Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 94

In good weather a steamer of ordinary speed can make the run from Odessa to Constantinople in about forty hours. At daylight on the second morning we were at the entrance of the Bosphorus, but it was still so dark that we could see little more than the lighthouses and a very dim outline of the forts that command the passage.

Just inside the entrance we cast anchor and waited for the visit of the health officer. Until this was obtained we could go no farther, and hold no communication with the shore. The quarantine regulations in the Orient are very rigid, and the least violation of them subjects the offender to severe penalties.

The health officer came at six o’clock, and after a brief inspection granted us a clean bill of health. Then we might have gone on, but a tantalizing fog made its appearance and delayed us an hour or more. Then it lifted a little and soon shut down, and it kept lifting and shutting alternately, so that we anchored twice afterwards; drifted some of the time, and moved very slowly for the rest of our way.

It was a disappointment to nearly all of us, for we had great anxiety to see the shores of the Bosphorus, about whose beauty we had heard so much. We had now and then a slight glimpse—all the more aggravating—but did not get a fair view of the shores until we were in sight of the great city.

Some days later, when the sky was clear and the air soft, I made a journey on the Bosphorus, as I was determined not to miss it.

The length of the Bosphorus from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora is a little more than twenty miles, as a ship runs through; the shores are longer owing to their sinuosity. The strait is supposed to have been formed by an earthquake, as there is a similarity in the rocks of the two shores, and furthermore, there are on each side seven promontories corresponding to as many bays opposite. Its width at the narrowest point is about six hundred yards, and it enlarges in places to eight hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand, and twenty-five hundred yards. In the Gulfs of Bey-Kos and Buyuk-Dere it is more than three thousand yards wide.

The pen may give the figures that indicate the distances and heights, and depths, but no pen can give an adequate description of the pictures presented by the shores of the Bosphorus.

As we enter from the Black Sea we pass between the two castles, the one of Europe and the other of Asia. The hills are steep and rugged, and appear capable of easy defence; as we move along we have a succession of crags and rocks and forests; of villages, chateaux, and palaces in such profusion that we should be wearied were it not for the great beauty of the scene. For several miles the Asiatic side is but thinly inhabited, and the shore appears almost in its primitive condition. There is little else than mountains and gorges, lonely valleys, deep set and secluded, forests of varying colors fringing the cliffs and climbing the sloping sides of the hills, and below them the dark water in which the whole picture is at times reflected. On the European side the tableau is much the same for only a mile or so. Then begins a succession of edifices that show how much the progress of settlement has clung to the northern shore. Village after village, palace after palace, follow in such rapid succession that it is difficult to imagine them little else than a continuous line, which they indeed become, long before the towers and domes and minarets of the city come into sight. The irregularity of the shores adds to the picturesque effect; were they straight like the banks of an artificial canal, much of their beauty would be lost.

The real luxury of architecture on the Bosphorus, as we approach from the Black Sea, begins at Buyuk-Dere. This place has been called the most charming pleasure resort in the world. I am hardly prepared to endorse that opinion, but am willing to say it is one of the prettiest I have ever seen. Several of the foreign embassies have their summer residences here, and their palaces are quite prominent; the rich merchants of Constantinople dwell there in considerable numbers, and have fitted up their houses with very little regard for expense. The houses skirt the shore, and some of them climb the hills in terraces; there are groves of trees and a fine promenade near the water, so that the combined effect is very pretty. From here, as we go on, there is an uninterrupted succession of villages and palaces, whose names would be almost meaningless, but whose beauty as we view them from the water can never be forgotten.