Day & Haghe, Lith^rs to the Queen

SHIPWRECK NEAR THE ISLAND OF RHODES

London, Henry Colburn, G^t. Marlborough S^t., 1846.

TRAVELS
OF
LADY HESTER STANHOPE;

FORMING THE COMPLETION

OF

HER MEMOIRS.

NARRATED BY

HER PHYSICIAN.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1846.

Frederick Shoberl, Junior, Printer to His Royal Highness Prince Albert, 51, Rupert Street, Haymarket, London.

TO

JOHN SCOTT, ESQ., M.D.

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, AND FELLOW OF THE ROYAL
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON,

A GENTLEMAN AT ONCE EMINENT FOR HIS EXTENSIVE
ACQUAINTANCE WITH ORIENTAL LANGUAGES,
AND FOR HIS CLASSICAL KNOWLEDGE,

THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED,

BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

The Travels now presented to the public are intended to complete the Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope; and the author trusts that the interest excited by his former work—shown by the rapid sale of an extensive first edition, and the demand for a second—will be manifested equally for this. Indeed, he cannot doubt that the reader will be anxious to learn by what steps an unprotected woman progressively gained so marked an ascendency in a strange land, the language and the usages of which were altogether contrary to her own, whereby the attempt became so much the more difficult. As, then, the Memoirs embraced a period of about fifteen years, in which the author endeavoured to trace the causes that led to the “decline and fall” of her ladyship’s somewhat visionary empire in the East, the Travels will now take up her history from the time she quitted England, and, by a faithful narrative of her extraordinary adventures, show the rise and growth of her Oriental greatness.

A distinct line may at once be drawn between this and other books of peregrinations in the East. The reader will here find no antiquarian research, no new views of the political relations of sects and parties: but these Travels exhibit what others do not—a heroine who marches at the head of Arab tribes through the Syrian desert; who calls governors of cities to her aid, whilst she excavates the earth in search of hidden treasures; who sends generals with their troops to carry fire and sword into the fearful passes of a mountainous country, to avenge the death of a murdered traveller; and who then goes, defenceless and unprotected, a sojourner amidst the people on whom these chastisements had fallen.

This work embraces a period reaching from the thirty-sixth to the forty-third year of Lady Hester’s life. It fills up an interval so far important, as connecting her residence with Mr. Pitt and the occurrences which marked the last fifteen years of her existence; and enables those, who may be disposed to blame or applaud her conduct, to speak at least upon certain grounds: and, though her enemies may find eccentricities enough to satisfy their inclination to ridicule her, her friends will dwell with pleasure on such of her actions as must, in the eyes of unbiassed persons, excite praise; whilst the undoubted marks of a superior mind, which, every now and then, show themselves, will bring into evidence the talents and energy which she inherited from her ancestor, the great Lord Chatham.

Some apology may seem necessary for the paucity of incidents in the first six or eight chapters. Twice had the author to lament the loss of what is most precious to a traveller, supposing him to have noted down from day to day the occurrences of his route. Up to the early part of the year 1812 the narrative is compiled from letters, written to friends in England, and from notes fortunately preserved. All that is subsequent to May, 1812, is copied from a journal kept unbroken for four or five years, during an intercourse which afforded the same facilities for observation as he enjoyed in preparing his former work.

On the criticisms which were passed on that work, the “Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope,” he feels bound, in justification of himself, to make a few observations. Unacquainted with the motives which actuated the writers of them, the public will, perhaps, when these are explained, entertain a different opinion from what, otherwise, it might be led to do.

Mr. Pitt, during his long administration, was surrounded by many coadjutors, who were raised by his patronage and favour to high places in the government. His generous nature led him to tolerate in some of them a line of conduct based on principles and motives less pure than his own. These men, in becoming the channel of advancement to others of an inferior class, created a host of followers, who thought it, and, where they survive, may think it still, a party duty to support the reputation of those persons to whom they owed their advancement. Mr. Pitt’s niece and companion, Lady Hester, endowed with a finer discrimination of character than her uncle, and enabled from her position as a bystander to take a just measure of the abilities and motives of those who seemed to be acting with him, could scarcely bear with the stupidity of some, the duplicity of others, and the baseness of almost all. Gifted by nature with a most retentive memory, so as to be able to compare men’s actions and assertions from time to time, just in her appreciation of their designs, fearless of their anger and a match for their ridicule, disclaiming all compromise with insincerity and vice, she aimed with an unerring hand the shafts of her disdain at all those whose vices and perfidy called forth her execration.

What then must have been the rage of these persons, who, finding their patrons unmasked in conversations related with strict fidelity, had no resource left them, but, where the narration was unimpeachable, to malign the narrator! All this is well understood by the higher classes of society in England: they may read the critic’s vituperation, but they know why he is enraged, and they leave out his observations in the estimate which they form of the author’s claim to their attention: but the mass of the public, who are less in the secret, pity the author, or perhaps even join in the ridicule against him.

Let those, therefore, who are open to conviction, correct their judgment and be undeceived. Let them be persuaded that, although the adherents of a Heliogabalus, of a versatile, or an insincere minister, a pompous Lord, or an intriguing Duchess, may for a time be successful in their abuse, truth at length will prevail, and the indignation of a noble-minded, upright, and virtuous woman, become matter of history.

Among a host of critics, the Memoirs have been pronounced by some of another class as devoid of artistic excellence. The author’s total abnegation of self, and his steady adherence to the rule he had laid down of shadowing the background on which he stood, in order to throw greater light on the more prominent figure in front, seems to have availed him nothing! Surely these critics might have had the sense to perceive that the author, if he had been so disposed, could have given to himself a much more flattering costume, and have arrayed himself in a garb of Eastern glitter as imposing as the most vivid fancy could desire. What was to prevent him from describing his familiar visits to the great people of the country, and the intercourse which he enjoyed with many of them—from recounting his pleasant adventures with lords and princes—from enumerating the ambassadorial gaieties of Constantinople, the frivolities of Smyrna, Cairo, and other cities, in which he bore his share—or from colouring incidents calculated to impose on the reader, too far removed from the scene of action to be able to decide what degree of credit was to be given to them? But it was not the author’s purpose to divert attention from the heroine of his story; and in all the adventures which the reader may peruse in the following pages, he wishes his own share in them to be lost sight of, excepting where his presence is necessary for making the description complete.

One word more remains to be added as to the credit which is to be attached to what Lady Hester Stanhope says of herself and others. The author of this narrative can conscientiously affirm that, after an intimate knowledge of her ladyship’s character for upwards of thirty years, he was always impressed with the highest respect for her veracity. Indeed, her courage was of too lofty a nature ever to allow her to condescend to utter a falsehood.

May 1, 1846.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

CONTENTS
OF THE
THE FIRST VOLUME.

GIORGIO DALLEGIO, PAGE TO LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

TRAVELS

OF

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

CHAPTER I.

Departure from England—Danger of Shipwreck—Gibraltar—Malta—City of La Valetta—Public Edifices—General aspect of the Island—Commerce—Character of the Inhabitants—Island of Goza—Mansion of the Governor at San Antonio occupied by Lady Hester Stanhope—English Visitors—Lady Hester resolves on an Eastern Tour.

The writer of this narrative had just completed his studies in medicine, when he was engaged, through the recommendation of an eminent anatomist and surgeon, to attend Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, in the capacity of her physician, on a voyage to Sicily; in which island it was her intention to reside two or three years, for the benefit of her health, that had suffered greatly from family afflictions.[1] Her ladyship was accompanied by her half-brother, the Honourable James Hamilton Stanhope, and his friend, Mr. Nassau Sutton.

On the 10th of February, 1810, we embarked at Portsmouth, on board the Jason frigate, commanded by the Hon. James King, having under convoy a fleet of transports and merchant vessels bound for Gibraltar. Our voyage was an alternation of calms and gales. We were seven days in reaching the Land’s End; then, having passed Cape Finisterre and Cape St. Vincent, we were overtaken, on the 6th of March, by a violent gale of wind, which dispersed the convoy, and drove us so far to leeward that we found ourselves on the shoals of Trafalgar.

It was for some hours uncertain whether we should not have to encounter the horrors of shipwreck, on that very shore where so many brave sailors perished after the battle which derives its name from these shoals: but, on the following morning, by dint of beating to windward, under a pressure of sail, in a most tremendous sea, we weathered the land, and gained the Straits of Gibraltar, through which we ran.

We anchored in the Bay of Tetuan, at the back of the promontory of Ceuta, facing Gibraltar, on the African coast. Mount Atlas, the scene of so many of the fables of antiquity, was visible from this point; but its form was far from corresponding with the shape pictured by my imagination, presenting rather the appearance of a chain of mountains than of one single mount.

The wind abated the next day, when we weighed anchor, and entered the Bay of Gibraltar. As we approached the rock, we were struck with the grandeur and singularity of its appearance. Lady Hester and her brother were received at the Convent, the residence of the lieutenant-governor, Lieut. Gen. Campbell. Mr. Sutton and myself had apartments assigned to us in a house adjoining the Convent, where we occasionally partook of the hospitality of Colonel M’Coomb, of the Corsican Rangers, although we dined and lived principally at the Governor’s palace.

I visited the fortifications in company with the Lieutenant-Governor and Captain Stanhope.

As I had never before sailed to a latitude so southern as Gibraltar, I was much struck with the difference of temperature into which we were now transported. There were flowers in bloom, shrubs in leaf, and other appearances of an early spring; and I hastened, the morning after our arrival, to enjoy the luxury of bathing in the sea. These feelings of pleasure at the change of climate were, however, greatly abated by the attacks to which we were daily and nightly exposed from the musquitoes, which entirely destroyed our rest. How impartial has Nature been in all her dealings! Go where you will, if you sum up the amount of good and evil, every country will be found to have about an equal portion of both; and, in many cases, where Providence has seemed to be more beneficent than was equitable, a little fly will strike the balance.

The French, about this time, had overrun almost the whole of Spain, and parties of their cavalry had approached within three miles of the fortifications of Gibraltar. Our excursions, therefore, beyond the isthmus were exceedingly limited, and the only neighbouring places I saw were St. Roque and Algeziras. Numbers of Spanish fugitives flocked in every day. Those who bore arms were sent to Cadiz, and the rest remained in security at Ceuta, a possession of the Spanish on the African side of the Straits, ceded about this time to the English.

The Marquis of Sligo and Mr. Bruce,[2] both of whom afterwards joined Lady Hester’s party, were also at Gibraltar. These gentlemen, with several other Englishmen and many Spanish noblemen and officers, who, with their families, had taken refuge here, constituted the society at the Lieutenant-Governor’s house.

Gibraltar seemed to me to be a place where no one would live but from necessity. Provisions and the necessaries of life of all kinds were exceedingly dear. The meat was poor and lean; vegetables were scarce; and servants, from the plenty of bad wine, were always drunk. Out-door amusements on a rock, where half the accessible places are to be reached by steps only, or where a start of a horse would plunge his rider over a precipice, must be, of course, but few; although, to horsemen, the neutral ground, which is an isthmus of sand joining the rock to Spain, affords an agreeable level for equestrian exercise.

Soon after our arrival at Gibraltar, Captain Stanhope, Lady Hester’s brother, received an order to join his regiment, the 1st Foot Guards, at Cadiz; and Mr. Sutton departed for Minorca, whither his affairs led him. Her ladyship, for whom a garrison town had no charms, was anxious to pursue her voyage. Her state of health rendered the civilities, with which she was overwhelmed, irksome to her; so that she readily availed herself of an offer made by Captain Whitby,[3] of the Cerberus frigate, to take her passage with him to Malta: and, on the 7th of April, we sailed out of the bay, after a double risk, first of the boat’s being swamped in getting on board, and then of the frigate’s falling on a rock, by missing stays, in going out. We put into Port Mahon on our way, and arrived at Malta on the 21st of April, after a passage of fifteen days.

Few cities are more striking at first sight than La Valetta, the capital of Malta. It happened to be Easter day; and the ringing of bells and firing of crackers and guns, as we entered the harbour, about ten in the morning, together with the varied appearance of English, Moorish, and Greek ships, with their different flags mingled in a most agreeable confusion, and reflected from a green water, transparent to the bottom, at the foot of stupendous fortifications, altogether rendered it one of the most cheerful and animating sights we had ever beheld.

Lady Hester was expected at Malta, and the Governor and some other persons of note invited her to take up her residence at their houses. She accepted the invitation of Mr. Fernandez, the Deputy Commissary-General. We landed in the afternoon. In walking through the streets, I found myself surrounded by buildings, different in style from any that I had yet seen, and jostled by a race of people, sufficiently strange to attract my attention strongly. I now felt that I was fairly out of England; which, while in Gibraltar, where the population is so largely made up of English, and where the English language is so generally spoken, I never could persuade myself to be the case.

The residence of Mr. Fernandez was a large house, formerly the inn[4] or hotel of the French knights: each nation, as it would appear, having had a separate palace to lodge in. The sleeping rooms were old-fashioned and gloomy, with windows like embrasures, almost twenty feet apart.

Malta contains two principal cities and twenty-two villages, or casals, as they are called. The old city, Civita Vecchia, was the only one at the time the knights took possession of the island. It is still called by the natives El Medina (the Arabic word for the city.). It has no edifices worthy of notice but the palace of the grand-master and the cathedral, in which are some paintings by Matthias Preti. Its greatest curiosity is the catacombs. They are very extensive, and contain what may be called excavated streets in all directions. From these branch off corridors, wherein are formed apartments containing tombs or sepulchres without number. These catacombs have likewise served as asylums for individuals who fled from religious persecution, and for the inhabitants generally, whenever piratical descents were made on the island.

