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

But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in doing justice to the grand seignior. His highness has not always slept upon a bed of roses. He had to thank the petticoats of a female slave for saving his life when a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne before he found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of the general prejudices of the people, he determined to organize an army according to European tactics. He staked his throne and his head upon the issue; and it was not until he had been pushed to the desperate expedient of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet, parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and calling upon all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in short, it was not until the dead bodies of thirty thousand janisaries were floating down the Bosphorus, that he found himself the master in his own dominions. Since that time, either because he is fond of new things, or because he really sees farther than those around him, he is constantly endeavouring to introduce European improvements. For this purpose he invites talent, particularly mechanical and military, from every country, and has now around him Europeans among his most prominent men, and directing nearly all his public works.

The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and cannot help feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably the immediate effect may be to make them prone rather to catch the faults and vices than the virtues of Europeans; but afterward better things will come; they will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that is almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace a better religion.

But, however this may be, or whatever may be the cause, all ye who would see the Turk of Mohammed; the Turk who swept the plains of Asia, who leaned upon his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna, and threatened the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the Turk of the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come quickly, for he is becoming another man. A little longer, and the great characteristic distinctions will be broken down; the long pipe, the handsome pipe-bearer, and the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the seraglio are prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown open, the black eunuch and the veiled woman are no more seen, while the honest Turk trudges home from a quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones, with his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head drooping between his shoulders, taking a lecture from his better half for an involuntary sigh to the good old days that are gone. And oh you who turn up your aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages which time covers with its dim and twilight glories,

"When the world was fresh and young, And the great deluge still had left it green;"

you who come piping-hot from college, your brains teeming with recollections of the heroic ages; who would climb Mount Ida, to sit in council with the gods, come quickly, also, for all things are changing. A steamboat—shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon, forgive the sins of the day—an Austrian steamboat is now splashing the island-studded Ægean, and paddling the classic waters of the Hellespont. Oh ye princes and heroes who armed for the Trojan war, and covered these waters with your thousand ships, with what pious horror must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the impious modern monster of the deep, which strips the tall mast of its flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the propitiation of the gods, and flounders on its way in spite of wind and weather!

A new and unaccountable respect for the classics almost made me scorn the newfangled conveyance, though much to the comfort of wayfaring men; but sundry recollections of Greek caiques, and also an apprehension that there might be those yet living who had heard me in early days speak anything but respectfully of Homer, suggested to me that one man could not stem the current of the times, and that it was better for a humble individual like myself to float with the tide. This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think better of Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and smothering, as well as I could, my sense of shame, I sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for a race to Constantinople. Join me, now, in this race; and if your heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the most classic ground consecrated in history, mythology, or poetry, and in less time than ever the swiftfooted Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven o'clock on a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two hours passed the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine station, the yellow plague flag floating in the city and among the shipping; and toward dark, turning the point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance Foggi, the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on board, and, in the honesty of his heart, congratulated me upon being this time independent of the elements, without seeming to care a fig whether he profaned the memory of his ancestors in travelling by so unclassical a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the evening we were moving close to the Island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, the country of Sappho, Alcæus, and Terpander, famed for the excellence of its wine and the beauty of its women, and pre-eminently distinguished for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag now floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the abode of pestilence and death.

Early in the morning I found myself opposite the promontory of Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the ancient Troas from Æolia; a little to the right, but hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos, where the apostles stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the ruins of Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at some distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in the songs of the poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus, the island that received Vulcan after he was kicked out of heaven by Jupiter. A little farther, nearer the land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient Leucophrys, where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to have abandoned the siege of Troy. Still farther, on the mainland, is the promontory of Sigæum, where the Scamander empties into the sea, and near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles. A little farther—but hold, stop the engine! If there be a spot of classic ground on earth in which the historical, and the poetical, and the fabulous are so beautifully blended together that we would not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now. Extending for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed the earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and it is the plain of Troy, the battle-ground of heroes. Oh field of glory and of blood, little does he know, that surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough over thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war chariots, the crashing of armour, the swift flight, the hot pursuit, the shouts of victors, and the groans of the dying. Beyond it, towering to the heavens, is a lofty mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top Paris adjudged the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and paved the way for those calamities which brought on the ten years' siege, and laid in ruins the ancient city of Priam. Two small streams, taking their rise from the mountain of the gods, join each other in the middle of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters once washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus; and that small, confused, and shapeless mass of ruins, that beautiful sky and the songs of Homer, are all that remain to tell us that "Troy was." Close to the sea, and rising like mountains above the plain, are two immense mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax and Achilles. Shades of departed heroes, fain would we stop and pay the tribute which we justly owe, but we are hurried past by an engine of a hundred horse power.