.

Civilization represented by Western commercial enterprise and isolated from religious principle has been in contact with the people of Constantinople for many many years. Since the Crimean War it has had untrammelled sway. Some of the externals of environment have benefited from this contact. Individuals may sometimes have been lifted out of the quagmires of the mass of the population by glimpses of what manhood really is. But there is no question as to the general result. The result has been the moral deterioration of the city, and the strengthening of the repulsion felt by Turks toward the West.

Constantinople dealt

One of the leading Turkish papers of Constantinople dealt with this subject not long ago. It said that the one positive influence of Western civilization is against faith in God and in favour of drunkenness and debauchery. It pointed to the great number of disorderly houses in Pera, which engulf and destroy large numbers of Mohammedan youth, and it declared in open terms that the family life of Europeans living in Pera is such as to lead to the supposition that marital fidelity is not known there. “ We want none of this Christian civilization,” said the Turk jeep safari bulgaria.

The syndicate of European officials who constitute the Administrators of the Turkish Public Debt, have multiplied several fold the places in Constantinople where liquor is sold. They are proud of this, for it has added to the revenues derived from the tax on liquors and has brought dividends to the holders of Turkish bonds. But it is worthy of note that during two hundred years of commercial intercourse between the Turkish people and civilized Europe, the mercantile colonists living in Constantinople in all the splendour of superior culture, enterprise and business success, have not once tried to do anything for the improvement of the minds or the morals of the native population, whether Mohammedan or Christian. It was the missionary spirit in Roman Catholic and Protestant churches which first gave the city schools that could teach and school books which children could understand.

Turkish ladies are richly dressed

It should not be supposed, however, that ladies of rich families who have plenty of servants make themselves quite such guys in the hours before custom requires them to dress for the afternoon. But the circumstance that they may wander about the premises unprepared for observation of others, is what makes the Turk fortify his house against outside eyes by truly ingenious contrivances. When they are dressed, Turkish ladies are richly dressed. In the street what one sees is a voluminous silken sheet thrown over the head and falling to the feet. This gives the woman the form of an inflated pillow tied in the middle with a string. But, in Constantinople at least, the lady after she has entered the house and has thrown off her outer shell is quite a different creature. True she sometimes still inclines to wear her hair cut straight across at the nape of the neck. She loves big figures and startling colour schemes in her dress. She has not yet found her taste oppressed by die jostling of scarlet and magenta which she uses in the same costume. But in the main her dress is cut after Western patterns when at last she dresses herself for the social functions of the afternoon.

But neither the tardy dressing, nor the social function which is like a Western Woman’s Club, nor the house that she lives in makes a home for the woman of Constantinople. A wealthy Turk’s best house is commonly a showy palace on the Bosphorus. Its front, after the fashion of Venetian palaces, is lapped by the water of the sea. Behind it delicious groves and brilliant gardens rise terrace on terrace in magnificent spaciousness. Both land and placid sea promise sweet content to all who enjoy the privileges of the place. To the men, so long as they pursue their separate pleasure in their part of the premises, the promise may be fulfilled. But rarely to the women. In one such house of which I know, there arc sixty women private tours istanbul. Place as wife or favourite or servant is assigned to each. Each has abundant food and clothing, with jewels and other adornments befitting her special station. The great rooms of the house are divided among the women according to their rank. Housekeeping arrangements and responsibilities rest upon servants alone. The ladies have time enough on their hands to make the finding of ways to get rid of it a tax upon their ingenuity.

Splendid mirrors

Books, papers, pictures there are not. Musical instruments there are, singers there are, and one can kill time with these for a while. One can dress oneself up in new costumes, and admire the effect in splendid mirrors, and then undress and don some new combination of costly robes. But this disposes of but an hour or two. One may lounge by the window and watch passing steamers and sailing vessels and fishing craft and caiques, and wonder how much Bessim Bey paid for his new boat, and note the handsome boatmen that Nazli Khanum has picked up somewhere. If a steamer passes very near the shore, the distress of the caiques thrashed about in its wake gives momentary excitement. But the wish for power to make the long days go faster—the longing for something to do, is the burden of life to every lady in that house. Quarreling with the other ladies is the sure recourse under such circumstances. When a quarrel begins it may last for days and develop into a feud that ranges the whole household—mistress or maid—in factions.

Another diversion which makes time fly is the advent of the master of the house. He is a noble looking gray-bearded man who has a past but not much future. He spends most of his time on the other side of the high stone wall which separates the house of the men from that of the women. Announcement of his arrival makes a wild flurry of excitement. There is a general rush to provide for his entertainment. There is visible expectancy of being permitted to receive him or at least of being called to hear a kind word from him. And then there is the hitter, inconsolable disappointment of the unlucky ones. But all these emotions serve after all to cause the time to pass.

Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople

In the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople is temporal and spiritual guidance for all the Armenians of the Empire. From these eternal hills of New Rome the Legate of the Pope issues edicts of control for all Roman Catholics of Western Asia. There is the Grand Rabbi of the Jews of the Spanish emigration; there is the Exarch of the Bulgarian Church, and there too is the civil chief to whom the Protestant subjects of the Sultan look for obtaining both the instructions and the favour of their sovereign. Turkey has not been able to free itself from the ancient notion that the common people must be controlled through chief men of their own, who by necessity of their ability must live near the Sovereign. Hence its system of Government emphasizes the unique importance of this city to all in the Empire who would be or do anything whatever. Lapse of years has not ended, nor can it ever end the sway of this marvellous city over millions of Asiatics to whom during many centuries it has been known as the dominant point of the universe.

The influence of Constantinople can never cease so long as the peoples of Western Asia persist in their ancient custom of coming periodically to this city, like the flow of a tidal wave, in order to carry back with its ebb to distant hamlets the impressions and other gains which the city has given them. Under these circumstances Constantinople may be called the throbbing heart of Turkey sightseeing sofia. When beneficent principles of life once more govern the lives of its population, this city will once more become as of old an efficient channel for the influence of Europe to control Western Asia; this time, let us hope, with effect to lead the imaginative continent into voluntary and permanent abnegation of the views which have made it hitherto the bitter enemy of its own development and of true civilization.

 Constantinople as the centre of a world

Perhaps the best way of putting the reader in touch with this peculiarity of Constantinople as the centre of a world of its own, and with the relation of this peculiarity to the efforts of the missionary stationed there, will be to mention a few by-ways of missionary experience in this city of broad issues. At least those at a distance may thus have better understanding of the people for whom the missionary is working and of their attitiule toward him. And if these experiences reveal the existence of humours in the life of the missionary, it will be but one more case where life alternates between situations at which men laugh and those at which they weep. One point which should be particularly borne in mind is the wide region of country from which the parties to these experiences came or to which their influence extended.

An application like that made to me one day by a man whom we will call Ahmed Bey, is typical of many made to missionaries at Constantinople by people who theoretically ought to be their enemies. Ahmed Bey was a handsome young Mohammedan from a city in Bulgaria, and an officer in the Turkish navy. He came to me in great distress. A certain Turkish Admiral of some importance so far as influence goes, had a daughter of comparative youth only, and afflicted like Leah with some trouble of the eyes which made her helpless much of the time, with injury to her prospects of matrimony.

This Admiral had unhappily seen the handsome young officer and wished to marry him to his daughter. When the officer declined the honour with thanks, the Admiral, Laban-like, said that marry her he must. Otherwise he would order the young man to the naval station at Bussora, on the Persian Gulf, for three years. To be sent to Bussora is like being sent to Cuba in yellow fever time. The young man came to me asking “ Must I marry this sore-eyed girl?” I could not help him. The order for his exile to Bussora was actually issued, and only overruled by the appeal at my suggestion of the weeping mother of mv friend to a Pasha of high rank who was a native of the same city in Bulgaria as Ahmed Bey, and who had access to the ear of the Sultan.

Great excitement and bawling

At last, with great excitement and bawling, to which the Pool late on the evening of Greenwich fair was nothing, we got out of the Golden Horn. A long caique with a sail, and twelve or fourteen passengers, overtook us, like the wind, and soon shot ahead. The people smoked and drank coffee, all working their beads about with restless irritability; and a band of music played airs from the operas of Donizetti and Verdi. The great feature of this band was the performer on the Pandean pipes ; it Ls impossible to conceive the excellent music he blew out from them. They contained four octaves, and were not flat, as the common ones, but curved round, so that his lips formed the arc of a circle, as it were, of which his neck was the centre. Only associating the Pandman pipes with a street drum, as accompanying the exertions of Punch, acrobats, and the fantoccini, I was amazed to find what they were really capable of, when well played.

The voyage lasted, altogether, nearly two hours, and each time passengers were landed the riot was awful. The captain, who was a little podgy man, in a fez and frock-coat, stormed and swore, and jumped about on the paddle-boxes like a maniac. The watermen in the caiques fought and hanged each other with a ferocity that exceeded the boatmen at the Piraeus, as they struggled to get their fragile barks next the steamer; and the passengers jostled, and pushed, and so increased the confusion, that it was wonderful how they were not all drowned. All this went on at every island, but the most frightful to-do was at Prinkipo ; and, although a tolerable swimmer, I was not sorry when our over-laden caique touched the shore. We had been nearly swamped by getting between two larger boats, in a manner that would have been dangerous on a river, but here a heavy sea was running city tours istanbul.