The modern city, Valetta, was founded in 1566; and, by the enthusiasm of the islanders, who voluntarily aided in the works, it was finished in 1571. It is entirely built of the calcareous stone of the rock on which it stands. A piece of ground was given to each of the nations (or languages, as it was usual to style them) for their respective habitations or inns. The streets are built at right angles, and paved with flat square stones, and the houses are spacious, lofty, and with regular fronts, most of them having a balcony projecting over the street. The object of the architect seems to have been, besides beauty and strength, to gain shade and coolness. Hence the walls of the houses are generally from six to twelve feet thick, and the floors always of stone:[5] the doors are folding, and the windows down to the ground. In every house of the principal inhabitants, in the summer, there is a suite of rooms thrown open. Thus, by having five or six rooms in a line, great coolness, and, if required, a current of air is obtained, the value of which can be sufficiently appreciated by those only who live in very hot countries. In most of the dwellings, the ground floor is used for warehouses and shops; and the family resides on the first floor, the bed-rooms and sitting-rooms being all on the same level. Every house has a cistern, into which rain-water runs from the roof. These roofs, formed of an excellent cement, are flat. Besides the private cisterns, there are public reservoirs, and also a fountain, the source of which is at the village of Diar Chandal, twelve or thirteen miles from La Valetta whither the water is conveyed by a subterranean aqueduct.

The public edifices most worthy of notice are the Palace of the Grand Master, the Hotels or Inns of the different languages, the Conservatory, the Treasury, the University, the Town Hall, the Palace of Justice, the Hospital, and the Barracks, all built with great simplicity. Indeed, La Valetta is much more striking from the arrangement of the general mass of buildings than from the details of any particular one.

The palace, once the residence of the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, is a magnificent edifice, in its general appearance somewhat like Somerset House. It contains many splendid rooms and saloons, hung with tapestry and damask; and there is a spacious hall, the walls of which are curiously painted in commemoration of the naval victories of the Christian knights over the Moslems. The grand staircase is of remarkably easy ascent. In one part of the Conservatory is the Library: in 1790, it had 60,000 volumes, although founded so lately as 1760: its rapid increase was owing to a law, whereby the books of every knight, at his decease, wherever he might be, were to be sent to Malta. Adjoining to the library is a museum, which contains many interesting objects.

The Hospital is a spacious edifice, open for the sick and wounded of all countries. The knights were formerly bound to attend them, and the utensils employed were almost all of silver, but of quite plain workmanship; so that it might be seen that cleanliness, not ostentation, was the purpose for which they were made.

The Church of St. John is a building, the imposing grandeur of which, when I first saw it, made a strong impression upon me. It consists of an immense nave, from which branch off, right and left, small chapels, each adorned with richly sculptured altars, beautified with everything that superstition can collect. The roof is arched, and painted in fresco by Matthias Preti, the Calabrian. The walls are also decorated with paintings by him and other masters: and the pavement is one uninterrupted piece of mosaic of coloured marbles. Some idea of its effect may be formed by imagining the pictures in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris to be taken from their frames, sewed together, and the spectator to be walking on them. The subjects are less lively, certainly; because, in St. John’s church, each mosaic picture covers the tomb of some Maltese knight, and consequently death and his emblems form the principal features in it; but they are not the less beautiful. The church of St. John was built by the Grand-Master, La Cassière: its riches were, before their spoliation by the French, immense, from the donations made every five years by the master and priors of the order, and by the piety of individuals. The carved ornaments were all gilt with sequin gold by the liberality of the Grand-Master, Coloner.

There is a pleasure garden, called the Boschetto, nearly south-west of La Valetta, which is the only place in the island that has trees of any size: they are arranged in symmetrical forms; and there are several avenues and arbours of orange-trees, interspersed with cedars. This garden is situate in a deep valley, where springs communicate a refreshing coolness to the atmosphere.

The general appearance of the island of Malta is the most unpromising for agriculture that can be conceived. Nowhere is the face of nature so uninviting. A surface of stone has, however, by the effect of industry, been powdered over with a soil, the general depth of which is said to be from six inches to a foot: yet, on this scanty bed, grow lemon, orange, pomegranate, fig, and other fruit-trees, besides corn, cotton, lichen, kali, &c., in the greatest luxuriance. The vines spread wherever they are trained, and the oranges acquire the richest flavour.

Cotton is much cultivated in Malta. That which I saw most frequently was of a cinnamon colour when raw, and not like the white common cotton. Corn is said to yield from 16 to 60 for 1. The fruits are of exquisite flavour. Flowers are very fine, and I could not help fancying the roses more fragrant than in my own country. Malta honey is highly esteemed; but always remains in a liquid state.

The commerce of Malta consists in the exportation of oranges and lemons, potash, lichen, orange-flower water, preserved apricots, pomegranates, honey, seeds of vegetables, and Maltese stone. The Maltese likewise export fillagree-work, in which the native artists excel; also clocks and boilers. They import corn, cloth, fuel, wine, brandy, &c. Ice brought from Sicily is likewise an article of great consumption. The profits of their exports would not have been sufficient to defray even the cost of the quantity of corn imported: but, to meet this, they had, during the existence of the Order, the prizes made at sea, whereas now they have the consumption of provisions for victualling ships and a flourishing commerce.

The Maltese are very expert and daring seamen. In their speronaras, which are boats without a deck, about thirty feet long, they are to be seen in all parts of the Mediterranean; and, like the sailors of the Kentish and Sussex coast, as their principal occupation is smuggling, they cannot always wait to choose their weather to put to sea in.

Since the English had been in possession of the island, commerce had flourished to a prodigious extent, as was demonstrated by the fleets of merchantmen constantly floating in the spacious harbours, and by the splendid equipages and sumptuous entertainments of the merchants, who were living in a style of luxury suitable to princes.

Nor can I refrain from saying a few words on the almost regal entertainments which the governor at this time gave. His palace, well fitted for the display of a court, with its spacious halls and vast saloons, was often the scene of banquets and festivities, which I scarcely can hope to see again. The English, shut out from the continent, resorted principally to the Mediterranean. Malta, when we arrived there, was full of English and Neapolitan nobility, and the officers of the fleet and of the garrison, vying in their showy dresses with the foreign costumes intermixed with them, formed a striking picture. Dinners of fifty or sixty covers were of every day’s occurrence at the Governor’s palace, and the singular usage of a high table, as in college-halls at the Universities, was not uncommon at suppers after balls. On one occasion, it fell to my lot to hand a lady of rank into the supper-room, and, taking a seat by her side, I found myself directly opposite to the governor, separated by the breadth and not the length of the table, with the Duchess of Pienne on his right hand, Lady Hester on his left, and a string of Lords and Ladies and Counts and Countesses on either hand. But Lady Hester had then recently quitted England, and she had not yet begun her tirades against “doctors and tutors,” nor possibly would have dared openly to intimate the aristocratic superiority of rank over professional claims, as she did afterwards: so she was delighted to see me enjoy myself, and pleased at the attentions which the General showed me, in common with his other guests.

The Maltese have never mixed with the nations which have held them in subjection. Their original character, therefore, remains unchanged, and their physiognomy indicates an African origin. Their hair is curly; they have flattish noses, and turned-up lips, and their colour and language are nearly the same as those of the people of the Barbary States. It is a lingo of Italian grafted on Arabic. They are said to be active, faithful, economical, courageous, and good sailors; but they are Africans for passion, jealousy, vindictiveness, and thieving, being likewise very mercenary. Their superstition in religious matters is proverbial. By many English, however, who had resided among them for some time, the Maltese were pronounced to be ferocious, ignorant, lazy, passionate, revengeful, and, if married, jealous beyond conception.

Of their superstition an example occurred just before our arrival, in the brutal manner in which they treated a British officer of the 14th regiment of foot, who, whether purposely or unintentionally, offended them by passing through the line of a procession on horseback, for which supposed insult to their religion they dragged him from his horse, and nearly tore him in pieces. I cannot, however, forbear to observe that the lower orders did not appear to deserve the charge of laziness; for the men were slim in their persons, quick in their intellects, and of inconceivable activity. They are remarkably sober in their diet: an onion or an anchovy, with dry bread, will serve them for a meal. No people are more attached to their country than the Maltese to their barren rock.

The upper classes of the inhabitants dress like the French: but the common people wear a dress resembling that which is given to Figaro in the opera, with this difference, that they have trousers instead of tight breeches.

The women are small, and have beautiful hands and feet. When they go out, they wear a black silk shawl, which covers their head and half the face, and is very gracefully wrapped about their bodies; beneath this is a coloured upper petticoat, and a corset or stomacher. They are fond to excess of gold ornaments, which they estimate by value more than taste: and their ears, necks, and arms are set off with rings, chains, and bracelets. They wear shoe-buckles of gold or silver. Although very brown, they are often handsome—I think generally so: and when I say that they are in figure like English maid-servants, I do not mean to disparage them by such a comparison, but rather to mark the plumpness of their flesh and the roundness of their limbs. Children, until they are six or seven years old, are seen rolling naked in the filth of the streets.

The repasts of the Maltese are plentiful: they dine at twelve and sup in the evening. When an entertainment is given, it is common to have three complete courses, and from five to ten different sorts of wine. They rise from table after dinner, taking coffee and liqueurs, like the French. Both rich and poor indulge themselves with a siesta after dinner, generally until half-past two or three o’clock. During this time, the shops are shut; and, to judge by the stillness which reigns in town and country from twelve to three o’clock, one would suppose that the island was deserted. About half-past two the shops are re-opened; as evening comes on, the population appears out of doors, and all is gaiety and life.

There are some antient remains on the island, as the ruins of Ghorghenti; of Hagior Khan; of a Greek house at Casal Zorrick; and of a supposed temple of Hercules.

Goza, a smaller island, separated by a channel, four miles broad, from Malta, has some tracts of pasture land on it, and supplies Malta with cattle and fruit. There are some Cyclopean remains on this island worthy of inspection. It has also an alabaster quarry near the village of Zeberg, and a convent of Capuchin friars, about half a mile from which is a grotto of neat workmanship hollowed out of the rock.

I was told that, in sailing round this small island, several remarkable appearances are presented by its cliffs, which have some curious caves in their sides. For two or three miles, they rise quite perpendicular to the height of from 130 to 160 feet: yet so daring are the inhabitants, that, for the sake of birds’ eggs or of fishing, they will venture down their sides, stepping from crag to crag, where, to an inexperienced eye, it would appear utterly impossible to find footing.

About five miles from La Valetta there was a country residence of the Governor’s, called the palace of St. Antonio, in a village of the same name. On our first arrival in the island, it was occupied by Lord and Lady Bute: but, on their departure for England, on the 28th of May, General Oakes,[6] who showed on all occasions great attention to Lady Hester, politely offered it for her residence; we therefore quitted the hospitable roof of Mr. Fernandez, and betook ourselves thither on the 1st of June.

This palace is a large irregular edifice, with a beggarly exterior, rendered more ugly by a quadrangular steeple, which looks like a belfry. It is constructed of the soft stone of the island, with stone floors, and with ceilings and walls painted in fresco. The walls were hung with some tolerable pictures. The entrance to it is by an avenue of orange trees, the appearance of which, though richer, is much less imposing than the lofty oaks and elms forming the avenues of our own country. About half way down the avenue, which is two hundred and fifty yards long, the road turns abruptly on the left into the courtyard of the palace: this is spacious, and covered with vines to the right and left. At the end of it two doors lead, one into the house and the other into the garden.

The house contains some handsome and spacious rooms, but the absence of carpeting and matting, rendered necessary by the heat of the climate, gave an air of nakedness displeasing to the eye of an Englishman. I always felt as if sitting in a stone kitchen. It was in the garden that a proper estimate might be formed of the magnificence of the mansion, which might vie, in horticultural beauties, with many of the first gardens in Europe. In its plan it was not unlike the orangerie at Versailles; but at Versailles, no care could ever give to the orange, pomegranate, and lemon trees, half the vigour they showed here. The walks were lined with myrtle hedges, ten feet high; and there was a terrace with a colonnade, where the vines twined their branches in wonderful profusion in every direction in which they were trained. There were five hedges also of double oleander; and, as a proof of the luxuriance of the growth of plants, the marshmallow, if left in the soil, grew to the height of a filbert-tree.

The Governor, General Oakes, strove, in every way in his power, to render Lady Hester’s stay at Malta agreeable to her. He visited her daily at the palace of St. Antonio, and we were his constant guests at the dinners and parties at his own residence.

At the beginning of July, in this year, an earthquake was felt by several inhabitants of Malta. I should presume that habit renders persons quicker at feeling these slight shocks; for, during many years that I was up the Mediterranean, I was present when shocks were felt, but never perceived them myself.

On the 29th of July, Mr. Adair and Mr. Hobhouse, returning from Constantinople, landed at Malta, and, after performing a short quarantine, were entertained at the Governor’s. Many British travellers had visited Malta in the course of this year: for, besides those of whom mention has already been made, there were several noblemen, as also Mr. Thomas Sheridan, whose brilliant vivacity was not yet diminished by the incipient malady under which he finally sunk, Mr. Drummond, Mr. Fiott,[7] and Mr. B.; the last of whom, when he learned that Lady Hester’s brother had been called away by his duties as a soldier, undertook to escort her in the perilous journey which she had resolved to make through European and Asiatic Turkey.

Lady H. Stanhope had begun to grow tired of Malta. The thermometer generally stood as high as 85° Fahrenheit in the afternoon, and the excessive heat had produced some disagreeable effects on her constitution, so that she often complained of sickness of stomach, feverish thirst, and loss of appetite; and was tormented with many other painful sensations which the summer months commonly produce in those, who, for the first time, visit hot countries.

Sicily was at that time threatened with a descent from the coast of Calabria; where Murat, the new King of Naples, was in person urging on the necessary preparations. Several English and Sicilian families had hastily quitted the island to take refuge in Malta, and many fears were entertained as to the probable issue of the enterprise. At all events, the impending storm presented no temptations to Lady Hester to go thither, and she accordingly changed her destination for the only part of Europe which was now open to the English, namely, Turkey.

