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

CHAPTER XIII.

Visit to the Slave-market.—Horrors of Slavery.—Departure from Stamboul.—The stormy Euxine.—Odessa.—The Lazaretto.—Russian Civility.—Returning Good for Evil.

The day before I left Constantinople I went, in company with Dr. N. and his son, and attended by Paul, to visit the slave-market; crossing over to Stamboul, we picked up a Jew in the bazars, who conducted us through a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets to a quarter of the city from which it would have been utterly impossible for me to extricate myself alone. I only know that it was situated on high ground, and that we passed through a gateway into a hollow square of about a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet on each side. It was with no small degree of emotion that I entered this celebrated place, where so many Christian hearts have trembled; and, before crossing the threshold, I ran over in my mind all the romantic stories and all the horrible realities that I could remember connected with its history: the tears of beauty, the pangs of brave men, and so down to the unsentimental exclamation of Johnson to his new friend Don Juan:

"Yon black eunuch seems to eye us; I wish to God that somebody would buy us."

The bazar forms a hollow square, with little chambers about fifteen feet each way around it, in which the slaves belonging to the different dealers are kept. A large shed or portico projects in front, under which, and in front of each chamber, is a raised platform, with a low railing around it, where the slave-merchant sits and gossips, and dozes over his coffee and pipes. I had heard so little of this place, and it was so little known among Europeans, taking into consideration, moreover, that in a season of universal peace the market must be without a supply of captives gained in war, that I expected to see but a remnant of the ancient traffic, supposing that I should find but few slaves, and those only black; but, to my surprise, I found there twenty or thirty white women. Bad, horrible as this traffic is under any circumstances, to my habits and feelings it loses a shade of its horrors when confined to blacks; but here whites and blacks were exposed together in the same bazar. The women were from Circassia and the regions of the Caucasus, that country so renowned for beauty; they were dressed in the Turkish costume, with the white shawl wrapped around the mouth and chin, and over the forehead, shading the eyes, so that it was difficult to judge with certainty as to their personal appearance. Europeans are not permitted to purchase, and their visits to this bazar are looked upon with suspicion. If we stopped long opposite a door, it was closed upon us; but I was not easily shaken off, and returned so often at odd times, that I succeeded in seeing pretty distinctly all that was to be seen. In general, the best slaves are not exposed in the bazars, but are kept at the houses of the dealers; but there was one among them not more than seventeen, with a regular Circassian face, a brilliantly fair complexion, a mild and cheerful expression; and in the slave-market, under the partial disguise of the Turkish shawl, it required no great effort of the imagination to make her decidedly beautiful. Paul stopped, and with a burst of enthusiasm, the first I had discovered in him, exclaimed "Quelle beauté!" She noticed my repeatedly stopping before her bazar; and, when I was myself really disposed to be sentimental, instead of drooping her head with the air of a distressed heroine, to my great surprise she laughed and nodded, and beckoned me to come to her. Paul was very much struck; and repeating his warm expression of admiration at her beauty, told me that she wanted me to buy her. Without waiting for a reply, he went off and inquired the price, which was two hundred and fifty dollars; and added that he could easily get some Turk to let me buy her in his name, and then I could put her on board a vessel, and carry her where I pleased. I told him it was hardly worth while at present; and he, thinking my objection was merely to the person, in all honesty and earnestness told me he had been there frequently, and never saw anything half so handsome; adding that, if I let slip this opportunity, I would scarcely have another as good, and wound up very significantly by declaring that, if he was a gentleman, he would not hesitate a moment. A gentleman, in the sense in which Paul understood the word, is apt to fall into irregular ways in the East. Removed from the restraints which operate upon men in civilized countries, if he once breaks through the trammels of education, he goes all lengths; and it is said to be a matter of general remark, that slaves are always worse treated by Europeans than by the Turks. The slave-dealers are principally Jews, who buy children when young, and, if they have beauty train up the girls in such accomplishments as may fascinate the Turks. Our guide told us that, since the Greek revolution, the slave-market had been comparatively deserted; but, during the whole of that dreadful struggle, every day presented new horrors; new captives were brought in, the men raving and struggling, and vainly swearing eternal vengeance against the Turks, and the women shrieking distractedly in the agony of a separation. After the massacre at Scio, in particular, hundreds of young girls, with tears streaming down their cheeks, and bursting hearts, were sold to the unhallowed embraces of the Turks for a few dollars a head. We saw nothing of the horrors and atrocities of this celebrated slave-market. Indeed, except prisoners of war and persons captured by Turkish corsairs, the condition of those who now fill the slave-market is not the horrible lot that a warm imagination might suppose. They are mostly persons in a semibarbarous state; blacks from Sennaar and Abyssinia, or whites from the regions of the Caucasus, bought from their parents for a string of beads or a shawl; and, in all probability, the really beautiful girl whom I saw had been sold by parents who could not feed or clothe her, who considered themselves rid of an encumbrance, and whom she left without regret; and she, having left poverty and misery behind her, looked to the slave-market as the sole means of advancing her fortune; and, in becoming the favoured inmate of a harem, expected to attain a degree of happiness she could never have enjoyed at home.

I intended to go from Constantinople to Egypt, but the plague was raging there so violently that it would have been foolhardy to attempt it; and while making arrangements with a Tartar to return to Europe on horseback across the Balkan, striking the Danube at Semlin and Belgrade, a Russian government steamer was advertised for Odessa; and as this mode of travelling at that moment suited my health better, I altered my whole plan, and determined to leave the ruined countries of the Old World for a land just emerging from a state of barbarism, and growing into gigantic greatness. With great regret I took leave of Dr. N. and his son, who sailed the same day for Smyrna, and I have never seen them since. Paul was the last man to whom I said farewell. At the moment of starting my shirts were brought in dripping wet, and Paul bestowed a malediction upon the Greek while he wrung them out and tumbled them into my carpet-bag. I afterward found him at Malta, whence he accompanied me on my tour in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land, by which he is, perhaps, already known to some of my readers.

With my carpet-bag on the shoulders of a Turk, I walked for the last time to Tophana. A hundred caiquemen gathered around me, but I pushed them all back, and kept guard over my carpet-bag, looking out for one whom I had been in the habit of employing ever since my arrival in Constantinople. He soon spied me; and when he took my luggage and myself into his caique, manifested that he knew it was for the last time. Having an hour to spare, I directed him to row once more under the walls of the seraglio; and still loath to leave, I went on shore and walked around the point, until I was stopped by a Turkish bayonet. The Turk growled, and his mustache curled fiercely as he pointed it at me. I had been stopped by Frenchmen, Italians, and by a mountain Greek, but found nothing that brings a man to such a dead stand as the Turkish bayonet.