The incident loses some of its pathos

The incident loses some of its pathos in view of the circumstance that the mob was largely made up of professionals hired to make a disturbance. When officials are in need of cash and salaries are delayed, the officials sometimes be take themselves to the professional collectors, who are women, and who receive a small percentage on the fruits of these extreme measures. The women herd together in mobs to cry in public, watering the pavements with their tears and deluging the palace officials with statements of their wretched condition, until the thing becomes a scandal. Then an Imperial order issues for some small payment of salaries. At the appointed time these women armed with the necessary powers occupy the corridors of the Ministry and repulse every unhappy male creature who attempts to get his pay, until they have drawn the last penny which they can extract from the hard-hearted cashiers.

It has been hinted that the Mohammedan women are quite religious. They are one of the strong bulwarks of Islam; keeping their husbands to religious duty by talking all over the city of any laxness in practice or remissness in faith on the part of their men. But this does not imply any deep convictions private tours istanbul. The prevalent idea respecting religious exercises is that along with various other forms of words they are useful to ward off ill-luck. The women generally are under the sway of superstitions of ancient paganism, looking at worship as a means of placating evil spirits. No one has thought it worth while to free them from belief in demons and local genii and fairies and the evil eve.

Mohammedan woman

A European lady desiring to be friendly with a Mohammedan woman will sometimes speak of the beauty of the little child tugging at its mother’s skirts. It is a most terrible mistake and is regarded as almost an act of enmity. Its dire consequences can only be averted by spitting in the child’s face at once so as to imply to the watchful demons of the house that the child is not highly valued. If a child is sick, the mother will not call a doctor, but will seek some old man or old woman who knows what to recite over it in order to counteract evil influences. Or she will go herself to the tomb of some saint, or to the holy resort of Muslim, Christian, or Jewish neighbours, and there mutter formulas of prayer that promise effective results.

On the top of one of the hills of the Bosphorus which overlooks the Black Sea is a very ancient tomb some forty feet long. Tradition makes it the tomb of Bcbryces, King of Bythinia, who was killed in a boxing bout by Castor and Pollux at the time of the Argonautic Expedition after the Golden Fleece. With characteristic willingness to take possession of good things—” even though found in China ” the Turks have adopted this grave as a shrine. A tablet in the mosque which they have erected at this place says that the tomb is that of Joshua the son of Nun, “ Who defeated the Romans with great slaughter by the power of God, and if any doubts let him read the sacred books of the Christians.”

The wire netting which surrounds the head of this tomb is covered with small bits of rag tied into the wire by Turkish women who have painfully toiled up that great hill in order to present at that tomb some dire need which they hope to keep in the memory of the spirits of the place by the bit of rag tied on the wire in a secure knot. Mohammedans believe that the events of every life are foreseen from eternity and are written on the “ Reserved Tablets ” laid up under the Throne of God. Yet their women maintain the gypsies who foretell the coming storm or sunshine of life from a bag of beans. It is upon the women that those dervishes rely who make a fat living out of their reputed ability to cure the sick by a touch, or to compound a philter for any emergency which will secure the desired result especially if accompanied by a charm written with ink in which ambergris is an ingredient.

Man wished assistance from the missionary

This was a dozen years ago, and all the parties to the affair are now dead. But the man assured me that a certain lawyer in Galata had the means – of getting him an American passport for the modest sum of $3,000, and the point on which the man wished assistance from the missionary was the question of securing a hold on the lawyer, to whom the money must be paid in advance. I never knew whether the lesson in common honesty which this man received did him any good. But he sadly abandoned the scheme of buying American citizenship for $3,000, and went into the Turkish prison in default of the American protection which he had fondly hoped to gain.

Missionaries for help

The applications of the people to the missionaries for help in their political and religious quarrels with their superiors make quite a list in the course of a year. One clay a fine looking man with a magnificent black beard, with the eye of an eagle and the bearing of a Grand Duke, came to call. He was the chief of a tribe, half Arab, half Canaanite, living in Syria. Conversation in Turkey is farther advanced than in some Western countries, from the artistic point of view. The preliminaries are not necessarily weather comments taken from the Bureau Reports. They are rather expressions of high regard which imply that one is of world-wide fame, so that although but just introduced for the first time, the emotions on meeting are those of a gratified desire.