I have said that Mr. B. had undertaken to escort Lady Hester into Greece. Her ladyship had brought out with her an English maid, named Ann Fry, and a valet, named François, a native of Coblentz.

Lady Hester had been fortunate enough, on two former occasions, to obtain a king’s ship to convey her from place to place: but it was vain to hope that one could now be spared, when every vessel on the station was so much needed to scour the Straits of Messina, and to prevent the threatened landing in Sicily. Accordingly, she resolved on hiring a merchant-vessel; and an American brig, bound for Smyrna, was almost engaged, when it happened that the Belle Poule frigate of 38 guns, commanded by Captain C. Brisbane, came into Malta from Corfu, to which island she was to return; and the captain very politely offered to convey her ladyship and her party to one of the Ionian Islands.

On the second of August, we embarked in the Belle Poule, and arrived at the cruizing station, off Corfu, on the third day. We passed Corfu, Little and Great Cephalonia, and Fano, and on the 8th anchored in the bay of Zante.

CHAPTER II.

Zante—Earthquakes—Patras—The Marquis of Sligo joins Lady Hester’s party—Corinth—Visit of the Bey’s harým to Lady Hester—Indiscreet curiosity—Women of the East—Isthmus of Corinth—Kencri—The Piræus.

A British ship of war is at all times a noble and interesting spectacle, but, in the Mediterranean, she becomes a beautiful one also. For a week together the sea was scarcely rougher than the bosom of a lake; and the white dresses and straw hats of the sailors, the cleanness of the decks, and the awning over our heads, combined with the serenity of the weather, gave to our voyage the appearance of a party of pleasure.

The view was truly enchanting, when, doubling the north-east point of the island of Zante, we of a sudden discovered the bay and surrounding country. At the foot of mountains which are seen on the right hand, stand the white houses of the chief town, extending for a mile and a half. Immediately behind, and elevated above them, olive-trees, cypresses, and vineyards, meet the eye as it ascends: and the picture is crowned by the castle which commands the town beneath it. From the bottom of the bay a fertile plain extends four or five miles inland, bounded in the distance by blue hills. On the left, a high mountain, the ancient Etatus, corresponding with that on the opposite shore, rises conically from its promontory, and, like the other, exhibits at different heights white villas, olive woods, vineyards, and arid patches of soil, left apparently neglected, or else inaccessible to the plough of the husbandman.

Captain Brisbane went on shore the same evening; and the next morning Mr. Foresti, the English consul, and an aide-de-camp from Major-General Oswald, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Ionian Islands, came on board: soon after which we landed, and residences were assigned to us in the town. The civility and attention of Lady Hester’s host may be judged of from the fact that, every morning, as soon as she was visible, he waited on her, in full dress, to inquire if the arrangements of the house, from day to day, were such as she approved.

When seen from the castle, from which almost the whole circuit of the island can be taken in at one view, its features were not less delightful than those I have before described. Hence it has obtained the name of “the Golden Island,” “the Flower of the Levant,” &c. It is composed of two chains of mountains to the north and south, with a spacious vale between them. Looking down upon this vale, instead of meadows of herbage and fields of corn, is beheld a luxuriant garden of all the productions of warm climates. It is here that the currants grow which are in such request in England. It was the vintage time at our arrival, and I saw the process of drying them. The vines which produce them grow no higher than gooseberry-bushes, and are not sticked. The currants, when gathered, are spread in the open fields, on spots smoothed for the purpose, near the vines, where they lie in square layers about an inch thick, until they become shrivelled and blackened by the sun, and assume the appearance which they have when they reach us, a change which is effected in a few days. They are shovelled up into sacks, and deposited in roomy places called seraglios, where they are kept for about three years, and are then fit for exportation and use. Undried, these grapes are about as large again as an English currant, and in taste exceedingly luscious. They are exclusively the production of this island, with the exception of those grown in the Morea. Currants, with dried olives and olive oil, are the staple commodities of Zante.

The fertility of this happy spot seemed inexhaustible, if a judgment might be formed from the cheapness of its productions. Half a dozen lemons cost only a halfpenny, and grapes, peaches, and other fruits were to be had almost for plucking. Turkeys were sold at one shilling each: geese, poultry, &c., in proportion. The wines of the island, like those of Cephalonia, seemed to us to have little flavour: and it is said that, to make them keep, the skins, jars, or casks in which they are put, are smeared over with rosin. This is the case also up the Archipelago; and custom alone can reconcile a stranger to the taste, which at length becomes just tolerable.

Of the native Zanteots such as I saw may be described in a few words. The women paint their faces excessively, particularly with white round the mouth: they take great pride in long hair, and make the greatest possible display of it. Among the higher classes, the unmarried females are kept much shut up in rooms with blinds to the windows, and are often betrothed without being seen by their future husbands. Among the lower and middle orders there must be a greater freedom of conduct, since many young creatures of considerable beauty were pointed out to me as having attached themselves to English officers without the sanction of the Church; whilst assassination, which formerly followed almost inevitably an illicit connection, if discovered, from the hand of some of the relatives of the female, was now rarely heard of.

Zante was, at this time, garrisoned by the 35th regiment of infantry: it is a defensible place, owing to the strong castle above the town. There was an Albanian regiment quartered in it, under the command of Major (afterwards General) Church. Zante is proverbial for the frequency of earthquakes. The Zanteots declare that they experience them every week; we were there a fortnight and felt none. But the fissures in the walls of almost every house bore sufficient testimony to the severity of one which shook the island at the end of July; in consequence of which some of the inhabitants were so much alarmed that they slept for some time in tents, and many of the English officers were among the number. It happened just after midnight. Those who spoke of it to me described it as beginning somewhat like the trembling that agitates a house in London when a carriage passes it rapidly. The shocks lasted for half a minute, and were repeated several times. Wine glasses danced off the table on which they were standing, and the houses and walls seemed almost to reel: yet, when all was over, nothing was to be seen but here and there a ceiling peeled off, and irregular cracks through the stone walls. Many ludicrous situations arose from the terror in which persons left their beds; as few had time or inclination to stop to put on their clothes before they ran out into the streets.

Captain Brisbane made no stay at Zante, but sailed to rejoin his squadron. General Oswald displayed much courtesy in his attentions to Lady Hester during the fortnight she was on the island; and, when she thought proper to depart, he furnished her with a government transport, in which we left Zante for Patras on the 23rd of August. A felucca was hired to accompany us, into which it was proposed to disembark at Patras, in case (which was probable) the Turkish governor of the castle at the entrance of the Gulf of Lepanto should refuse admission to an English vessel. We landed at Patras on the following evening. Mr. Strani, the English consul, gave us a most hospitable reception in his own house.

A valley, about a mile in width, runs from the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto to a chain of mountains. The valley is covered with vineyards and olive-trees: and, at the verge of it, near the foot of the hills, stands Patras, the ancient Patra. The houses, built of mud, are despicable without and comfortless within. Here and there I observed a mosque. Melancholy indeed was the change from the fine streets of La Valetta to the mud habitations of Patras! Still I felt that I was in Greece, and the language and appearance of the inhabitants had something magical in it. My bosom beat with emotion as I now trod, for the first time, the soil of a people, in studying whose language and habits the chief part of fifteen years of my early life had been—I still think wisely—expended.

Mr. B. and myself, having some leisure here, resolved to try the hot bath. We were exceedingly overpowered by the heat, and experienced the feelings common I believe to all those who enter a hamám for the first time, namely, a sense of suffocation so great as to alarm ourselves and the bather. But those who overcome this first impression never fail to like the process better on each succeeding experiment.

We found at Patras an English woman married to a Greek sailor, and through her means her husband recommended himself to Lady Hester’s notice as a servant, and he was hired to accompany us to Athens.

Our two German servants had a quarrel when at this place, and sallied forth to fight with sabres. François had served in the Austrian, French, and English armies. As they were exceedingly vociferous, many persons assembled as spectators, and prevented their coming to blows.

The Marquis of Sligo had been cruizing some months in the Mediterranean Sea, in his yacht, a commodious vessel of considerable burden. He was at this time on a visit to Veli, pasha of the Morea, who resided at Tripolizza;[8] but no sooner did he hear of Lady Hester’s arrival at Zante, than he remanded his vessel to Malta, and hastened towards Patras to meet her. Mr. B. had written to him from Patras, and the letter found him at Corinth; where he took a boat, and arrived on the evening of the 27th, just as we were on the point of embarking in a felucca for Corinth, and he immediately joined Lady Hester’s party. We set sail by night; and, passing the spot where once stood a temple of Neptune, we entered the Gulf of Lepanto or of Corinth. We proceeded up the gulf, landing to take our meals; for here the delightful bowers, formed by nature of myrtle, oleander, laurel, arbutus, and other shrubs, invite one to live in the open air. By night we slept on deck; the cabin, with a tilted awning toward the stem, being reserved for her ladyship, who suffered much from the heat.

We arrived at Corinth on the 7th of September. It blew so fresh on our reaching the landing-place, that we had much difficulty in getting on shore. Corinth is at some little distance from the strand. Here we made a stay of three days. The weather was so hot that Lord Sligo and myself suspended our beds in an arbour formed by vines, and there slept. Corinth is a miserable town, and has not much to interest the traveller in actual remains of edifices, although its desolate and altered state appeals very forcibly to his recollections. A fragment only of one Doric temple remains, affording no specimen of that order of architecture which derives its name from the city. One might question the existence even of a city of such celebrity, if there were not here and there some traces and fragments of buildings, which just satisfy doubt but not curiosity. Corinth is surrounded by marshes, which render it most unwholesome; and the plague was said to depopulate it frequently. I paid a visit to the son of the bey, or governor: he received me very civilly, gave me a pipe and coffee, and permitted me to view his apartments: he begged some Peruvian bark of me, which he seemed to hold in great estimation.

The bey himself, an elderly man, sent his harým, consisting of his wife and about a dozen young females, her slaves, to visit Lady Hester. Lord Sligo, Mr. B., and myself, were sitting with her ladyship at the time; but it was intimated to us by the interpreter, that women could not enter whilst men were present. On an occasion so tempting, none but the over-fastidious will blame us for resolving to hide ourselves in an adjoining room, and obtain, through the crevices of the wainscot, a sight of these beauties of Corinth: for we naturally supposed that a man whose will was law throughout the province would have selected only beautiful females as the companions of his leisure hours.

As soon as we had retired, the ladies were introduced, and by the engaging manner with which Lady Hester welcomed them, they became in a few moments quite familiar with her. They unveiled their faces, threw off their ferigees,[9] and placed themselves on the sofa, in attitudes apparently negligent, although of studied grace, as best fitting to display their figures, their jewels, and the long tresses that contrasted with the dazzling clearness (for I will not say whiteness) of their complexions. The conversation was carried on by signs and gestures; and, naturally inquisitive as females in all countries are on matters of dress, they began to examine Lady Hester’s, and to compare it with their own. Unconscious that the eyes of men were watching them, their naked feet, and sometimes their bosoms, Βαθυκολπαι, from the nature of a Turkish dress, were exposed. At length we relieved Lady Hester from the unpleasant situation in which she found herself unintentionally placed, both on our part and hers, by a half smothered laugh, which acted like an electric shock on the Moslem ladies; for, resuming their veils and ferigees in dismay, they suppressed their gaiety at once, and made earnest signs to know what the noise was. Our position was critical: for so surely as we had been discovered would the bey have endeavoured to do us some mischief. Her ladyship saw by their seriousness how much they were offended; she persisted in affirming it was nothing, and succeeded in pacifying them; but they very soon afterwards went away, and no doubt agreed that it would be best to hush up their suspicions, lest the bey’s jealousy might be excited to their own detriment.

I will here anticipate the course of my narrative, and put down a few observations about Turkish women, which are the result of seven years’ residence among them; observations, too, made under advantageous circumstances, from the frequent occasion I had to pay visits to harýms, in my capacity of physician.

A female in the Levant generally arrives at puberty about the age of twelve years, and is seldom married later than fifteen; often at twelve or thirteen, or even earlier. It is a mistake to suppose that Mahometans consider what the French call embonpoint as an essential quality of beauty: their taste I believe to be the same with that of men of other nations, who have given the matter a thought; and rounded limbs and a plumpness which conceals the bones, are with them, and I conceive elsewhere, the requisites for a perfect form.

From the fortieth day after birth, when the mother makes her appearance abroad, children in the East are carried to the bath, and continue, weekly, to frequent it for the rest of their lives. This custom, it is supposed, enervates their frames, renders the muscles flaccid, and prematurely brings on old age: but I differ entirely from those who assert this; convinced as I am that a woman of thirty-five in the East is in as good preservation as a woman of the same period of life in England or France. To say nothing of the antient Greeks and Romans, from whom we have the finest models of female beauty, and who made as frequent use of the bath as Turks now-a-days do, I would assert that travellers have been deceived by appearances; and, forgetting for the moment that no artificial means are used in the East to conceal the wearing effects of child-bearing, and the natural decay of the female frame, they have imagined that they saw no where the same graceful form which distinguishes their own fair countrywomen, without considering how far that form may be owing to artificial means and expedients. On this point I will only make one other observation, namely, that I have seen a native lady of Damascus, the mother of seven children, whom I had considered in her own country as already shapeless, display, on her arrival in London, by the aid of a mantuamaker, a shape which was the envy of one sex and the admiration of the other.

It is for softness of skin and inodorous sweetness that the women of the East are without rivals. Depilation is used to its utmost extent; and the strigil and frequent ablutions give their bodies as much purity as is consistent with human nature. Does it not imply a commendable cleanliness of person, when an eastern coquette would think no more of winding off a skein of silk on her toes than on her hands, and has no idea that it is possible for the latter to be less agreeable to the touch or any other sense than the former?

