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

For two or three days I was hors du combat , and put myself under the hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian, educated at Edinburgh, whom I cordially recommend both for his kindness and medical skill. On going out, one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill, a gentleman whose name has since rung throughout Europe, and who at one time seemed likely to be the cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war. He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient Chalcedon, in Asia; and I have seldom been more shocked than by reading in a newspaper, while in the lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally shot a Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized by the Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, bastinadoed till he was almost dead. I had seen the infliction of that horrible punishment; and, besides the physical pain, there was a sense of the indignity that roused every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious spirit with which the Turks would stand around and see a Christian scourged. The civilized world owes a deep debt of gratitude to the English government for the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the sultan, and the firmness with which it insisted on, and obtained, the most ample redress for Mr. Churchill, and atonement for the insult offered to all Christendom in his person.

My companions and myself had received several invitations from Commodore Porter, and, accompanied by Mr. Dwight, one of our American missionaries, to whom I am under particular obligations for his kindness, early in the morning we took a caique with three athletic Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio point to the Seven Towers, a distance of five miles, being close under the walls of the city, in two hours reached the commodore's residence at St. Stephano, twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders of the Sea of Marmora. The situation is beautiful, abounding in fruit-trees, among which are some fig trees of the largest size; and the commodore was then engaged in building a large addition to his house. It will be remembered that Commodore Porter was the first envoy ever sent by the United States' government to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, with the other members of the diplomatic corps; but his salary as chargé being inadequate to sustain a becoming style, he had withdrawn to this place. I had never seen Commodore Porter before. I afterward passed a month with him in the lazaretto at Malta, and I trust he will not consider me presuming when I say that our acquaintance ripened into friendship. He is entirely different from the idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten, much broken in health, and remarkably mild and quiet in his manners. His eye is his best feature, though even that does not indicate the desperate hardihood of character which he has exhibited on so many occasions. Perhaps I ought not to say so, but he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I could not but think that he ought still to be standing in the front rank of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke with great bitterness of the Foxardo affair, and gave me an account of an interesting interview between General Jackson and himself on his recall from South America. General Jackson wished him to resume his rank in the navy, but he answered that he would never accept service with men who had suspended him for doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation, was done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."

At the primitive hour of one we sat down to a regular family dinner. We were all Americans. The commodore's sister, who was living with him, presided, and we looked out on the Sea of Marmora and talked of home. I cannot describe the satisfaction of these meetings of Americans so far from their own country. I have often experienced it most powerfully in the houses of the missionaries in the East. Besides having, in many instances, the same acquaintances, we had all the same habits and ways of thinking; their articles of furniture were familiar to me, and there was scarcely a house in which I did not find an article unknown except among Americans, a Boston rocking-chair.

We talked over the subject of our difficulties with France, then under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, and I remember that Commodore Porter was strong in the opinion that the bill paying the debt would pass. Before rising from table, the commodore's janisary came down from Constantinople, with papers and letters just arrived by the courier from Paris. He told me that I should have the honour of breaking the seals, and I took out the paper so well known all over Europe, "Galignani's Messenger," and had the satisfaction of reading aloud, in confirmation of the commodore's opinion, that the bill for paying the American claims had passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority.

Castle of the Seven Towers.

About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return to Constantinople. In an hour Mr. D. and I landed at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few things in this ancient city interested me more than my walk around its walls. We followed them the whole extent on the land side, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five gates, the principal of which is the Cannon Gate, through which Mohammed II. made his triumphal entry into the Christian city. They have not been repaired since the city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the same walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended city;" to a great extent, they are the same walls which the first Constantine built and the last Constantine died in defending. Time has laid his ruining hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of modern war. The moat and fossé have alike lost their warlike character, and bloom and blossom with the vine and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than the venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can reach, is one continued burying-ground, with thousands and tens of thousands of turbaned headstones, shaded by thick groves of the mourning cypress. Opposite the Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected from all around, containing five headstones in a row, over the bodies of Ali Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina, and his four sons. The fatal mark of death by the bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of the Porte. It was toward the sunset of a beautiful evening, and all Stamboul was out among the tombs. At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in a caique, and in a few minutes were in Pera.

The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went up to the shipyards at the head of the Golden Horn to visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter from a friend in Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is a native of Long Island, but from his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great pleasure in saying that he is an honour to our state and country. The reader will remember that, some years ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens, under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left his native city. He sailed from New-York in a beautiful corvette, its destination unknown, and came to anchor under the walls of the seraglio in the harbour of Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life" on the waters of the Golden Horn, a model of beauty.

The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great nation if she could spare from her service such a man. Had he lived, even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant pecuniary reward. Mr. Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of completing his employer's work devolved on him. It could not have fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman shipbuilder, all at once Mr. Rhodes found himself brought into close relations with the seraskier pacha, the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself; but his good sense never deserted him. He was then preparing for the launch of the great ship; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions of every ship that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the ship and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the sultan. He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without whiskers or mustache, and, except that he wore the tarbouch, was thorough American in his appearance and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by his side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached Turks, and in the same breath he was talking with me of shipbuilders in New-York, and people and things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes knows and cares but little for things that do not immediately concern him; his whole thoughts are of his business, and in that he possesses an ambition and industry worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion, particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic government, I may mention that, while standing near the ship and remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her name, and he told me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern, and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not be able to answer when asked. I have seldom met a countryman abroad with whom I was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a pinnacle in my estimation by telling me that, if I came to the yard the next day at one, I would see the sultan! There was no man living whom I had a greater curiosity to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but the sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness had come two hours before the time; had accompanied Mr. Rhodes over the ship, and left the yard less than five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still lying at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays of refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and two black eunuchs belonging to the seraglio, handsomely dressed in long black cloaks of fine pelisse cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers, were still lingering about the ship, their effeminate faces and musical voices at once betraying their neutral character.