Part 1 (1/2)
The Lion of Janina.
by Mor Jokai.
PREFACE
The first edition of _Janicsarok vegnapjai_ appeared forty-five years ago. It was immediately preceded by the great historical romance, _Erdely aranykora_ (_The Golden Age of Transylvania_), and the still more famous novel of manners, _Egy Magyar Nabob_ (_A Hungarian Nabob_), which Hungarians regard as, indisputably, Jokai's masterpiece, while only a few months separate it from _Karpathy Zoltan_ (_Sultan Karpathy_), the brilliant sequel to the _Nabob_. Thus it belongs to the author's best literary period.
It is also one of the most striking specimens of that peculiar group of Turkish stories, such as _Torokvilag Magyarorszagon_ (_Turkey in Hungary_) and _Torok mozgolmak_ (_Turkish Incursions_), _A ketszarvu ember_ (_The Man with the Antlers_), and the extremely popular _Feher rozsa_ (_White Rose_), which form a genre apart of Jokai's own creation, in which his exuberant imagination revels in the rich colors of the gorgeous East, as in its proper element, while his ever alert humor makes the most of the sharp and strange contrasts of Oriental life and society. The hero of the strange and terrible drama, or, rather, series of dramas, unfolded with such spirit, skill, and vividness in _Janicsarok vegnapjai_, is Ali Pasha of Janina, certainly one of the most brilliant, picturesque, and, it must be added, capable ruffians that even Turkish history can produce.
Manifold and monstrous as were Ali's crimes, his astonis.h.i.+ng ability and splendid courage lend a sort of savage sublimity even to his blood-stained career, and, indeed, the dogged valor with which the octogenarian warrior defended himself at the last in his stronghold against the whole might of the Ottoman Empire is almost without a parallel in history.
With such a hero, it is evident that the book must abound in stirring and even tremendous scenes; but, though primarily a novel of incident, it contains not a few fine studies of Oriental character, both Turkish and Greek, by an absolutely impartial observer, who can detect the worth of the Osmanli in the midst of his apathy and brutality, and who, although sympathetically inclined towards the h.e.l.lenes, is by no means blind to their craft and double-dealing, happily satirized in the comic character of Leonidas Argyrocantharides.
Finally, I have taken the liberty to alter the t.i.tle of the story.
_Janicsarok vegnapjai_ (_The Last Days of the Janissaries_) is too glaringly inapt to pa.s.s muster, inasmuch as the rebellion and annihilation of that dangerous corps is a mere inessential episode at the end of the story. I have, therefore, given the place of honor on the t.i.tle-page to Ali Pasha--the Lion of Janina.
I have added a glossary of the Turkish words used by the author in these pages.
R. NISBET BAIN.
The Lion of Janina
CHAPTER I
THE CAVERNS OF SELEUCIA
A savage, barren, inhospitable region lies before us, the cavernous valley of Seleucia--a veritable home for an anchorite, for there is nothing therein to remind one of the living world; the whole district resembles a vast ruined tomb, with its base overgrown by green weeds.
Here is everything which begets gloom--the blackest religious fanaticism, the darkest monstrosities of superst.i.tion--while an eternal malediction seems to brood like a heavy mist over this region, created surely by G.o.d's left hand, scattering abroad gigantic rocky fragments, smiting the earth with unfruitfulness, and making it uninhabitable by the children of men.
Man rarely visits these parts. And, indeed, why should he come, or what should he seek there? There is absolutely nothing in the whole region that is dear to the heart of man. Even the wild beast makes no abiding lair for himself in that valley. Only now and then, in the burning days of summer, a lion of the wilderness, flying from before the sultry heat, may, perchance, come there to devour his captured prey, and then, when he is well gorged, pursue his way, wrangling as he goes with the echo of his own roar.
Solitary travellers of an enterprising turn of mind do occasionally visit this dreary wilderness; but so crus.h.i.+ng an impression does it make on all who have the courage to gaze upon it, that they scarce wait to explore the historic ground, but hasten from it as fast as their legs can carry them.
What is there to see there, after all? A battered-down wall, as to which none can say who built it, or why it was built, or who destroyed it. A tall stone column, the column of the worthy Simon Stylites, who piled it up, stone upon stone, year after year, with his own hands, being wont to sit there for days together with arms extended in the shape of a cross, bowing himself thousands and thousands of times a day till his head touched his feet. The northern and southern sides of the valley are cut off from the rest of the world by gigantic ma.s.ses of rocks as steep and solid as the bastions of a fortress; only towards their summit, at an elevation of some three to four hundred yards, is a little strip of green vegetation visible.
Darkly visible at intervals in this long and steep rocky wall are the mouths of a series of caverns, of various sizes, all close together.
It looks as if some monstrous antediluvian race had cut two or three stories of doors and windows into the living rock, in order to make themselves palaces to dwell in.
The walls of these caverns are so rugged, their bases are so irregular, that it is scarcely conceivable that they could be the work of human hands, unless, indeed, the arched concavities of the chasms and the regular consecutiveness of the series may be a.s.sumed to bear witness to the wonder-working power of finite forces.
Three of the entrances to these caverns have all the loftiness of triumphal arches; nay, one of them, carved in the base of the rock, is so exceptionally vast that it rather resembles the nave of a huge church, and is said to penetrate the whole mountain to the sea beyond.
It is said that if any one has the courage to attempt the journey, he will discover mysterious hieroglyphics carved on the walls. Who could have been the authors of this unknown runic language? The Chaldeans perhaps, or the wors.h.i.+ppers of Mithra. What hidden secrets, what human memorials are enshrined in these symbols? That question must remain forever without an answer.
Most probably this valley was used as a burial-place by some long-vanished nation, whose tombs have survived them, making the whole region still more dreadful; the gaping crevices of the rocks seem to proclaim, as from a hundred open throats, that here an extinct race has found its last resting-place.