The Turkish women stain their hair (if not naturally black or dark brown) with henna powder, made by pulverising the dried leaf of a shrub[10] which imparts a golden brown or auburn colour. But the unprejudiced eye will see nothing more unnatural in this than in the white powder formerly so much used in England and France for the same purpose. One cannot say so much for the straitness which they give to their hair, studiously shunning ringlets and curls; and there seem to be no examples of it in antiquity. Of the custom which they have of giving a black rim to the eyelids I speak confidently in commendation; for no eyes are so brilliant as those which Nature has so set; examples of which, though rare, are not wanting among us.

The Turks, in their notions of grace, exclude all angular lines. Hence their women seldom walk or sit stiffly upright. The sofa is their throne, and the drooping-headed flower,[11] not the straight reed, is their model.

I now return to the course of my narrative. On the Isthmus of Corinth, towards the Ægean Sea, there is a small port, called Kenkri; there, a two-masted vessel, rigged like a bombard, was hired to convey us to Athens; and, on the evening of the fourth day, we embarked. Kenkri is eight miles from Corinth; and, as we crossed the Isthmus on post-horses, I shall describe the nature of our cavalcade. Persons of consideration, when travelling in Turkey, procure from the Pasha of the province, or the nearest governor, an order, by which post-horses are to be furnished to them—I believe gratis, if the order were complied with to the letter. Such an order as this the Marquis of Sligo had obtained at Tripolizza. The horses are used indifferently for riding or for luggage, and each person is provided with his own saddle. Lord Sligo had with him a Tartar, two Albanians (presented to him by Veli Pasha) superbly dressed in the costume of their country, with silver-stocked pistols and silver-hilted yatagans; a dragoman, or interpreter; a Turkish cook; an artist, to paint views and costumes; besides three English servants in livery, and one out of livery. These, with himself, made up eleven persons. Lady Hester and Mr. B., with their retinue, made up eleven more; forming a cavalcade with myself and servant, of twenty-five persons, all the males of which were armed with a sabre and pistols.

In this manner we crossed the Isthmus, and, embarking, lay all night in the harbour. Kenkri (the ancient Cenchræa) has little left of its pristine splendour. There were a few broken columns lying about, and part of the pier of the harbour still remained. At daybreak on the 12th of September, we weighed anchor. The wind was fair, the day delightful, and by twelve o’clock we were at the entrance of the Piræus.

The master of the vessel was a man of fine stature, of noble mien, and of a prepossessing countenance. From beneath his red skull-cap, his curling hair behind formed a bush, somewhat like a bishop’s wig; for the Greeks of certain districts shave the forehead and crown, and leave the hair behind of its natural length. He had with him a son, about twelve years old, whom Lady Hester would have taken to attend upon her, could the captain have been induced to part with him.

The fame of Lord Byron’s exploit in swimming across the Hellespont, from Sestos to Abydos, in imitation of Leander, had already reached us, and, just as we were passing the molehead, we saw a man jump from it into the sea, whom Lord Sligo recognized to be Lord Byron himself, and, haling him, bade him hasten to dress and to come and join us.

Just before arriving at the Piræus is Caluri, formerly the island of Salamis, close to which the fleet of Xerxes was beaten by the Greeks. It seemed that in the strait between Salamis and another island called Psyttalia, where the battle raged the fiercest, there would be scarcely room for a seventy-four gun ship to wear; hence we may infer the small size of the ships of those days, and the Piræus, which contained the whole Athenian fleet, is hardly more spacious than the two harbours of Ramsgate. Its entrance is exceedingly narrow, but having, I was told, a depth of six or seven fathoms.

We sailed in, and anchored before a mean building at the bottom of the port, which served as a custom-house. There happened to be on the strand about a dozen horses, which had brought down part of the freight of a polacca lying at the quay to load. These were forcibly seized by our Tartar, and, laden with our baggage, sent off to the town, which is six miles inland. Lord Sligo himself set off on one of the horses of Lord Byron, who had now joined us, to send down conveyances for Lady Hester and the rest of us.

While we were waiting on the shore, we had leisure to survey what was around us. The country immediately adjoining the port seemed bare and without verdure. Some remains of the quays, which once bordered the Piræus, lay scattered at the water’s edge, and a few ill-constructed boats, made fast by rush hawsers, showed how low the navy of Athens had declined. There were some Turkish women sitting on the bank, covered in every part excepting their eyes, who immediately walked away when we attempted to approach them. We were ignorant of the customs of the country, and Mr. B. made signs to them to stop, which excited greatly the anger of some Turks who were standing near us.

The horses arrived in about two hours. As we quitted the Piræus, the aspect of the country became more pleasing. Gentle slopes and hills, rising and sinking with a pleasing wavy line, gave a tranquillity and repose to the scenery which few can understand who have not felt it in those countries.

While musing on the goodly prospect around me, on temples and demi-gods, on the Parthenon and Socrates, the cool Ilyssus and the shades of Academus, my reflections were interrupted by the loud smack of a whip, applied by Aly the Tartar to the back of a poor Greek, accompanied by a louder oath, which at once dissipated my vision, and brought me back to the reality of things around me.

CHAPTER III.

Athens—Residence there—Accommodations—Researches of Lord Sligo—Embarkation for Constantinople—Sunium—Temple of Minerva—Zea—The Hellespont—Greek Sailors in a gale of wind—Erakli—Constantinople.

It was evening before we entered Athens. Preparations had been made for our coming, and a house was cleared of its tenants expressly for Lady Hester. Mr. B. and myself were lodged in a house which Lord Sligo had occupied some time previous to our reaching Greece. It had been tenanted by other English travellers, and the owners, who let it, were so far acquainted with Englishmen’s wants, as to have procured some chairs and a table, furniture then seldom found in a room in Turkey.

I employed the first day in making my apartment tidy. I found my bed-room to be a whitewashed chamber, having an unglazed window, with a shutter, which excluded light and let in the wind. There were large crevices in the floor, through which the dust and rubbish were swept, not by a long-handled broom, for I never saw one throughout Turkey, but by a hand-broom. Upon these materials my servant had to go to work to make me a chamber. A mat was spread upon the floor, as being the coolest covering to the gaping chinks; my camp-bed was laid on boards, supported by two trestles; a piece of white linen formed a curtain to the window, and, my musquito net being suspended upon cross pieces of twine, I found myself almost as comfortable as if I had been lying upon an English fourpost bedstead. Lord Sligo and Mr. B., who seemed to despise luxuries in proportion as they had the means of enjoying them, made their beds on the floor, and all the servants slept in the open air. But, in this climate, to sleep under the cope of heaven is no cause of complaint; for, during the voyage from Patras to Corinth, all of us, as said above, excepting Lady Hester, lay on deck. It was now six months since I had seen a drop of rain, and, I might almost say a cloud; indeed, the serenity and dryness of the weather had been such, that prayers (we were told) had been offered up at Athens by the Christians for rain, accompanied by the novel expedient of penning a flock of sheep in the porch of the church, whose plaintive bleatings, it was supposed, would give greater effect to the petitions of the people, and move the pity of Heaven.

The house occupied by Lady Hester was spacious and handsome, having a courtyard, a bath, and other requisites for comfort and quiet. None of the windows of the house had casements, and, to ensure greater warmth, it was necessary to nail up some of them with old carpets, mats, &c. Her ladyship was a great contriver of comfort, and I have often known her transform a naked room, with holes in the walls, floors, and doors, into a snug apartment. The janissary sat at her gate, on a raised wooden couch, something like a kitchen table with a railed back to it, which is generally to be seen at the doorways of most great persons in European Turkey, and upon which the master of the house will often place himself, to smoke his pipe, and to breathe the morning and evening air. The janissary acted as porter and guard.

I observed one morning that Aly, this janissary, had his feet swathed in old rags: on inquiring what was the matter, he pretended that they were covered on account of the cold; but I learned in the course of the day that he had been bastinadoed on the soles at the governor’s, for riotous behaviour at a tavern.

It was many days before we were settled, and very many more before we had surveyed the numerous beauties of architecture and statuary which are yet left in this celebrated city. Our time passed most delightfully. The mornings were spent in examining the remains of ancient edifices, in rides, and in excursions into the environs; the evenings in the society of a few clever artists, who, enamoured of the spot, seemed wedded to it for the rest of their days. Of these, M. Lusieri and M. Fauvel are very generally known by their drawings. Fauvel was living in a small house on the site of the ancient agora. There were likewise many English and some other foreigners at this time at Athens. Among the English I may name Lord Plymouth, Messieurs Gordon, Hunt, and Haygarth. Two British merchants, Mr. John Galt,[12] and Mr. Struthers, passed through the place on their way to Constantinople. Of foreigners, there were gentlemen who have since distinguished themselves in their respective careers.

I had not been a day in Athens before I was beset with the sick, maimed, halt, and blind, importuning me for advice and medicine. St. Paul had not more patients than I, but how different our means of cure! I, however, did what I could for all, and obtained admission to several Turkish and Greek houses in my professional capacity.

Lord Sligo had, on a previous visit to Athens, carried on several excavations among the ruins, and he renewed them on his return thither. One of those was on the Theban road, about two hundred yards from the city wall, where he employed a dozen men; another was on the side of the Acropolis; others were in other parts, and all were attended with some success. His researches brought to light several tombs. He found, at different times, some beautiful vases, gold ornaments, lacrymatories, lamps, and other objects, generally buried with the ancient Greeks. He bought, likewise, many bas-reliefs, coins, and other antiquities, all of which now compose part of his valuable cabinet at Westport Place, in Ireland.

An English gentleman named Watson, coming from Janina, fell ill on his way, and died just as he reached Athens. He was buried in the Temple of Theseus; and, as there was no memorial to testify where his body lay and his death was yet recent and the circumstances known, Lord Sligo, to whom they were told, with that sympathy for the misfortunes of others which was so natural to him, immediately took the necessary steps for placing a marble slab with an epitaph over his grave. But no slab could be found fitting for the purpose, and there were no workmen in all Athens capable of cutting the inscription.

Lord Sligo and Mr. B. made an excursion to Delphos, but, on account of my professional avocations, I could not accompany them any farther than Thebes, whence I returned the following day, with a guide only, over unfrequented mountains.

Lord Byron made one of the small society which collected every evening at Lady Hester’s: he had been the college friend of Lord Sligo and Mr. B. It was strange enough, however, that on the third or fourth day after our arrival, he alleged pressing business at Patras, in the Morea, and left us, but returned some days before our departure from Athens, when I saw him frequently. Lady Hester’s opinion of him has appeared in another publication. What struck me as singular in his behaviour was his mode of entering a room; he would wheel round from chair to chair, until he reached the one where he proposed sitting, as if anxious to conceal his lameness as much as possible. He consulted me for the indisposition of a young Greek, about whom he seemed much interested.

After having remained at Athens one month and four days, we were informed that a Greek polacca, a ship of nearly two hundred tons burden, was about to sail from the Piræus to Constantinople, with a cargo of wheat, part of the revenue of the Kislar Aga, to whom Athens belongs as a fief. As an opportunity like this might not very speedily offer again, it was resolved, now that we had seen whatever the place contained worthy of curiosity, to take our passage in her, which was agreed for at five hundred piasters, a sum equal to £25. The cabin, after having been whitewashed to kill the vermin, was set apart for Lady Hester; the servants occupied the hold, which was full of wheat, to within two feet and a half of the deck; and Lord S., Mr. B., and myself, slept in the open air, although the nights were beginning to be cold.

We embarked on the 16th of October, and, on the first day, sailed down the gulf of Ægina. The wind freshened so much as to induce the captain to cast anchor under the promontory of Sunium, where Theseus dedicated a temple to Minerva. The promontory is called by European mariners Capo de’ Colonni. We lay here the whole of the 17th, the storm still continuing, and we landed to see the ruins of the temple, the columns of which still attract the admiration of the traveller.

In a little nook at the foot of the promontory lay a small Greek boat, bound from Athens to Zea. She was hauled up on the shore, and the crew, with a passenger or two, were sitting round a fire in a cave in the rock. One was a female, and I recognized in her a very pretty-faced woman, whom I had seen in the cell of a holy friar in Athens, when, on one occasion, I had paid him a visit in the evening, somewhat after the accustomed hour. Around the temple, and covering the adjacent mountains, was a forest of stunted firs; and, in the wantonness of idlers, which sometimes leads to a great deal of mischief, we threw some firebrands among the brushwood, with the intention of setting fire to the forest, and of scaring the wolves, which were said to be very numerous hereabouts; but, fortunately, the rain that had fallen prevented the conflagration.

We quitted the promontory on the 18th, and in a few hours reached Zea, and entered the port to pass the night. The servants, from some trifling cause, had quarrelled with the crew; and matters had become so serious, that we slept on our arms, we being only sixteen in number, and they twenty. There are no bounds to the restlessness and cupidity of Greeks. In the present instance, whilst, on the one hand, the crew were cheating and robbing the servants, the captain, on the other, was scheming and contriving how he could obtain more passengers, in spite of the agreement he had made with us.

On the 19th, in the morning, no fewer than twenty persons came alongside, whom he wished to take on board; but we threatened to quit the vessel, and not to pay him anything—which menace had the desired effect, and they returned to the shore.

Those islands of the Cyclades which we saw had a barren appearance, exhibiting neither verdure nor trees. Zea is of the number. The town stands on the top of a conical mountain, which occupies the centre of the island. I landed, and procured a mule, which carried me up to it. I was entertained with coffee, preserves, and a pipe, at the house of Mr. Pangolo, the British agent, and I procured a few coins from some of the inhabitants.

On the 22nd we quitted Zea, and passed Negropont and Mytelene. The weather was unusually fine. Dolphins gambolled round our prow, and light airs filled our cotton sails. On the 24th we were abreast of the Troad, and entered the Hellespont at twelve o’clock.