Principally Greeks

We landed under a chi, along which a row of coffee-houses and some private villas ran; and, at the extremity of the promenade, we found an inn, in a fine position, with a view of Constantinople in the distance, looking far more beautiful than Venice — which, in all truth, is ‘not so attractive on first sight as some writers would make it — with the domes and minarets of Stamboul shining like gold, in the sunset. The hotel was kept by a Neapolitan; and was built entirely of light thin wood — very like those we see in Switzerland, in high and out-of-the-way spots. The landlord appeared very anxious to make his customers comfortable. ‘He gave us a very good dinner at a table-dhoti, where we sat down some fourteen or sixteen — principally Greeks; but he somewhat committed himself in recommending a bottle of Broussa beer to our notice. Broussa is a city in Asia hlinor, celebrated for its manufactories of silk, which supply the Levant. It certainly cannot claim any distinction for its breweries, for I never tasted anything so nasty in my life. With my eyes shut, I could have imagined it a species of effervescing black-draught.

As soon as dinner was over, we turned out for a stroll about the village, which possesses several very novel and entertaining features. I have said that there was a row of coffee-houses on the heights facing the sea. These were all wooden buildings with porticos before them; and on the opposite side of the promenade, in front, were platforms, surrounded by railings, built to project over the edge of the cliff, and singularly insecure. The masters supply coffee, narghiles, and a very tolerable punch.

The steamboat band was playing in front of the principal house ; and before all of them were suspended hoops, with thin white cylinders depending from them, which I at first took to be candles. But I found afterwards that they were blue-lights; and that when the beauties of Prinkipo assembled, (which they were to do on tho morrow in great numbers,) and it got dark, some public-spirited and gallant gentleman would pay to have one of these fireworks ignited, and thus show off the fair gazers to the admiration of the spectators. At present there were not many ladies about. Our steamer was evidently the “husband’s boat;” and they were listening to tho gossip of Constantinople in their own houses.

Portici fishermen

“All English gentlemen,” continued Demetri, “think they cut off heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on plates at the Seraglio Gate. And they think people are always being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which conies from the wall of the Seraglio Point, as the placo they slide them down. It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of other things.”

Demetri was right. To be completely disillusioned on certain points, one has but to journey with a determination to be only affected by things as they strike you. Swiss girls, St. Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine, Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies, fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Pew tourists have the courage to say that they have been “bored,” or at least disappointed, by some conventional lion. They find that Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, Ac. Ac., all copy one from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did they dare to differ. Artists and writers trill study effect rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions of ninety- nine people out of a hundred — allowing all these to possess average education, perception, and intellect — when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual, is to the faithful photograph.

“ That fellow’s a Dervish — clam’ rascal!” Demetri went on, pointing to the individual; “ we shall see him dance ou Friday; ho keeps a shop in the bazaar. That’s a man from Bokhara — dam’ fellow, too; all bad there. This is a Ilan.”

The Ilan, or, as we usually pronounce it, Khan, was a square surrounded by buildings, with galleries; with other occupants it could have been easily converted into a slave-market. A vague notion of it may be formed from an old borough inn — one story high, and built of stone. There was, however, a tree or two in the middle, and a fountain; in the corner was also an indifferent coffee-house.

Two hundred in Constantinople

These places, of which there are nearly two hundred in Constantinople, have been built, from time to time, by the sultans, and wealthy persons, for the accommodation of the merchants arriving, by caravan, from distant countries. No charge is made for their use; but the rooms are entirely unfurnished, so that the occupier must bring his mattress, little carpet, and such humble articles of cookery as he may require, with him. A key of his room is given to him, and he is at once master, for the time being, of the apartment. In the Ilan I visited, the occupants were chiefly Persians, in high black sheepskin caps, squatted, in the full enjoyment of Eastern indolence, upon their carpets, and smoking their narghillas, or “ hubble-bubbles.” Some of them came from a very road distance — Pamarcand, and the borders of Cabool, for instance; so that their love of repose, after the toil and incertitude of a caravan journey, was quite allowable.

Demetri next insisted that l should see the two vast subterraneous catkin, relics of great antiquity. One of these, the roof of which was supported by three or four hundred pillars, is dry, and used as a rope-walk, or silk-winding gallery. The other has water in it. You go through the court of a house, and then descend, over rubbish and broken steps, to a cellar, from which the reservoir extends, until lost in its gloomy immensity. The few bits of candle which the man lights to show it off, cannot send their rays very far from the spectator. It is more satisfactory to throw a stone, and hear it plash in the dark water at the end of its course, with a strange, hollow sound. Over this mighty tank are the houses and streets of Stamboul. The number of columns, which are of marble, is said to be about three hundred ; and the water, which you are expected to taste, is tolerably good private tour ephesus.