After these preliminaries had been handled with no less dignity than skill, my visitor explained his object in calling. It was the wish to bring his people, numbering some fifty thousand Mohammedans, to increase the ranks of the Protestant Community. To the chief, the proposition was a reasonable one. Our Protestant friends are few in Turkey, hence such an accession to their ranks would be a matter for any missionary to consider. He was astounded beyond measure on learning that conversion from Mohammedanism to Christianity is not a thing for any one to accomplish for another, and that if his people wished to be Christians, all that was necessary was for each individual to yield up his heart to Jesus Christ. After long and vain efforts to lead 11s to see how grand a result we could boast if his people were to join us sightseeing sofia, he went sorrowfully away. In actual fact the proposal of this man contained the possibility of the complete destruction of the whole missionary enterprise in Turkey. He had some quarrel with Turkish officials, and he hoped that by the bait of a wholesale conversion of his people to nominal Christianity, we would espouse his cause. This he imagined would bring to him and his tribe the support of the United States Government.

Constantinople can missionaries

In no other city in Turkey than Constantinople can missionaries be sure that they understand the purposes and wishes of the Turkish Government. Without this knowledge they fail to understand the bearing of many edicts and regulations that affect their work, and may easily fall under suspicion or even seem to disregard the laws. The every-day happenings of the period of the Armenian troubles, in 1895 and 1896 gave illustrations of the dominant place occupied by Constantinople and of the necessity of remembering this quality of the city in any scheme of missionary operations in Turkey. The time came during that anxious period when the question was a burning one of the right of missionaries to risk life by staying in the midst of a troubled region. United States officials seemed early to reach the conclusion that missionaries ought to leave the country, instead of causing to the representatives of the United States anxiety and embarrassment by remaining where they might easily become victims of massacre.

Yet the missionaries throughout Turkey wished to remain at their posts in order to do what good they might to the suffering people. They had not what some officials professed to see in them —an ardent desire to get killed for the purpose of adding to the burdens of the official class. But the missionaries in the interior of the country told us at Constantinople that we must give them timely warning when they ought to flee rather than stay, and that they would rely upon our judgment. The responsibility of our position toward these associates was tremendous, for it implied prophetic foresight of new disturbances, through keeping the hand as it were upon the pulse of the Turks to detect each new symptom. Those were days when we dared not take a single step without prayer for guidance. And I believe we had it.

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.

Glimmer of hope and release

On the fourth day of our detention, came a glimmer of hope and release. The doctor arrived to see us. We were ranged all of a row, and he walked backwards and forwards, smoking a cigar, and looking at us, as I have seen convicts inspected in the Houses of Correction at home. We then heard, that after all this wretched discomfort, the board had argued our case; and that, taking our voyage into consideration, wo should be allowed critique next day. Our various applications had, I expect, but little to do with this. M. Abro told us that he believed a protest of our Turkish companions against the imprisonment, showing that they would be too late for the grand ceremonies at Mecca, if detained longer, had been the chief instrument of our liberation. However, we were to be liberated on the morrow—that was a fact; and such a pleasant one that we did not care to investigate it further.

What a difference the intimation made to all our spirits. The lazaretto had not been so miserable, after all—at all events, there was great novelty in it! It was something to sit on the ground at dinner, with a coop for a table; and a great deal more to sleep on it. Below us was a German family—very poor people indeed, with an intelligent little girl of twelve—one of the most thoughtful and wcll-conducted children I ever met. The evening before, when we had been playing off some tricks in the yard, she had been our best audience; and this afternoon she came up anxiously, and asked me “if we were going to have a theatre again?” I promised we would, to oblige her; and as we had an hour before being locked up, I got all our fellow-prisoners together, and each one did his best to form an entertainment; except the old gentlemen in the high turbans, who smoked their pipes and admired in silence, and the women, who peeped through the gratings, from behind which they had never ventured since we were first locked in.

Behaved altogether in a frightfully indecorous manner

The jolly Turk came out uncommonly. He sang native songs, pitched pies, conjured anew, and behaved altogether in a frightfully indecorous manner for a pilgrim bound for Mecca. The great hit of the evening, however, was a game of leap-frog, which four of us got up to the intense delight of the others communist bulgaria tour, who did not appear to have the slightest notion of it. The German people sang some concerted music very nicely, and altogether the entertainment was pronounced a success. After we were shut up, we had our last meal together, from the scraps—cold macaroni soup, remains of fowls, and dates—and then went very contentedly to bed.

At daylight next morning, be sure we were all alive. About half-past five the director of the lazaretto came to see us. He was an old man with spectacles and a long beard; and looked very much like the wizards in dream-books and prophetic almanacks. He shook hands with all of us, which was a sort of little ceremony to show that our touch was no longer infectious, and then told us we were free. Soon after came the valet I had engaged from Key’s hotel, to conduct us up to that part of the town; and then the Custom-house people arrived to look at our baggage. The search was merely nominal—my knapsack was handed over to me, and passing other passages to those by which we had arrived, I found myself once more out of the lazaretto.

Amongst several odd stories I heard at this time, respecting the absurd severity with which the Beyrout quarantine is enforced, were the two following. The first related to a ship in the harbor, and the other to the lazaretto.

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.