When we had passed the two castles which guard the entrance, lovely indeed were the prospects that opened upon us, in each of the two quarters of the world! On the side of Europe the scenery was bolder than on the opposite; but the softness of the Asiatic shore was too attractive to lose by the comparison, and its warm and languishing features accorded with the enervating character which we imagine to be so fatal to the energies of its natives. As we advanced, every spot on each side of us revived the recollections of some classic story. It was here that Xerxes lashed the waves—it was there that Leander braved them: now we looked for the corpse of the too adventurous lover; and now we thought we saw the eddies writhing under the scourge of the vain and baffled despot. We saw, also, where the battle of Ægos Potamos was fought.

On the 24th, in the evening, passing Gallipoli, we entered the sea of Marmora. On the 25th, we were becalmed within three miles of the island that gives its name to the sea.

At night the wind blew strongly, and our situation by degrees became extremely perilous. My cot was slung athwart the deck from the mizen-mast to the quarter-railing, which, landsman-like, (in spite of the representation of the Greek captain) I had fancied to be the best way; when, after having been a short time in bed, the heeling of the vessel became so great that I was constantly thrown to the foot of my cot, and was, at last, compelled to get out and dress myself, as the sailors wanted all the facility which could be afforded them for working the ship.

As the wind increased, the utmost noise and confusion prevailed among the crew. Instead of doing their duty, they set about collecting money from us, which they tied in a handkerchief, and fastened to the tiller, making a vow to St. George that they would dedicate it to his shrine if we reached some port in safety. The wind was south, and we ran before it towards Erakli, a port on the N.W. shore of the Gulf of Rhodosto. We reached it in safety; but the specimen we had had of the incapacity of the captain and his crew induced Lady Hester to disembark. A house was provided for us on shore, and we, and all the baggage, were transferred to it.

There are many things revolting to a European when he first travels in the East, and nothing more so than the filth of the natives. This, perhaps, is more manifest in the Christians than in the Turks; for the former are not compelled, as the Mahometans are, by their religion, to wash themselves frequently; and one observes in them habits of uncleanliness which are quite disgusting. Thus, our captain, besides appearing to us to be no mariner, had the itch in its worst stage; and his men daily assisted each other, on the deck in the sunshine, in keeping under the stock of vermin attached to each. They were observed never to have shifted themselves during the whole voyage; and, to protect ourselves from the results of their filthiness, we were obliged peremptorily to forbid any one coming on the quarter-deck, except to steer and haul.

Erakli, the ancient Heraclea, is now a ruined village, but exceedingly pretty in its situation on a promontory that projects into the bay. We were lodged in a Greek monastery. The same evening Lord Sligo and Mr. B. set off, on post-horses, for Constantinople. During the five days we remained there, I had excellent shooting at divers and teal, which abounded in the port.

On the 2nd of November, Lord Sligo and Mr. B. returned, accompanied by a Turkish officer, who was sent to conduct Lady Hester to Constantinople: he bore a firmán or mandate, that all proper facilities were to be afforded her for the completion of her voyage. As the roads were said to be infested with deserters from the army, who plundered and murdered travellers, it was thought best to continue our course by sea, more especially as we were now so near its termination. We therefore embarked in two open boats, which had come for that purpose from Constantinople. These galleys are as clean, as trim, and as richly gilded, as a nobleman’s barge on the Thames: they are elevated at the stern and the stem, and sharp at both ends.

On the 3rd of November, at eleven in the morning, we landed at Ponte Grande, where we dined, and arrived, at about eleven at night, at Topkhana, one of the principal stairs of the harbour of Constantinople, on the side towards Pera. A sedan-chair was sent down for Lady Hester, and the rest of the party walked up; whilst the luggage was carried on the backs of porters, who seemed to be very powerful men. We ascended a very steep street, where scores of dogs, like so many Cerberuses, poked their ugly heads out of dark corners, and stunned us with their incessant barking. A huge lantern was carried before us, there being no lamps in use; and in this manner we reached Pera.

A house had been hastily prepared for Lady Hester, and Lord Sligo gave me a room in his lodgings at one Madam Onophrio’s, who kept an apothecary’s shop. Everything appeared to us inconvenient and dirty; and, what was most uncomfortable of all, the principal part of our luggage, from the frequent changes in our plans, had been sent to Smyrna.

CHAPTER IV.

Procession of the Sultan to the Mosque—A Dinner party—Therapia—Visiters there—Lady Hester seeks permission to reside in France—Turbulence of the Janissaries—Pera—Visit to Hafez Aly—Captain Pasha—Mahometan patients attended by the Author—Princess Morousi—Disagreeable climate of Constantinople—Return of Lord Sligo to Malta.

We were busied, during the first days, in making ourselves somewhat like the beings among whom we were come. Tailors, hatters, and such persons, are not wanting at Constantinople. We let our mustachios grow, bought ourselves horses, and went through the ceremony of paying and receiving visits. I was fortunate in procuring for myself a Persian horse, which, I was told, had brought Mr. Morier from Persia: it was very handsome, and proved capable of enduring great fatigue.

The first person generally resorted to, on arriving in a strange city, is the banker. I was commissioned to call on Lady Hester’s; and I found in Mr. Alexander a man of rare merit. He was dragoman of the Prussian mission, as well as a merchant, and to him I was subsequently indebted for whatever information I needed on any point. His conversation abounded in anecdotes, which were highly useful and instructive to a traveller.

The house in which Lady Hester lived was too small, and in a narrow street (as indeed are all the streets in Pera but the two main ones); she therefore hastened to get into the country, after having seen the sights that are usually shown to strangers. By means of a firmán, we entered four of the principal mosques. I forbear giving descriptions of them, as they are to be found at length in several works.

In Constantinople all that one sees is odd and strange, but it is difficult to make another person understand in what that strangeness consists. The mere act of walking in the streets has something in it incompatible with recreation. There are no carriages or vehicles of any kind, and consequently the streets are so silent that people’s voices are heard as in a room. All the shops are entirely open to the air; you are therefore subjected to the gaze of the shopkeepers; so that the effect is similar to what is felt in walking through a hall, with a row of servants on each side.

All persons of the same trade here have their shops in the same place. Thus, there will be a row of tailors, a row of furriers, and a row of shoemakers; and such a street is called the tailors’ bazar, the furriers’ bazar, the shoemakers’ bazar. But, if the commodities are of a precious nature, or susceptible of injury when exposed to the air or wet, as jewelry, drugs, and the like, then the street is covered in, the shops are fitted up in a somewhat more ornamented manner, and the place is called bezestan.

There was no audience of an English ambassador while we were at Constantinople, so that I had not an opportunity of seeing his highness, the Sultan, excepting on Fridays, when it was his custom to perform his public devotions at a mosque. The sight was magnificent and striking, but it is impossible to convey an adequate impression of it in a description: and I can only give the reader a general idea of it. The origin of it, as we were told, was this—that subsequent to some insurrection among the janissaries, in the reign of one of the early Sultans, a sort of charter of rights was obtained from their monarch; one of which was, that, instead of keeping himself shut up in his seraglio, as his predecessors had done, he should show himself once a week to his faithful subjects; since which time it has become a custom for him to go publicly to mosque every Friday, which is the Moslem’s sabbath.

On these occasions, when the Sultan issues from the harým, the janissary-aga holds his stirrup whilst he mounts his horse, and (as I was informed) draws on his legs a pair of new yellow boots, a ceremony always repeated. To secure a good view, I had taken a convenient situation in a street through which the Sultan was to pass; and, presently, the procession approached in the following order. First came some dozens of water-carriers, who bore skins of water across their backs, with which they laid the dust as they advanced. On the right and left of the street was a double file of janissaries. Bostangis, with knotted whips, kept the crowd from pressing on the procession. Next to the water-carriers came a group of nondescript persons; grooms to hold horses, servants to unrobe their effendis or masters, and other hangers-on or attendants of great men. After these, upon a finely caparisoned horse, surrounded by a dozen valets on foot, followed a fierce-looking Turk, with a black beard; and I and my companion exclaimed, “Here comes the Sultan:”—it was only his coffee-bearer. We made the like remark at a second, and a third; but they were his stool, sword, and pipe-bearers, who, with the emblems of office in their hands, passed in succession.

The surprise which the splendour of these inferior officers of the palace excites is increased, when the Captain Pasha, the Reis Effendi, the Kakhya Bey, and the Grand Vizir, pass by, muffled in pelisses worth £200 each, wearing in their girdles hangers or daggers studded with diamonds, and mounted on horses almost sinking under the weight of gold housings. Our ideas were confused by the magnificence which we saw displayed. And now, on a sudden, the crowd, which had been noisy and making their remarks on the scene before them, was hushed. A solemn and really an awful silence prevailed, whilst only low whispers were heard that the commander of the faithful was near. Every Turk immediately folded his long robe over his breast, crossed his hands before him, dropped his head on his bosom, and, in a tone of voice just audible, prayed Allah and Mahomet to preserve the perpetuity of the royal race. Our object was curiosity, and we looked eagerly for the Sultan, but could hardly obtain a glimpse of him. His person, too sacred to be gazed on, was almost hidden by the lofty plumes of feathers of the attendants who surrounded him, each of whom wore a vest of glittering stuff representing resplendent armour, and on his head a crested helmet. Fancy must assist the reader in imagining the gorgeous housings, studded with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, on a ground of gold, that covered the Sultan’s horse, which was a milk-white stallion.

He passed, and lo! an ugly blackamore, the minister of his pleasures, entitled the Kislar Aga, followed him. His deformity rendered him hideous, yet was he rivalled in it by fifty other black eunuchs, and as many white ones, who filled up his train. These were succeeded by a dwarf. Three hundred chokhadars, or pages, closed the procession, all clad in white, and all extremely beautiful in person. There were several men appointed, according to custom, to throw money to the mob; and several others whose duty it was to beat them unmercifully if they thronged too riotously to pick it up; so that, between the sixpences and the blows, which seemed to be dealt out in about equal shares, there was much diversion for a bystander.

The procession arrived at the mosque. Prayers were said. But within those sacred walls, on such an occasion, no infidel dared cast even a glance, and we retired to our homes delighted with what we had seen, but mortified by our exclusion from the termination of the ceremony.

It was on one of these occasions that Lady Hester rode on horseback on a side-saddle to witness the procession. There is probably no other example of a European female having ridden through the streets of Constantinople in this manner on that day; and it may be reckoned as a proof of her courage that she did so, and of her conduct that she did so without insult.

The Mahometans are the most temperate men on earth: they are practical philosophers, unostentatiously sober in the use of everything. I dined, on two several occasions, with a Turk, named Azýz Effendy. The restrictions which their religion imposes on them make their meals so simple as to be not very grateful to a European stomach. The time was about one in the day, which is their first meal. Our party consisted of the chief clerks of the Admiralty; as Azýz Effendy, being physician to the Captain Pasha, or Lord High Admiral, had invited me to the arsenal. A table, not so large as an English claw tea-table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ebony, was covered with an embroidered satin cloth, round which, facing the place where each guest was to sit, were laid, not knives and forks, and plates, but mahogany spoons tipped with coral. A basin and ewer having been carried round by a black slave, each person washed his hands, and then took his place. A napkin was put over his knees, and another, much finer and embroidered, was thrown over his shoulders. I doubled my knees under me like a tailor, in imitation of the rest. Immediately, a single dish was placed in the middle of us, which, being of rice, was eaten with our spoons, each person scooping it up from the side next to him; and, after four or five mouthfuls, the dish was lifted off to be replaced by another. This was a stew, and, as fingers were to be used here, each person, helping himself with his right hand, had time for about five mouthfuls more, when other dishes were served up in succession, which, according as they were more or less liquid or solid, were eaten by means of the fingers or the spoon, always, however, to be spirited away immediately after the first relish. The cookery I liked very much. During the repast, those who wanted it called for water, which was the only beverage, and was handed in a cut glass mug; this being almost the only article of glass used among them. The last dish was a preparation of rice called pilau, which always concludes a Turkish dinner. Every body then rose from table; the hand-washing was again performed, and coffee and pipes were handed round.

This description may serve for a general idea of the dinners of both the rich and poor; for I dined with a son of the celebrated Ibrahim Bey, one of the first people in the empire, and I saw no great difference, excepting in the number of dishes, and in several sweet things, as entremets and hors-d’œuvres, which stood constantly on the table, and of which, every now and then, a morsel or a spoonful was taken. A supper, in every respect similar, takes place about sunset.

Those Turks, who are not very rigid in the observance of the laws of Mahomet, and who wish to drink wine or spirits, do it I believe secretly, or go to the French coffee-houses at Pera, where their intemperance is not observed: but I entirely differ from many travellers, who tell us that the major part of the Turks drink fermented liquors. I aver that no people in the world adhere more rigidly to the injunctions of their religion in that and other respects. Those who take forbidden drinks are generally soldiers, Tartars and persons of the lowest class. The effects of spirituous liquors on the Turks are remarkable. Naturally sedate, composed, and amicable, they become, when intoxicated, downright madmen; and the inhabitants of Pera, who are accustomed to see them in this state, know so well the danger of getting in their way at such a moment, that they avoid them as they would a mad bull.

A house was hired for six months at five hundred piasters per month, in the village of Therapia, on the Bosphorus, ten miles from Constantinople. Lady Hester had scarcely removed thither, when she was attacked with a severe indisposition, which confined her to her bed.

The house was at the bottom of a small creek, which formed a harbour to the village; it was three stories high. The ceilings and walls were painted in fresco ornaments on a white ground, and there were little jets d’eau in some of the rooms. Each story consisted of a grand saloon, with four rooms opening into it, most of which had broad sofas fixed to the walls all round, with furniture either of flowered velveteen or of printed cotton. The highest story in the house is the story of honour:—a custom remaining from the time when the Genoese possessed this quarter of Constantinople.

