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

I returned to my caique, and went on board the steamer. She was a Russian government vessel, more classically called a pyroscaphe, a miserable old thing; and yet as much form and circumstance were observed in sending her off as in fitting out an exploring expedition . Consuls' and ambassadors' boats were passing and repassing, and after an enormous fuss and preparation, we started under a salute of cannon, which was answered from one of the sultan's frigates. We had the usual scene of parting with friends, waving of handkerchiefs, and so on; and feeling a little lonely at the idea of leaving a city containing a million inhabitants without a single friend to bid me Godspeed, I took my place on the quarter-deck, and waved my handkerchief to my caiqueman, who, I have no doubt, independent of the loss of a few piasters per day, was very sorry to lose me; for we had been so long together, that, in spite of our ignorance of each other's language, we understood each other perfectly.

I found on board two Englishmen whom I had met at Corfu, and a third, who had joined them at Smyrna, going to travel in the Crimea; our other cabin-passengers were Mr. Luoff, a Russian officer, an aiddecamp of the emperor, just returned from travels in Egypt and Syria, Mr. Perseani, secretary to the Russian legation in Greece; a Greek merchant, with a Russian protection, on his way to the Sea of Azoff; and a French merchant of Odessa. The tub of a steamboat dashed up the Bosphorus at the rate of three miles an hour; while the classic waters, as if indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, blustering monster upon their surface, seemed to laugh at her unwieldy and ineffectual efforts. Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, lined on the European side almost with one continued range of houses, exhibiting in every beautiful nook a palace of the sultan, and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces of the foreign ambassadors; passed the Giant's Mountain, and about an hour before dark were entering a new sea, the dark and stormy Euxine.

Advancing, the hills became more lofty and ragged, terminating on the Thracian side in high rocky precipices. The shores of this extremity of the Bosphorus were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples, monuments of the fears or gratitude of mariners who were about to leave, or who had escaped, the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine; and the remains of these antiquities were so great that a traveller almost in our own day describes the coasts as "covered by their ruins." The castles on the European and the Asiatic side of the strait are supposed to occupy the sites where stood, in ancient days, the great temples of Jupiter Serapis and Jupiter Urius. The Bosphorus opens abruptly, without any enlargement at its mouth, between two mountains. The parting view of the strait, or, rather, of the coast on each side, was indescribably grand, presenting a stupendous wall opposed to the great bed of waters, as if torn asunder by an earthquake, leaving a narrow rent for their escape. On each side, a miserable lantern on the top of a tower, hardly visible at the distance of a few miles, is the only light to guide the mariner at night; and as there is another opening called the false Bosphorus, the entrance is difficult and dangerous, and many vessels are lost here annually.

As the narrow opening closed before me, I felt myself entering a new world; I was fairly embarked upon that wide expanse of water which once, according to ancient legends, mingled with the Caspian, and covered the great oriental plain of Tartary, and upon which Jason, with his adventurous Argonauts, having killed the dragon and carried off the golden fleece from Colchis, if those same legends be true (which some doubt), sailed across to the great ocean. I might and should have speculated upon the great changes in the face of nature and the great deluge recorded by Grecian historians and poets, which burst the narrow passage of the Thracian Bosphorus for the outlet of the mighty waters; but who could philosophize in a steamboat on the Euxine? Oh Fulton! much as thou hast done for mechanics and the useful arts, thy hand has fallen rudely upon all cherished associations. We boast of thee; I have myself been proud of thee as an American; but as I sat at evening on the stern of the steamer, and listened to the clatter of the engine, and watched the sparks rushing out of the high pipes, and remembered that this was on the dark and inhospitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had begun after mine was ended. I trust I did his memory no wrong; but if I had borne him malice, I could not have wished him worse than to have all his dreams of the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own engines.

I turned away from storied associations to a new country grown up in our own day. We escaped, and, I am obliged to say, without noticing them, the Cyaneæ, "the blue Symplegades," or "wandering islands," which, lying on the European and Asiatic side, floated about, or, according to Pliny, "were alive, and moved to and fro more swiftly than the blast," and in passing through which the good ship Argo had a narrow escape, and lost the extremity of her stern. History and poetry have invested this sea with extraordinary and ideal terrors; but my experience both of the Mediterranean and Black Sea was unfortunate for realizing historical and poetical accounts. I had known the beautiful Mediterranean a sea of storm and sunshine, in which the storm greatly predominated. I found the stormy Euxine calm as an untroubled lake; in fact, the Black Sea is in reality nothing more than a lake, not as large as many of our own, receiving the waters of the great rivers of the north: the Don, the Cuban, the Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube, and pouring their collected streams through the narrow passage of the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean. Still, if the number of shipwrecks be any evidence of its character, it is indeed entitled to its ancient reputation of a dangerous sea, though probably these accidents proceed, in a great measure, from the ignorance and unskilfulness of mariners, and the want of proper charts and of suitable lighthouses at the opening of the Bosphorus. At all events, we outblustered the winds and waves with our steamboat; passed the Serpent Isles, the ancient Leuce, with a roaring that must have astonished the departed heroes whose souls, according to the ancient poets, were sent there to enjoy perpetual paradise, and scared the aquatic birds which every morning dipped their wings in the sea, and sprinkled the Temple of Achilles, and swept with their plumage its sacred pavement.

Odessa.

On the third day we made the low coast of Moldavia or Bess Arabia, within a short distance of Odessa, the great seaport of Southern Russia. Here, too, there was nothing to realize preconceived notions; for, instead of finding a rugged region of eternal snows, we were suffering under an intensely hot sun when we cast anchor in the harbour of Odessa. The whole line of the coast is low and destitute of trees; but Odessa is situated on a high bank; and, with its beautiful theatre, the exchange, the palace of the governor, &c., did not look like a city which, thirty years ago, consisted only of a few fishermen's huts.

The harbour of Odessa is very much exposed to the north and east winds, which often cause great damage to the shipping. Many hundred anchors cover the bottom, which cut the rope cables; and, the water being shallow, vessels are often injured by striking on them. An Austrian brig going out, having struck one, sank in ten minutes. There are two moles, the quarantine mole, in which we came to anchor, being the principal. Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour, the yellow indicating those undergoing purification, and the red the fatal presence of the plague. We were prepared to undergo a vexatious process. At Constantinople I had heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment of lazaretto subjects, and the rough, barbarous manners of the Russians to travellers, and we had a foretaste of the light in which we were to be regarded, in the conduct of the health-officer who came alongside. He offered to take charge of any letters for the town, purify them that night, and deliver them in the morning; and, according to his directions, we laid them down on the deck, where he took them up with a pair of long iron tongs, and putting them into an iron box, shut it up and rowed off.