I`ve left the cistern, and traversed a few more lanes on our way to the bazaars. In these Eastern thoroughfares, narrow and crowded, one continually labors under the impression of being about to turn into a broad street or large square from a bye-way; but this never arrives. A man may walk for hours about Constantinople, and always appear to be in the back streets; although, in reality, they may be the great arteries of the city. Tortuous, and very much alike, Stamboul is also one large labyrinth, as regards its thoroughfares; the position of a stranger left by himself in the centre would be hopeless.

Therapia and Buvukdere

At two or three points of the shore of the Bosphorus were some graveyards, better kept than those about Constantinople. The tombstones were painted most gaudily, and the inscriptions were written in gold and silver. I was told that the crews of ships passing along were in the habit of breaking off these monuments and taking them away as future ornaments to gardens—an offence calling for more severe reprehension than the generality of travelling sacrileges.

We passed Therapia and Buvukdere, about which pleasant places I shall have more to say by and by; and at last landed at a little village on the Asiatic side of the stream. This was as prettily oriental a spot as I saw during my sojourn at Constantinople ; but I fear I cannot do it justice by description. The village was situated at the base of a wooded mountain, rising from a small bay round the corner of one of the promontories, with which the shores of the Bosphorus abound. The waves coming in from the Euxine rippled against its very street—for it had but one, and this was not above ten feet wide; with a long row of rustic coffee-houses facing the water, in all of which some dirtily picturesque fellows were lolling about and smoking private tour Istanbul.

The thoroughfare was not altogether clear; for the spars of the ships—many of which were anchored in a line along the shore—at times crossed it. They were all wicked looking felucca-rigged craft: and the wild swarthy men who slept about them only knew in what their real trade consisted; for between Trcbizonde or Odessa, and the Archipelago, all sorts of wickedness’s may be achieved. This street ended in a small open place, surrounded by ragged wooden houses, one of which had been built round a gigantic plane-tree— so enormous that its bows stretched over the whole of the little square; and caused the ground to be pleasantly chequered with dancing lights and shadows.

Fountain of purely Eastern build

At one end was a fountain of purely Eastern build, at which some of the faithful were performing their holy ablutions, and at its side a tired camel was nodding and blinking lazily in the heat. Two little shojs adjoined this fountain : one was a coffee-house and the other belonged to a cook. A seller of melons had spread his store upon the ground, near there, and some of his fruit, not bigger than oranges, were delicious. Rude wooden benches were placed about in front of the coffee-house and round its walls, and our old friends, the dogs, were sleeping about, or squabbling for carrion, everywhere. At last, we were away from every trace of Europe.

We settled to dine here, so we brought up our basket from the cacique, and got some cups and plates from the coffee-house, which had a mud floor and walls, and in it some natives were playing at ricrac, casting the dice from their hands instead of a box, whilst others were going through their prayers, in corners. We were evidently objects of great curiosity for all of them; and the pale ale they could not understand at all. Indeed, they grouped round us when the cork was drawn, like a street audience round a conjuror; and the very dogs appeared to partake of the bewilderment.

We were very hungry, and such a good odor came from the cook’s shop, that we determined to patronize him. He was making kebobs—and if there was a spot on -which it was proper to taste that oriental delicacy, this was certainly the one. His shop was an open one, with a brazier in the window place, upon which the meats were being cooked. At the door-post hung a piece of mutton, of excellent quality; this was exhibited to show that he only made use of good meat. He cut it into small bits, seasoned these, and put them on a skewer: they were then cooked over the fire, and when properly done, served up with pepper, salt, and onion chopped very fine. No knife or fork was required, but the morsels were eaten from the skewer, and very excellent indeed they were. Then we finished our hard boiled eggs, had a delicious melon for dessert, which cost four- pence, and so made as fine a dinner as I ever partook of. Certainly I never sat down to one so full of agreeable associations, or served in so picturesque a fashion.

I have said that this little village was situated at a bend of the Bosphorus. We therefore agreed to walk over a mountain which rose directly behind it, and send the boat round to meet us at another yioint, as there were some curiosities to see on the summit, as well as a fine view. We first passed the ruins of a building known as The Genoese Castle, which must in former times have been of enormous extent and magnitude. Getting higher up, we had a fine prospect of the opposite, or European, shores of the Bosphorus; and, at last, on a ridge of ground, we got our first view of the Black Sea, with its long heavy swell coming towards the entrance of the strait in mighty curves, and dashing over the Symplegadcs which still thrust their rugged heads from the foam, as they arc said to have done when Jason passed with the Argonauts.