Lady Hester writes from this place to a friend thus:—

Lady Hester Stanhope to ——.

Therapia, upon the Bosphorus,

December 21, 1810.

My dear ——,

Since the fire at Pera good houses are so scarce that I have taken up my abode at this place, where I have a fine view of the coast of Asia, and mouth of the Black Sea. Lord S—— and B—— are about to set off upon a tour; the latter returns here in a few weeks, but my lord means to take his passage to Malta by the first opportunity, and to return to us in the early spring. I flatter myself that you will take my word for his having the best of hearts, and being a most friendly creature, till you can judge yourself of his good qualities. B—— desires to be most kindly remembered to you.

Canning[13] has behaved to me in the civilest, kindest manner possible, but has never once mentioned his cousin’s name.

Our circle at Therapia was often enlivened by visitors, who came to dinner from Constantinople. Mr. Stratford Canning, at that time his Majesty’s Minister to the Sublime Porte, was not unfrequent in his visits. Among our most distinguished travellers, were Mr. Gally Knight, Mr. Henry Pearce, Mr. Fazakerly, and Mr. Taylor, who had recently traversed Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Mr. Pearce, being the particular friend of Mr. B., afterwards joined Lady Hester’s party, and accompanied us to Egypt and Syria. Lord Plymouth, whom we had seen at Athens, was at this time at Constantinople, and did me the honour of presenting me with a handsome Damascus sabre, in a silver scabbard, in consequence of some professional assistance which I had rendered him.

Lady Hester always showed a strong partiality for the French nation, and it was long a favourite scheme with her to endeavour to obtain permission from the Emperor Napoleon to reside in France, thinking that the climate in the southern parts would be more beneficial to her than any other: an opinion in which I entirely agreed. Party spirit was at this time carried to a height unknown in former wars, so that individuals of belligerent nations were strictly forbidden to hold any intercourse. This prohibition, however, held good only with those who were immediately under the eye of the ambassadors and ministers: for, as well at Athens as at Brusa, we made no sort of difficulty, and found none, in visiting French families. But Lady Hester was a long time at Constantinople before she could contrive to communicate with M. de Maubourg, chargé d’affaires of France, who, however, no sooner learned what she desired from his court, than he offered to endeavour to obtain passports for her.

On the 21st December, the Marquis of Sligo and Mr. B. set off on their excursion to Smyrna: they bought fourteen horses for the journey.

We were constantly hearing of tumults among the janissaries, who seemed to be a very turbulent set of men. They feared that measures were planning for their suppression, and subsequent events have proved that their apprehensions were well founded.

The original institution of the janissaries was a species of militia, by which an army might always be collected in an emergency without being kept on foot. In the metropolis, however, a certain number of regiments were maintained as a body-guard to the Sultan, and as a means of awing the population into obedience to the acts of an arbitrary government. In time, these very instruments of tyranny, finding out their own importance, began themselves to exercise authority over their nominal masters; and the annals of the empire present numerous instances of their dethroning sultans, and putting them to death. The last act of this kind was that in which, beholding with jealousy the attempt made by Sultan Selim to new organize the army, they cut in pieces the troops disciplined after the European manner, together with the vizir, Mustapha Biractar, who favoured the change. Since that time the tumult had never completely subsided; and occasional quarrels were constantly taking place between the innovators and the janissaries.

It is most likely that, if the Turkish government had been at peace with the neighbouring powers, these turbulent and disaffected bands would soon have been reduced to order: but, unfortunately for Turkey, in addition to the Russian war, she was at this epoch torn in pieces by rebels, who were infesting, in one shape or another, almost all the provinces of the empire. Bagdad and Egypt, extensive but distant pashaliks, were both disturbed by intestine commotions, in which the public treasury was always the loser. The Wahabys, a sect of fanatics, had possessed themselves of the holy sepulchre of Mahomet, and were gaining ground on the Turks every day. Not thirty miles from the metropolis a petty war was waging between two provincial governors. The State, convulsed within, and threatened by formidable enemies from without, might be said to be in a tottering condition.

The janissaries, therefore, knowing that the government was too weak to control them, became every day more seditious. We were often told that tumults had taken place in Constantinople; but as Pera, where the Franks reside, is separated by the harbour from Constantinople proper, which is not often visited by the Franks, we were never eye-witnesses of them.

There was abundance of wild fowl on the Bosphorus during the cold weather; and I used sometimes to cross into Asia in a wherry to shoot. On two different occasions, I brought home two pelicans. They swam towards the boat, and suffered the gun to be levelled at them without showing the least symptom of alarm. Those who are desirous of shooting on the canal, or indeed anywhere in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, must obtain a teskery, or permission to that effect. I was stopped more than once by the keepers, who resorted to various stratagems to get money. One keeper, when I showed him my license, told me it was very true I had a teskery; but that an order had come down that no guns were to be fired on the canal, because two of the Sultan’s ladies were lying-in—at a distance of eight or ten miles! A piaster, however, would always set matters right, and cause me to be left undisturbed.

Pera was very gay during the winter. There were many dinner parties, evening parties constantly, and not unfrequently balls. In these meetings, the only thing that reminded me of being in Turkey was the presence of the several dragomans, interpreters of the different missions, who, from the necessity they are under of being as much at the Porte as with their ambassadors, are habited in a Turkish dress peculiar to that office. The Turks rarely, if ever, mix with the Franks: for they would not thank them for the most splendid banquet, if smoking were not allowed: and they dislike, worse than the French, the tiresomeness of sitting long at table. Besides, the use of wine effectually banishes a respectable Moslem from the repasts of Europeans, who, on their side, are too strongly attached to it to give it up for the sake of a Turkish guest.

On one occasion, Lady Hester invited the brother-in-law of the Captain Pasha and another person of distinction to dinner. Although entirely unaccustomed to the use of knives and forks, to sitting in chairs, to remaining more than half an hour at table, and to solid food like joints dressed in the English manner, they complied with the hospitable intentions of their hostess with so much courtesy that everything seemed to give them pleasure. They tasted of different wines, and each drank three or four glasses.

Lady Hester alludes to this visit in a letter to one of her correspondents, as follows:—

I have made my own way with the Turks, and I have contrived to get upon so intimate a footing, that the Pasha’s brother, brother-in-law, and captain of the fleet, dined with us, accompanied by the confidential physician. This may not sound like a compliment; but see the Captain Pasha’s brother sitting under a tree in a public walk:—he neither notices Greek, Armenian, or Frank women of any kind, but looks at them all as if they were sheep in a field: and they dare not come near him, as his attendants form a circle which they never pass, but stand and look at him for an hour together. I must likewise tell you that —— has been much shocked at my having gone on board the fleet in men’s clothes; a pair of overalls, a military great-coat, and cocked hat, is so much less decent a dress than that of a real fine lady in her shift and gown, and half naked besides! The Captain Pasha said I was welcome to go, but that I must change my dress, and I certainly thought it worth while. I closely examined everything, and as I understand a little about a ship, it was not quite a useless visit.

When the answer arrives from Paris, I will communicate to you the nature of it; and, at all events, as soon as it comes, and Mr. Liston is arrived, we shall leave this place. I find he is a sensible, liberal man. By the by, though I have made it a rule never to repeat any conversation with Monsieur de M.,[14] I will tell you in confidence one thing I said to him. He seldom talks politics, but one day asked questions about L. Bonaparte, ‘How was he, how would he be treated in England, how considered,’ &c., &c., &c. I answered, I knew not, but were I a public man I should have put him at once and kept him in close confinement. If he was his brother’s spy, he deserved it; if a traitor to his country, the same; for it is neither to the honour or interest of a great nation to encourage either the one or the other. These are my true feelings, and I am not ashamed to confess them to any one; and I fancy, although I can do justice to the French as a nation full of talent and resource, no one can better faire valoir their own country.

The long-promised bridle accompanies this letter. I fear you will not like it much, but it is of the newest fashion. There are two sorts of bridles here, such as I send, of various descriptions and colours, and those made for very great men of solid silver, weighing some of them twelve or fifteen pounds, which their own stallions can just bear the weight of during some grand procession. In the hand, these bridles are the most magnificent things you can imagine, but they are so confused with chains and ornaments that they bury a horse’s head, and have little effect. I have sent a red one to my brother, but I thought that a dark one would more become your white horse. All those with tassels are made with a little silk mixed with silver or gold twist: it looks pretty for a day, but the heat of the horse spoils it directly, and it cannot be cleaned! This bridle must be cleaned with lemon-juice.

Hafiz Aly was at this time Captain Pasha. Lady Hester became acquainted with him through me, and I was honoured with his notice in consequence of a cure performed on the Danish minister, Baron H., which had gained me much celebrity at Pera and Constantinople, so that I found myself on a sudden called to an extensive practice in my profession. He sent his physician, Azýz Effendy, to me one day, begging I would go and see him at the arsenal, a handsome edifice overlooking the harbour in the Galata quarter. A boat came about ten in the morning of the next day to Therapia to fetch me; and, on arriving at the arsenal, I was conducted to Azýz Effendy, who showed me the buildings, and, as it appeared he had been commanded to do, endeavoured to amuse me during the day. I breakfasted with him and several other Turkish gentlemen, and at sunset dined, after which a slave came to say the Pasha would receive us.

I was led by Azýz Effendy to the entrance of the saloon in which he was sitting, and, it being winter, a curtain was drawn aside, and Azýz Effendy, without speaking, made a sign to me and my interpreter to enter. The pasha was seated at the farther end of the room: we approached him, and he desired me to sit down by him on the sofa, whilst the interpreter and his own doctor, at a sign made to them, placed themselves on the floor with their knees doubled under them, and their garments so smoothed that neither their hands nor their feet could be seen; for both are studiously hidden by the people of the East when respect is intended to be shown. Ten or twelve chokhadars, or servants, stood before him with their arms folded; his brother-in-law, a young man of interesting appearance, sat on the sofa with his face turned towards him, and his legs and clothes arranged with the same precision as those of the doctor: and, at the distance of three or four yards, stood his little son upon the sofa, with his arms folded in the same respectful attitude as those of the servants. Every time that the brother-in-law replied to anything which the Pasha had said to him, he carried his hand to his mouth and forehead, and made a low inclination of his head, so as almost to touch the sofa with it. When the pasha did not speak, no one attempted to say a word, and the greatest silence prevailed.

Coffee was served to me, and the pipe presented, after which the pasha made a sign with his hand, and the servants left the room. Several questions were then asked me about my country, about anatomy, and about the opening of dead bodies, as practised in Europe, for the purpose of investigating the seat and nature of diseases. In conversation, in the course of the morning, I had inquired of the pasha’s physician where malefactors’ heads were cut off, and had said, that as I supposed such executions were frequent, I should be obliged to him if he would apprize me of one that I might be present. It seemed that all this and all my observations in the day had been reported to the pasha, for, among other questions, he asked me what made me think executions were frequent at the Arsenal. I told him plainly that we had an idea in England that cutting off heads was very common in the East, and that little account was taken of human life where the power of disposing of it was delegated to so many pashas and beys, whose will was law. He asked me how many executions took place in London during the year, and when I said they might amount to forty or fifty, he smiled, and assured me we were not less bloody than he and the Grand Vizir both together, and perhaps more so. He then explained his own case to me, which was connected with a plethoric habit arising from a sedentary mode of living, and, on my taking leave, he presented me with a crimson Cashmere shawl. I saw him afterwards frequently, both there and at his house at Buyukdery, a village on the Bosphorus, where he resided in order to be near the fleet, which lay at the mouth of the Black Sea.

He had married a woman from the Sultan’s harým, whose influence had procured him the situation he held. She was consumptive, and I was called in to attend her. I found her lying in a bed, placed on the floor in the middle of the room, without curtains, tester, or any furniture but the coverlet and the sheets. She was addressed in the tenderest manner by the pasha, who desired me to bestow all my attention on her case. As we entered the harým, a slave had preceded us, who cried out “Testûr, testûr,” (which means by your leave), upon which all the female slaves disappeared, excepting two who were in attendance on the lady. I saw nothing in the behaviour of the pasha that marked any undue assumption of superiority over the female sex; on the contrary, it was all kindness. Azýz Effendy, who was with us, stood in the same attitude of respect as before the pasha, and when speaking to the lady, or spoken to by her, preserved the same demeanour. I prescribed for her, and she grew for a while better, as it sometimes happens in such cases. I was desirous that she should be removed, when the weather would permit, to a pavilion on the banks of the canal, that she might breathe the air more freely than she could in the warm apartments of Buyukdery: this was done.

One day I had seen her, and signified that I should repeat my visit the next day, as she was much worse. The next day I went about noon, and, on entering the house, I found no appearance of the lady, or of her sick chamber, or of anything as it had been the day before. In fact, she had died in the night; was immediately washed, laid out, and buried; and, as the Mahometans make little outward show of grief, and never put on mourning garments that I could observe, no one could tell that a funeral had taken place, nor did the pasha, whom I saw, say anything more than that she was gone, and that it became us to be resigned to the decrees of the Almighty.

Not long afterwards, Azýz Effendy requested me to accompany him to the pasha, who wished to see me about a white slave or concubine whom he had bought since the death of his wife. He was still at Buyukdery, and I was ushered into his presence, nobody being with him but Azýz Effendy. He told me that a seryr, or concubine, whom he had taken to his bed, was pregnant, and, as her beauty was considerable, he was fearful that child-bearing would destroy the symmetry of her person; he wished me, therefore, he added, to administer something to cause abortion. I was not surprised at such a proposal from him; for, in my conversation with medical men at Constantinople, I had learned, to my astonishment, that the Mahometans make no scruple of resorting to a variety of methods for attaining that end; and, without listening to what the pasha had further to say, I told him plainly that, by the laws of my country, I should be considered a criminal, if I were, in any shape whatever, consenting to such a deed. He said no more about it, and the subject was never introduced before me again.

