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

From this we went into several other houses, in all of which the interior belied, in the same manner, their external appearance. I do not say that they were gorgeous or magnificent, but they were clean, comfortable, and striking by their oriental style of architecture and furniture; and being their Sabbath, the women were in their best attire, with their heads, necks, and wrists adorned with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments. Several of the houses had libraries, with old Hebrew books, in which an old rabbi was reading or sometimes instructing children. In the last house a son was going through his days of mourning on the death of his father. He was lying in the middle of the floor, with his black cap on, and covered with a long black cloak. Twenty or thirty friends were sitting on the floor around him, who had come in to condole with him. When we entered, neither he nor any of his friends took any notice of us, except to make room on the floor. We sat down with them. It was growing dark, and the light broke dimly through the latticed windows upon the dusky figures of the mourning Israelites; and there they sat, with stern visages and long beards, the feeble remnant of a fallen people, under scorn and contumely, and persecution and oppression, holding on to the traditions received from their fathers, practising in the privacy of their houses the same rites as when the priests bore aloft the ark of the covenant, and out of the very dust in which they lie still looking for the restoration of their temporal kingdom. In a room adjoining sat the widow of the deceased, with a group of women around her, all perfectly silent; and they too took no notice of us either when we entered or when we went away.

The next day the shops were shut, and the streets again thronged as on the day of my arrival. I went to church at the English chapel attached to the residence of the British consul, and heard a sermon from a German missionary. I dined at one o'clock, and, in company with mine host of the Pension Suisse, and a merchant of Smyrna resident there, worked my way up the hill through the heart of the Turks' quarter to the old castle standing alone and in ruins on its summit. We rested a little while at the foot of the castle, and looked over the city and the tops of the minarets upon the beautiful bay, and descending in the rear of the castle, we came to the river Meles winding through a deep valley at the foot of the hill. This stream was celebrated in Grecian poetry three thousand years ago. It was the pride of the ancient Smyrneans, once washed the walls of the ancient city, and tradition says that on its banks the nymph Critheis gave birth to Homer. We followed it in its winding course down the valley, murmuring among evergreens. Over it in two places were the ruins of aqueducts which carried water to the old city, and in one or two places it turns an overshot mill. On each side, at intervals along its banks, were oriental summer-houses, with verandahs, and balconies, and latticed windows. Approaching the caravan bridge we met straggling parties, and by degrees fell into a crowd of people, Franks, Europeans of every nation, Greeks, Turks, and Armenians, in all their striking costumes, sitting on benches under the shade of noble old sycamores, or on the grass, or on the river's brink, and moving among them were Turks cleanly dressed, with trays of refreshments, ices, and sherbet. There was an unusual collection of Greek and Smyrniote women, and an extraordinary display of beauty; none of them wore hats, but the Greek women a light gauze turban, and the Smyrniotes a small piece of red cloth, worked with gold, secured on the top of the head by the folds of the hair, with a long tassel hanging down from it. Opposite, and in striking contrast, the great Turkish burying-ground, with its thick grove of gloomy cypress, approached the bank of the river. I crossed over and entered the burying-ground, and penetrated the grove of funereal trees; all around were the graves of the dead; thousands and tens of thousands who but yesterday were like the gay crowd I saw flitting through the trees, were sleeping under my feet. Over some of the graves the earth was still fresh, and they who lay in them were already forgotten; but no, they were not forgotten; woman's love still remembered them, for Turkish women, with long white shawls wrapped around their faces, were planting over them myrtle and flowers, believing that they were paying an acceptable tribute to the souls of the dead. I left the burying-ground and plunged once more among the crowd. It may be that memory paints these scenes brighter than they were; but, if that does not deceive me, I never saw at Paris or Vienna so gay and beautiful a scene, so rich in landscape and scenery, in variety of costume, and in beauty of female form and feature.

We left the caravan bridge early to visit the Armenian quarter, this being the best day for seeing them collectively at home; and I had not passed through the first street of their beautiful quarter before I was forcibly struck with the appearance of a people different from any I had yet seen in the East. The Armenians are one of the oldest nations of the civilized world, and, amid all the revolutions of barbarian war and despotism, have maintained themselves as a cultivated people. From the time when their first chieftain fled from Babylon, his native place, to escape from the tyranny of Belus, king of Assyria, this warlike people, occupying a mountainous country near the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, battled the Assyrians, Medes, the Persians, Macedonians, and Arabians, until their country was depopulated by the shah of Persia. Less than two millions are all that now remain of that once powerful people. Commerce has scattered them, like the Israelites, among all the principal nations of Europe and Asia, and everywhere they have preserved their stern integrity and uprightness of character. The Armenian merchant is now known in every quarter of the globe, and everywhere distinguished by superior cultivation, honesty, and manners. As early as the fourth century the Armenians embraced Christianity; they never had any sympathy with, and always disliked and avoided, the Greek Christians, and constantly resisted the endeavours of the popes to bring them within the Catholic pale. Their doctrine differs from that of the orthodox chiefly in their admitting only one nature in Christ, and believing the Holy Spirit to issue from the Father alone. Their first abode, Mount Ararat, is even at the present day the centre of their religious and political union. They are distinguished by a patriarchal simplicity in their domestic manners; and it was the beautiful exhibition of this trait in their character that struck me on entering their quarter at Smyrna. In style and appearance their quarter is superior to any in Smyrna; their streets are broad and clean; their houses large, in good order, and well painted; oriental in their style of architecture, with large balconies and latticed windows, and spacious halls running through the centre, floored with small black and white stones laid in the form of stars and other fanciful devices, and leading to large gardens in the rear, ornamented with trees, vines, shrubs, and flowers, then in full bloom and beauty. All along the streets the doors of the houses were thrown wide open, and the old Armenian "Knickerbockers" were sitting outside or in the doorway, in their flowing robes, grave and sedate, with long pipes and large amber mouth pieces, talking with their neighbours, while the younger members were distributed along the hall or strolling through the garden, and children climbing the trees and arbours. It was a fête day for the whole neighbourhood. All was social, and cheerful, and beautiful, without being gay or noisy, and all was open to the observation of every passer-by. My companion, an old resident of Smyrna, stopped with me at the house of a large banker, whose whole family, with several neighbours young and old, were assembled in the hall.