Part 4 (2/2)
Not far from the Osmanije mosque is the
SLAVE-MARKET.
I entered it with a beating heart, and already before I had even seen them, pitied the poor slaves. How glad, therefore, was I when I found them not half so forlorn and neglected as we Europeans are accustomed to imagine! I saw around me friendly smiling faces, from the grimaces and contortions of which I could easily discover that their owners were making quizzical remarks on every pa.s.sing stranger.
The market is a great yard, surrounded by rooms, in which the slaves live. By day they may walk about in the yard, pay one another visits, and chatter as much as they please.
In a market of this kind we, of course, see every gradation of colour, from light brown to the deepest black. The white slaves, and the most beautiful of the blacks, are not however to be seen by every stranger, but are shut up in the dwellings of the traffickers in human flesh. The dress of these people is simple in the extreme.
They either wear only a large linen sheet, which is wrapped round them, or some light garment. Even this they are obliged to take off when a purchaser appears. So long as they are in the hands of the dealers, they are certainly not kept in very good style; so they all look forward with great joy to the prospect of getting a master.
When they are once purchased, their fate is generally far from hard.
They always adopt the religion of their master, are not overburdened with work, are well clothed and fed, and kindly treated. Europeans also purchase slaves, but may not look upon them and treat them as such; from the moment when a slave is purchased by a Frank he becomes free. Slaves bought in this way, however, generally stay with their masters.
THE OLD SERAIL
is, of course, an object of paramount attraction to us Europeans. I betook myself thither with my expectations at full stretch, and once more found the reality to be far below my antic.i.p.ations. The effect of the whole is certainly grand; many a little town would not cover so much ground as this place, which consists of a number of houses and buildings, kiosks, and summer-houses, surrounded with plantains and cypress-trees, the latter half hidden amid gardens and arbours.
Everywhere there is a total want of symmetry and taste. I saw something of the garden, walked through the first and second courtyard, and even peeped into the third. In the last two yards the buildings are remarkable for the number of cupolas they exhibit.
I saw a few rooms and large halls quite full of a number of European things, such as furniture, clocks, vases, etc. My expectations were sadly damped. The place where the heads of pashas who had fallen into disfavour were exhibited is in the third yard. Heaven be praised, no severed heads are now seen stuck on the palings.
I was not fortunate enough to be admitted into the imperial harem; I did not possess sufficient interest to obtain a view of it. At a later period of my journey, however, I succeeded in viewing several harems.
THE HIPPODROME
is the largest and finest open place in Constantinople. After those of Cairo and Padua, it is the most s.p.a.cious I have seen any where.
Two obelisks of red granite, covered with hieroglyphics, are the only ornaments of this place. The houses surrounding it are built, according to the general fas.h.i.+on, of wood, and painted with oil- colours of different tints. I here noticed a great number of pretty children's carriages, drawn by servants. Many parents a.s.sembled here to let their children be driven about.
Not far from the Hippodrome are the great cisterns with the thousand and one pillars. Once on a time this gigantic fabric must have presented a magnificent appearance. Now a miserable wooden staircase, lamentably out of repair, leads you down a flight of thirty or forty steps into the depths of one of these cisterns, the roof of which is supported by three hundred pillars. This cistern is no longer filled with water, but serves as a workshop for silk- spinners. The place seems almost as if it had been expressly built for such a purpose, as it receives light from above, and is cool in summer, and warm during the winter. It is now impossible to penetrate into the lower stories, as they are either filled with earth or with water.
The aqueducts of Justinian and Valentinian are stupendous works.
They extend from Belgrade to the ”Sweet Waters,” a distance of about fourteen miles, and supply the whole of Constantinople with a sufficiency of water.
COFFEE-HOUSES--STORY-TELLERS.
Before I bade farewell to Constantinople for the present and betook me to Pera, I requested my guide to conduct me to a few coffee- houses, that I might have a new opportunity of observing the peculiar customs and mode of life of the Turks. I had already obtained some notion of the appearance of these places in Giurgewo and Galatz; but in this imperial town I had fancied I should find them somewhat neater and more ornamental. But this delusion vanished as soon as I entered the first coffee-house. A wretchedly dirty room, in which Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and others sat cross- legged on divans, smoking and drinking coffee, was all I could discover. In the second house I visited I saw, with great disgust, that the coffee-room was also used as a barber's shop; on one side they were serving coffee, and on the other a Turk was having his head shaved. They say that bleeding is sometimes even carried on in these booths.
In a coffee-house of a rather superior cla.s.s we found one of the so- called ”story-tellers.” The audience sit round in a half-circle, and the narrator stands in the foreground, and quietly begins a tale from the Thousand and One Nights; but as he continues he becomes inspired, and at length roars and gesticulates like the veriest ranter among a company of strolling players.
Sherbet is not drunk in all the coffee-houses; but every where we find stalls and booths where this cooling and delicious beverage is to be had. It is made from the juice of fruits, mixed with that of lemons and pomegranates. In Pera ice is only to be had in the coffee-houses of the Franks, or of Christian confectioners. All coffee-house keepers are obliged to buy their coffee ready burnt and ground from the government, the monopoly of this article being an imperial privilege. A building has been expressly constructed for its preparation, where the coffee is ground to powder by machinery.
The coffee is made very strong, and poured out without being strained, a custom which I could not bring myself to like.
It is well worth the traveller's while to make an
EXCURSION TO EJUB,
the greatest suburb of Constantinople, and also the place where the richest and most n.o.ble of the Turks are buried.
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