Of my other patients, I will enumerate those only whose rank may entitle them to notice. The Princess Morousi, wife of the ex-Hospodar of Wallachia, was one. Her husband had been driven from his principality by the Russians. She was a woman of a highly amiable character, and the misfortunes which her family has since met with may serve to show at once how great was their power, and perhaps their guilt. Her palace was at Kurugesmy, a village on the European side of the Bosphorus. When I paid her a visit, everything was done with a view to inspire me with a notion of her greatness. Vanity is the failing of the Greeks. It was usual for me to be conducted up a flight of steps to the first or second floor, between two ranks of servants, then led through a suite of apartments, and, when arrived at the door of the room where she was sitting, a page would draw aside a crimson curtain, and there I found the Princess, seated on a crimson sofa edged with gold. On a cushion on the floor, but at a distance of some yards, (for here respect is measured by the distance at which inferiors keep from the great) sat the physician; and, if her sons were in the room, although young men with their beards grown, they stood before her. Behind her would be her young daughter on the sofa. Sweetmeats, coffee, and the pipe were first handed to me; and then her doctor, a Greek, explained her case in Latin, in which language I always found the Greek physicians exceedingly ready, although their Latinity was not classical.

On these occasions, the little princess would plant herself at the door, and, as I was taking leave, would give me an embroidered scarf, an antique ring, or some such present, with a little speech of her own in French, calculated, by its amiability, to render the present more acceptable.

The princess had a daughter, lively, and of great wit, who was married to the Prince Mavrocordato. This prince was affected with spitting of blood; and I went to his villa, on the Prinkipi islands, to see him, and remained there two days. These islands, which are close to the mouth of the Bosphorus, in the sea of Marmora, are inhabited entirely by Greeks; and their archons here live in great pomp, unrestrained by the presence of the Turks.

Lady Hester, who always suffered more from variable weather than from periods of steady heat, rain, or drought, was grievously disappointed in the climate of Constantinople: for we had experienced, during the winter, a degree of cold equal to what is sometimes felt in Paris, and had been subject to vicissitudes quite as marked as those in England. The months of December and January were mild as our spring, and we naturally supposed that, these over, the winter was past; but it proved far otherwise. On the 28th of February there was a fall of snow a foot deep, which was again succeeded by some days more genial and mild than can ever be seen in England. March was a series of snowstorms and tempests, exceeding almost what I had ever witnessed elsewhere. Such weather, in a country where there are no fireplaces, and the houses are hardly weather-proof, made Lady Hester feel much regret at having quitted Athens, where we might have sat, as we were told, with our windows open all through the year.

At the end of this month, Lord Sligo, who, with Mr. B., had returned from Smyrna, was obliged to depart for Malta, for the purpose of being invested with the Order of St. Patrick, sent out to him by the king. It was with much regret that Lady Hester saw Lord Sligo depart: she always spoke of the qualities of his heart with commendation, and her friendship for him ever continued unaltered.

CHAPTER V.

The Author goes to Brusa—Situation of the city—Baths—Surrounding country—Residence at Brusa—Lady Hester mistaken for a youth—Women of Brusa—Return of the Author to Constantinople—Sudden death of Mr. Alexander, Lady Hester’s banker—Departure from Brusa—Residence at Bebec—Provisions—Excursion to the village of Belgrade—Throwing the Girýd—Fast of Ramadàn—Lady Hester resolves to winter in Egypt—Presents to the Author for professional attentions.

It was represented to Lady Hester that the sulphureous baths of Brusa, a city of Asia Minor, might be serviceable to her; and, the testimony of several persons whom I consulted on the subject being in their favour, she resolved on going thither. But the reports we heard concerning the nature of the accommodations to be met with made it expedient that I should precede her a day or two, in order to provide a place for her reception. To avoid the heat, I set off at midnight, on the first of May, in an open four-oared barge with an awning, accompanied by Aly, a janissary, and my servant: and, although the distance to Mudania, the landing-place nearest Brusa, is sixty or eighty miles, the watermen rowed it within twelve hours, including the time for allowing me to go on shore to breakfast, at a point of land at the entrance of the bay of Mudania.

A Turkish row-barge is an object more striking and picturesque than those on the Thames, and the watermen wear a costume more uniform and much more becoming. Their shirts, of a texture like Chinese crape, are open at the bosom; so that their muscular forms and brawny arms are seen to great advantage. They wear a red cloth skull-cap and white balloon trousers; the feet and legs are naked.

I landed at Mudania, a village nearly at the bottom of a gulf of the same name, about mid-day; and, as I had a firmán, or order, to be civilly treated by all persons whom it might concern, I escaped the exactions of the custom-house officer, who sat cross-legged on a bench near the beach to examine the baggage of persons landing.

Taking post-horses and a guide, I arrived in the dusk of the evening at Brusa. The distance might be about eighteen miles, through a country so fertile and so rich that I at once felt what was meant by the luxuriance of Asiatic scenery.

I had a letter of introduction to M. Arles, a French merchant established at Brusa, whose traffic consisted in raw silk for France, in skins for furriers at Constantinople, and in embroidered silks; and he received me in a very hospitable manner.

On the following morning I hired three cottages just out of the city; one, which was new, belonging to a priest, and two others, in themselves somewhat humble dwellings, but advantageously situated on the sloping foot of Olympus, commanding a view of the vale of Brusa and the adjoining baths. The snowy summit of Olympus overhung them, and from their doors began the groves which covered the vale stretched out before them. To the right, the lengthened city displayed its hundred mosques, intermingled with cypresses and lofty planes. There are several baths: the principal of them is a large building, consisting of three spacious rooms with vaulted roofs, in which are bell-glasses to admit a dim light, and to confine the heat. These baths in their structure resemble the hot baths common throughout the Turkish empire. The water which supplies them is derived from several sulphureous springs, of different degrees of temperature, which rise near each other within a square place of a few acres. The spring belonging to the principal bath issued in a volume of water a foot in diameter, and of such a heat that the hand cannot bear it. A strong smell of sulphur, which filled the sudatory, was emitted by it as it ran, and to this quality its medicinal virtues are ascribed. The same water, which in the first room yields a vapour hot enough to steam the body, in a second is received into proper cisterns, where the bather may immerse himself. These baths were not used by invalids only, but frequented generally by the inhabitants. I occasionally resorted to them, and should have done so oftener, but for the vermin with which the Turks filled the carpets and cloths.

The city of Brusa stands at the foot of Mount Olympus, one of the highest mountains in Asia Minor. Were we to speak of it in the language which we should use respecting a European town, we might say that it contains a hundred parishes, there being so many mosques. But places of worship in Mahometan countries are much more numerous than in Christian, and with such a number Brusa is perhaps not so populous as Bristol. It is divided into the old and new town: the former is inhabited by Turks alone, Armenians, Greeks, and Franks being excluded, and compelled to occupy the new town or suburbs. There is also a suburb for the Jews, who are here rather numerous, and have less of the degraded appearance so observable in their nation elsewhere in Turkey. Many of them are tall, well-made, and comely; and some of their women, whom I saw at M. Arles’s, were very handsome. Brusa, like all Turkish cities, is made up of mean streets, although it contains several splendid houses; and, seen from the mountain which overlooks it, presents a striking appearance, owing to the minarets of the mosques, and to the lofty trees which are interspersed among the houses.

I was now in a part of the empire where the Turks are seen in their true colours, their natural dislike to Christians not being softened down by any intercourse with civilized foreigners, as is the case in Constantinople: for there were no more than three Frank families of the middling rank of life in all Brusa, and the resort of European travellers was but rare. The epithet of Christian dog was frequently to be heard in the streets, not indeed applied to ourselves, but to the poor rayah Christians.

The vale of Brusa is almost as much renowned for its beauty as that of Tempe: its fertility is past conception. One may ride for miles in a continued shade of walnut, chestnut, fig, cherry, and mulberry trees. These are the trees by the road-side; but, within the hedges, as being less handy to be gathered, grow peach, apricot, pear, and apple trees.[15] In every hedge flowering shrubs grew spontaneously; at every step springs gushed from the side of the mountain. Through the centre of the vale flow two rapid streams, fed by the melting of the snow; and, surrounding the vale on every side, sloping hills, covered with villages and diversified by cornfields and vineyards, bound the horizon.

That Lady Hester’s opinion was in accordance with my own, may be gathered from a letter she wrote to a friend, from which the following passages are extracted:—

“How I wish you were here to enjoy this delicious climate, and the finest country I ever beheld! Italy is nothing to it in point of magnificence. The town of Brusa is situated at the foot of the Mount Olympus; it is one of the largest towns, and may be considered the capital of Asia Minor: the houses are like all Turkish houses, bad in themselves, but so interspersed with trees and mosques that the whole has a fine effect; the view quite delightful over an immense plain more rich and beautiful than anything I ever saw, covered with trees, shrubs, and flowers of all descriptions; the rides are charming, and the horses better than any of those I have met with out of England.

“How beautiful are these Asiatic women! they go to the bath from fifty to five hundred together; and when I was bathing, the other day, the wife of a deposed pasha begged I would finish my bathing at a bath half a mile off, that she might have the pleasure of my society, but this I declined; they bathe with all their ornaments on—trinkets I mean—and, when they have finished, they bind up their hair with flowers, and eat and talk for hours; then fumble up their faces all but their eyes, and sit under trees till the evening.”

Brusa, nevertheless, was full of beggars; and the city gates used to be thronged with miserable objects, exciting compassion by the exhibition of distorted limbs, offensive sores, and filthy tatters. Add to this that, from the want of gutters in the streets, the pedestrian has to pick his way through mud and puddle every step he takes; and that the splendid supply of water, afforded them by the Almighty, is, by their neglect, rendered an absolute nuisance. As the summit of Mount Olympus is so high as to be covered with snow all the year round, a portion of it melts annually, and pours, in numerous rivulets, down the sides into the plain.

Three days after my arrival, Lady Hester, accompanied by Mr. B., reached Brusa; and they were as much enchanted with the beauty of the country as I had been. We used to ride out every day in the environs of the city. One day we came to a large piece of ground, sown with barley, which was now just in ear; and on it, tied by the leg, were grazing twenty horses belonging to a banished pasha, who lived at Brusa. Lady Hester, who was a great admirer, as well as a great judge, of horses, thought one of them so beautiful that she fancied she should like to purchase it as a present to some friend in England. It was an Arabian, and she begged the groom, an Egyptian, who was tending them, to mount and show her its action; but he declined, alleging that he had no saddle.

We were witnesses, during our stay at Brusa, to the miseries consequent on war. Several hundreds of Bulgarians, who had been driven from their homes, and whose houses and property had been burned and destroyed in the war between the Russians and the Turks, passed through Brusa, in search of a spot on which to build themselves fresh habitations. They drove before them their flocks, their mares, and their cows; whilst their wives rode in covered carts drawn by buffaloes, of which animals great use is made in this part of the world. These Bulgarians wore, for clothing, sheep-skins, with the wool turned inward in winter and outward in summer: their look was fierce and independent.

There was always a drawback on my pleasure, which there seemed to be little hope of surmounting. This was my ignorance of the Turkish language. I had now been in Turkey six months, and yet I hardly knew how to ask for water to drink. This was not owing to my aversion to the language, or to my indolence, but to the difficulty there is to a free intercourse with the people. Travelling here, I found, was not like travelling in Christendom, where a stranger goes into the society of the natives, is received with politeness by them, and can, if he chooses, take up his abode in the family of some one of the country. With Moslems this is not practised. A Turk would as soon receive a viper as an infidel into his house. The women, as they pass, cover themselves to the very tips of their fingers, lest the poisonous eyes of a Christian should bring evil upon them. The shopkeepers and artificers will, it is true, supply you with their commodities, if you pay for them; but with so ungracious an air, that one’s self-love is sorely wounded. This unwillingness to have any intercourse with Christians is a partial barrier to the quick attainment of their language, and an almost effectual one to the knowledge of their domestic customs.

I was accompanied, in all the professional visits I made, by my servant Lorenzo, who acted as interpreter. Lady Hester found in Mademoiselle Arles, the daughter of the French merchant, a young lady whose perfect knowledge of the Turkish language made her an excellent means of communication between the Turkish ladies and herself, whenever she paid visits.

Soon after we were settled, I was solicited by the Governor of the city to visit his son, an infant, who was dangerously ill. I had him under my care for some time, and my constant attendance at the palace led to an acquaintance between the Governor’s wife and Lady Hester. Mademoiselle Arles would, on these occasions, perform the office of interpreter. In the course of a few days, Lady Hester had received and accepted invitations from some of the persons of distinction of whom Brusa is so full; it being the city to which the Sultan is accustomed to send vizirs and pashas, who suffer under his displeasure. At first, Mademoiselle Arles said, doubts had been raised whether Lady Hester was really a woman: for, as she rode about in an English riding-habit, a dress (if the skirts were shorter) not altogether unlike that of the pages of the Seraglio, it was whispered about that she was a boy; more especially as she rode on a side-saddle, somewhat in the manner in which the dromedaries are ridden, instead of astride, like the women in the East. Besides, she went with her face uncovered. And so serious were these doubts, that, when she went to the public baths frequented by the women of the place, they all hid and covered themselves in a great bustle, and were not convinced of their error for some time.

