Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 95

By-and-by the fringe of villages becomes larger and deeper, and we are told that Constantinople is in sight. Its hills rise steeply so that the houses seem tost and in terraces; their varying colors appear as numerous as those of the kaleidoscope, and the domes and minarets that crown many of the elevations give the picture an emphatically oriental tinge. We are in front of the entrance to the Golden Horn with Pera and Golata on our right, and Stamboul, with its Seraglio Point, crowned with the dome of Santa Sophia on our left. Beyond are the waves of the Sea of Marmora, and as we look over them the Isles of the Princes rise between us and the horizon.

The harbor is dotted with shipping, and scores of restless steamers dart to and fro with their cargoes of passengers. Hundreds of caiques and other row boats are visible, and as our steamer drops her anchor, they throng around her in great numbers. The boatmen shout and gesticulate and push and fight, until they give us a fair indication of what the tower of Babel might have been just before the suspension of work on that edifice. Occasionally one of them falls into the water, but he is soon out again and shouting as wildly as ever. Evidently we shall not lack conveyance to the shore. The boatmen are a heterogeneous lot. They are Turks, Arabs, Maltese, Greeks, Italians, French, and Syrians, and there are many who would be unable, and others unwilling, to state their nationality. They are a picturesque crowd of thieves, most of them wearing the oriental dress, speaking a jargon of Italian and Greek and Turkish, with now and then one who has picked up a little English. They are difficult to manage, and not unfrequently, when they are out of sight of the police, indulge in robbing solitary passengers who engage them for journeys up and down the shores of the Bosphorus.

After running the gauntlet of the custom-house at Constantinople, we are at liberty to make our way to the hotels. All hotels are in the Pera quarter, on the east side of the Golden Horn, and there are always several runners for each establishment that board the steamer as soon as her anchor is down, and are ready to carry passengers and their baggage to the hostel-ries. No matter what hotel you intend to patronize, you are conducted up the steep hill, on whose elongated top the Grand Rue de Pera is situated.

You find that the street is very narrow and very dirty, even though a prolonged residence in New York may have given you modified notions about the ordinary condition of metropolitan highways and byways. There are pools and patches of mud that would have a slimy consistency if it were not frequently stirred by the feet of men and horses; and there are frequent heaps of filth that have waited so long for the scavenger that they have ceased to hope for his coming, and have settled down into the calm resignation of deep despair. The pavement is uneven and in very bad condition; it appears to have been wholly neglected since it was first laid down, and will probably continue to be neglected for years to come. The Moslem rarely repairs anything, as he believes that he is interfering with the work of God if he attempts to stop the progress of decay. He builds a house, a mosque, or a bridge—he erects a monument to the memory of his father or brother—he plants a tree and fences a field, and then rests content. The edifice may crumble, the monument may fall, or the tree may wither; he rolls his eyes to heaven and exclaims: “Inshallah”—as God wills it—his duty is ended.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Self-interest sometimes overcomes religious scruples in the East as well as elsewhere, and the Moslem will shrewdly conclude that the will of God requires him to preserve the gifts that Heaven has bestowed.