John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2)

I was now reminded at every step of my being in an oriental country by the caravans I was constantly meeting. Caravans and camels are more or less associated with all the fairy scenes and glowing pictures of the East. They have always presented themselves to my mind with a sort of poetical imagery, and they certainly have a fine effect in a description or in a picture; but, after all, they are ugly-looking things to meet on the road. I would rather see the two young Turk- esses again than all the caravans in the East. The caravan is conducted by a guide on a donkey, with a halter attached to the first camel, and so on from camel to camel through the whole caravan. The camel is an exceedingly ugly animal in his proportions, and there is a dead uniformity in his movement; with a dead, vacant expression in his face, that is really distressing. If a man were dying of thirst in the desert, it would be enough to drive him to distraction to look in the cool, unconcerned, and imperturbable face of his camel. But their value is inestimable in a country like this, where there are no carriage roads, and where deserts and drought present themselves in every direction.

One of the camel scenes, the encampment, is very picturesque, the camels arranged around on their knees in a circle, with their heads to the centre, and the camel-drivers with their bales piled up within; and I was struck with another scene; we came to the borders of a stream, which it was necessary to cross in a boat. The boat was then on the other side, and the boatman and camel driver were trying to get on board some camels. When we came up they had got three on board, down on their knees in the bottom of the boat, and were then in the act of coercing the fourth. The poor brute was frightened terribly; resisted with all his might, and put forth most piteous cries; I do not know a more distressing noise than the cry of a brute suffering from fear; it seems to partake of the feeling that causes it, and carries with it something fearful; but the cries of the poor brute were vain; they got him on board, and in the same way urged on board three others. They then threw in the donkey, and seven camels and the donkey were so stowed in the bottom of the boat, that they did not take up much more room than calves on board of our country boats.

In the afternoon I met another travelling party of an entirely different description. If before I had occasionally any doubts or misgivings as to the reality of my situation; if sometimes it seemed to be merely a dream, that it could not be that I was so far from home, wandering alone on the plains of Asia, with a guide whom I never saw till that morning, whose language I could not understand, and upon whose faith I could not rely; if the scenes of turbaned Turks, of veiled women, of caravans and camels, of graveyards with their mourning cypress and thousands of tombstones, where every trace of the cities which supplied them with their dead had entirely disappeared; if these and the other strange scenes around me would seem to be the mere creations of a roving imagination, the party which I met now was so marked in its character, so peculiar to an oriental country, and to an oriental country only, that it roused me from my waking dreams, fixed my wandering thoughts, and convinced me, beyond all peradventure, that I was indeed far from home, among a people "whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are not as our ways;" in short, in a land where ladies are not the omnipotent creatures that they are with us.

This party was no other than the ladies of a harem. They were all dressed in white, with their white shawls wrapped around their faces, so that they effectually concealed every feature, and could bring to bear only the artillery of their eyes. I found this, however, to be very potent, as it left so much room for the imagination; and it was a very easy matter to make a Fatima of every one of them. They were all on horseback, not riding sidewise, but otherwise ; though I observed, as before, that their saddles were so prepared that their delicate limbs were not subject to that extreme expansion required by the saddle of the rougher sex. They were escorted by a party of armed Turks, and followed by a man in Frank dress, who, as I after understood, was the physician of the harem. They were thirteen in number, just a baker's dozen, and belonged to a pacha who was making his annual tour of the different posts under his government, and had sent them on before to have the household matters all arranged upon his arrival. And no doubt, also, they were to be in readiness to receive him with their smiles; and if they continued in the same humour in which I saw them, he must have been a happy man who could call them all his own. I had not fairly recovered from the cries of the poor camel when I heard their merry voices: verily, thought I, stopping to catch the last musical notes, there are exceedingly good points about the Turks: chibouks, coffee, and as many wives as they please. It made me whistle to think of it. Oh, thought I, that some of our ladies could see these things; that some haughty beauty, at whose feet dozens of worthy and amiable young gentlemen are sighing themselves into premature wrinkles and ugliness, might see these things.

I am no rash innovator. I would not sweep away the established customs of our state of society. I would not lay my meddling fingers upon the admitted prerogatives of our ladies; but I cannot help asking myself if, in the rapid changes of this turning world, changes which completely alter rocks and the hardest substances of nature, it may not by possibility happen that the tenour of a lady's humour will change. What a goodly spectacle to see those who are never content without a dozen admirers in their train, following by dozens in the train of one man! But I fear me much that this will never be, at least in our day. Our system of education is radically wrong. The human mind, says some philosopher, and the gentleman is right, is like the sand upon the shore of the sea. You may write upon it what character you please. We begin by writing upon their innocent unformed minds, that, "Born for their use, we live but to oblige them." The consequence is, I will not say what; for I hope to return among them and kiss the rod in some fair hand; but this I do know, that here the "twig is so bent" that they become as gentle, as docile, and as tractable as any domestic animal. I say again, there are many exceeding good points about the Turks.

At about six o'clock we came in sight of Smyrna, on the opposite side of the gulf, and still a long way off. At dusk we were directly opposite the city; and although we had yet to make a long circuit round the head of the gulf, I was revelling in the bright prospect before me. Dreams of pulling off my pantaloons; delightful visions of clean sheets and a Christian bed flitted before my eyes. Yes, said I to my pantaloons and shirt, ye worthy and faithful servants, this night ye shall have rest. While other garments have fallen from me by the way, ye have stuck to me. And thou, my gray pantaloons, little did the neat Parisian tailor who made thee think that the strength of his stitching would ever be tested by three weeks' uninterrupted wear; but to-morrow thou shalt go into the hands of a master, who shall sew on thy buttons and sew up thy rents; and thou, my—I was going on with words of the same affectionate import to my shirt, stockings, and drawers, which, however, did not deserve so well of me, for they had in a measure dropped off on the way, when my Tartar came to a dead stop before the door of a cabin, dismounted, and made signs to me to do the same. But I began now to have some notions of my own; heretofore I had been perfectly passive; I had always done as I was told, but in sight of Smyrna I became restiff. I talked and shouted to him, pointed to the city, and turned my horse as though I was going on alone. My Tartar, however, paid no attention to me; he very coolly took off my carpet-bag and carried it into the cabin, lighted his pipe, and sat down by the door, looking at me with the most imperturbable gravity. I had hardly had time to admire his impudence, and to calculate the chances of my being able, alone at night, to cross the many streams which emptied into the gulf, when the wind, which had been rising for some time, became very violent, and the rain began to fall in torrents. With a sigh I bade farewell to the bright visions that had deluded me, gave another sigh to the uncertainty of all human calculations, the cup and the lip, &c., and took refuge in the cabin.