The female dress at Brusa pleased me exceedingly: but my fair countrywomen will not admire my taste, when I tell them that here, and elsewhere throughout Turkey, women wear no stays. The sex seemed to have but few amusements. They were allowed to gad about the streets as much as they pleased, and go to the baths when they liked; and, although their faces and bodies on such occasions were so completely covered that their very husbands could not know them, yet the customs of the country, that do not admit of a woman’s walking out alone, are a barrier to intrigue. At home, even a married woman must not see any persons of the other sex but her husband and her nearest relations; while the unmarried are seen by no one out of the family. Mademoiselle Arles told us, likewise, that husbands here were very tyrannical, and that corporeal chastisement was by no means uncommon. The wife, who is on the very best terms with her husband, can be said, after all, to be but his slave. When he enters the harým, or women’s apartment, he claps his hands at the outer door as a signal, and the wife must immediately hasten to receive him. As he walks, with an air of grandeur, into the inner room, she humbly follows. He seats himself on the sofa, but does not permit her to sit down until she has served him with a pipe and a cup of coffee: then, with a sign of submissive reverence to her lord and master, she takes her place at a distance; and, when he has smoked his pipe, he perhaps relaxes his heavy visage into a smile, and permits her to caress him. This is the way among the better sort of persons. Among the lower orders the husbands are said to be quite brutal: and the poor wife’s only protection is the occasional threat that she will have a separation; for divorce, by the Mahometan law, is an affair easily effected, and often practised.

As the time for occupying the house at Therapia had expired during our stay at Brusa, we had no longer any residence at Constantinople; Lady Hester, therefore, wished me to return thither for the purpose of hiring one. Accordingly, on the 1st of June, I set off; and, on my arrival, I hastened to the house of Mr. Alexander, her ladyship’s banker. I was shocked to learn that the worthy man had died of fright a few days before. It appeared that, in the street in which Lady Hester had lodged on her first arrival at Constantinople, a fire had broken out, which had raged so fiercely as to have consumed fifty houses, among which were those of the Russian and Austrian ambassadors. The conflagration would have extended farther, had not a copious fall of rain soaked the wooden houses, and put a stop to it. But this of itself became a calamity: for, one of the street sewers having been stopped up, the street overflowed, and much damage was done by the water.

The frequency of these accidents is assigned as a reason why the inhabitants of Constantinople sleep in their clothes, that they may be ready to make their escape. When the fire broke out, Mr. Alexander had been suddenly awakened with the cry in the streets; and, hastily rising, had rushed to the street, where he fell dead in an apoplectic fit. He was a man who spoke fluently six languages. I visited the spot where the fire had raged; but, as the buildings in this city are almost always of wood and very slight, not a wall remained standing.

Having heard that the Austrian Internuncio, Baron Sturmer, had a roomy house in a village near Constantinople, where no Europeans lived (which I knew to be a particular recommendation to Lady Hester,) I went to him, procured the key, and looked it over: after which I hired it furnished for a thousand piasters, for six months.

It is said that there was a time when the ministers of two hostile courts residing at Constantinople would remain in friendly intercourse with each other: but an opposite principle had been adopted since the reign of the First Consul and Emperor of the French, who, both in regard to his own minister and to those ministers over whom he had influence, interdicted all communication with the English. An interview therefore with the Austrian Internuncio was not a light matter; and, for the better prevention of any ill construction being put upon it, I received intimation that the place of meeting must be in his garden.

I remained to dine on the fourth of June at the English palace, in celebration of his Britannic Majesty’s birthday, and then returned to Brusa. Among the guests at the palace were the Hon. Frederick North (late Earl of Guilford,) and Mr. Frederick Douglas, his nephew, both of whom very shortly afterwards came to Brusa on a visit to Lady Hester.

On the 1st of July, 1811, we quitted Brusa, after passing two most agreeable months there. The same evening we embarked at Mudania, and on the close of the second day reached Bebec.

Bebec is a village on the Bosphorus, chiefly inhabited by Turks and Armenians: it is three or four miles from Constantinople. On the edge of the canal there was a very elegant kiosk, or summer residence of the Grand Signor, but which was not often visited by him. The house I had taken had once belonged to a Turk, from whom it passed into the hands of the Austrian Internuncio in lieu of a debt. It was built of weather-boarding, and painted of a tarry red, like some barracks built in England during the late war. This red is the privileged colour of Mahometans: for a Greek or an Armenian dares not paint his house with it, and can use only a lead colour.

The interior of all Turkish houses is divided into two parts; the largest and best furnished of them is occupied by the women, and is called the harým; the other part, named the selamlik, consists seldom of more than two or three rooms, where the master of the house receives male visitors, and transacts business. Into the harým female visitors enter, but no other man than the husband, his and his wives’ nearest relations, and now and then her physician. All the windows are barred and latticed, so that it is not only not possible to look in, but hardly possible for those inside to look out.

Attached to the harým of the house at Bebec there were a superb marble bath, a garden, and other comforts for the amusement of the imprisoned inmates. Provisions are taken in by means of a turn-about, such as is used in convents. All these contrivances are, in some measure, securities for the chastity of the women; but the greatest of all is included in the feeling, impressed upon them from their infancy, of the positive criminality of showing their faces to strangers.

Another fire broke out during this month in the south-east part of Constantinople, called the Fanál, the quarter where the Greeks reside, and consumed (as it was said) a thousand houses. Fires will be ever frequent in a metropolis where so much anarchy prevails, where the plunderers are more numerous than the sufferers, the gainers than the losers. It was rumoured that the janissaries were the wilful incendiaries in this case. That corps still continued very disaffected, and always suspicious lest the Turkish government should effect their abolition. As a body they were too powerful to be punished openly; yet every day some of those known to be the most dangerous were secretly conveyed away, and were heard of no more.

Northerly winds were so prevalent at this time, that, for six weeks, they blew invariably from that quarter. Although the season was thus far advanced, the Turkish fleet had not yet begun its annual summer cruise. It is not difficult for two hostile fleets to find each other, if so disposed; but the Black Sea was roomy enough for the Russians and Turks to cruise without meeting.

The heat of the climate is by no means oppressive, tempered as it is by breezes from the two seas. The thermometer generally during this month stood at 80° Fahrenheit, at noon. Grapes were now at a penny per pound, melons three pence a piece, fresh figs almost for nothing; so that a handsome and plentiful dessert cost but a trifle. But the supply for the table was in many respects deficient; and it was seldom that a good dinner, according to the English fashion, could be served up. The mutton was not good, and beef and veal were rarely to be found in the market, although there are numerous droves of horned cattle to be seen on the mountains. The butter had a disagreeable taste. Potatoes and cabbages were scarcely to be met with; turnips not at all. Few of the kinds of fish which were caught were well tasted: the best to my palate was the sword-fish, which is in season in August, and in appearance and taste, when served up, might be mistaken for delicate veal.

My long residence in Constantinople had given me time to form an extensive acquaintance, and, from some successful cures, I was much solicited to settle there. It would indeed have been a desirable situation as far as money was concerned; but I was under engagements with Lady Hester which precluded such a thought. The Turks, and also the Armenians, were exceedingly liberal in their fees; the Greeks were not so.

Lady Hester spent a few days, about this time, at Belgrade, a village rendered celebrated by the praises bestowed upon it by Lady M. W. Montague. With the exception of this one village, all the inhabitants of Constantinople who have villas prefer living in the villages on the banks of the Bosphorus. The wherries, with two or three pair of oars, transport them from door to door. Soft mattresses are spread, with cushions to recline on, there being no seats as in our wherries, and they indulge in an agreeable indolence, fanned by the zephyrs, and rocked by the scarcely undulating waves. It must not be imagined, however superior we may generally be to the Turks, that we are their inferiors in nothing; and I have been often vexed to hear persons, little acquainted with that people, pronounce their entire inferiority with as little ceremony as if they had passed years in investigating the subject. Few of the travellers who visit Constantinople take the pains of learning the language, and most of the residents are equally negligent. There was one lady, an Englishwoman, who had lived three years at Pera, and yet had never had the curiosity to cross the harbour.

During the summer I learned to throw the girýd, or blunt javelin; and, as I conceive it to be thrown by the Turks in the same manner as practised by the ancients during the time of the Trojan war, I shall endeavour to make the reader understand it. When a javelin is put into the hand of a person unused to handle such a weapon, and he is desired to throw it, he invariably elevates his hand and arm; and, holding the javelin on a level with his head, or still higher, throws it overhanded. But this I conceive is not the mode employed by the ancients; nor is the same degree of power acquired as in the underhanded manner, which is as follows. The javelin, being from three and a half to five feet long, and of equal weight at both ends, is taken in the palm of the hand, resting in a position out of the horizontal one by a trifling elevation of the point, and is pressed almost entirely by the finger and thumb alone. The arm is straightened, the bend of the arm faces outwards, and the elbow is turned inwards, so that it points to the hipbone. Then a position is assumed, exactly such as a man would take who should fence left-handed, and, in this way, the javelin is discharged as if slung from the whole arm, without any effort at the wrist, and little at the elbow. On horseback, the impulse is greater, because the horse is brought to a sudden halt and a wheel about to the left, just at the moment of throwing the javelin. Girýd is an Arabic word, meaning a branch of the palm-tree; such a branch being generally used for a sham javelin, as being firm, heavy, and elastic, and having a slight tapering from one extremity to the other.

About the 20th of April, the Captain Pasha was sent with troops and gun-boats to reduce a place called Heracli, on the Asiatic coast of the Black Sea, the governor of which was in rebellion. Up to the time of our departure it was not known what success had attended this expedition; but a Greek one day answered to my inquiries how the pasha got on—“Oh! we shall shortly have some information: for, according to his success or failure, there will be an exhibition at the Seraglio-gate, of the head of the rebel governor or of his own.”

The Ramadán, or fast of the Mahometans, began this year on the 27th of September. It is known to the reader that this fast continues for a whole moon, during which time no person, whatever his rank may be, takes nourishment of any sort from sunrise to sunset. When it falls, as it did this year, during the hot weather, so long an abstinence is intolerable; and the boatman, who is rowing almost continually for twelve or fourteen hours, or the bathman, who remains for a whole day in an atmosphere fifteen degrees hotter than the hottest day in England, each without daring to cool his thirst with one drop of water, may be considered as enduring a species of penance, which shows the devoutest submission to the laws of his Prophet.

Lady Hester’s application to the French court was unsuccessful. It had given rise to a characteristic letter, which is inserted.

Lady Hester Stanhope to the Marquis Wellesley.

My Lord,

You are aware, my lord, that I left England on account of my health, which, though mended, is by no means re-established: and I always suffer extremely from cold. In the course of last winter I had often expressed a wish that it were possible I could visit either Italy or the South of France: which coming to the ears of Mr. Latour Maubourg, the French chargé d’affaires at this place, he was so good as to hint, through a third person, that he should be most happy to give me every assistance in his power to accomplish this object. I ought, perhaps, in the first instance, to have communicated this circumstance to Mr. Canning, and to have fairly told him it was my intention to take advantage of the opportunity which now presented itself of making the acquaintance of Mr. Maubourg, and of requesting him to forward my views in the manner which he thought most honourable and respectable to both parties. But respecting, as I do, his many virtues, I did not wish to quarrel with him, or appear openly to disregard his authority, or publicly to ridicule the very idea of any person presuming to doubt my patriotism.

The above reasons decided me to see Mr. M. privately; who is also very young for his situation, but which his talents fully qualify him to fill. Nothing can have been more candid, more honourable, than his conduct upon this occasion. He lost no time in writing to Paris for passports, and his answer may be expected every day.

Hester Lucy Stanhope.

August, 1811.

So, having grown fearful of spending another winter at Constantinople, preparations were made for quitting that city. At first she thought of returning to Athens, and of trying a winter there; for the air of Athens is salubrious and mild; the antiquities would always afford amusement, and subjects for study; whilst they constantly attract strangers of different countries who compose a small society. Lastly, its situation would be a step on the route which it was proposed to continue towards Syria and Egypt; but this plan was afterwards abandoned, and it was resolved to sail for Egypt, and pass the winter there.

A Greek vessel with a Greek crew was accordingly hired, for which the sum of £65 was to be paid for the whole voyage. In the mean time, I sold my horses, dismissed my Albanian groom, forwarded some books and other articles to England, in order to lighten my baggage, and bade adieu to my Constantinople friends; and, whether Turks, Armenians, Greeks, or Franks, I saw the moment approach of quitting them with sincere regret. I received from the fair hands of several ladies various embroidered articles in which were wrapped their pecuniary acknowledgments of my professional attentions. One was from the wife of Ibrahim Effendy, son of the Ibrahim Kekhyah, who lost his head with Sultan Selim. She herself was daughter of the grand almoner of the Sultan; and she told the Countess of Ludolf, wife of the late ambassador from the court of Naples to England, but at that time residing at Constantinople, and in intimacy with her, that she began to think, since she had known me, there might be some good sort of people among the infidel barbarians of the West and North. An embroidered purse was presented to me from the wife of a gentleman named Mikitar, who was master of the mint, and an opulent banker, and the sister of Mr. Ayda, an Armenian gentleman, whom the charms of an English lady had nearly fixed in this country. This purse contained new specimens of every coin that had issued from the Mint during his administration. These and a variety of other curiosities, together with all my luggage of every kind, my journals, &c., were lost by shipwreck in our passage to Egypt, as will be narrated in its proper place.

Eastern countries became every day more agreeable to me. Whatever shocked at first, became by degrees familiar, and at last appeared almost necessary to my comfort. The dignified gravity of the men pleased me, and I admired the domestic virtues of the women. The placid mien and the extraordinary sobriety of all persons (excepting the soldiery), the decorous, but condescending demeanour of superiors, and the humility of inferiors, were all marks of minds rightly organized; and I am not ashamed to say that I more than once applauded the principle which confined music and dancing to professors only, or to such as were born with a natural genius to excel in those arts, and banished from society that anomaly—a woman, half lady, half artist, half courtezan, who passes her time in displaying her attractions to gain the admiration of men to whom she ought to be perfectly indifferent, except on the score of worth, good conduct, and religion.

CHAPTER VI.

Departure from Constantinople—Prince’s Islands—Scio—Drunken Turk—Rhodes—Storm—The ship springs a leak—Servants dismayed—Land seen—The ship founders—Escape of the passengers to a rock—The sailors proceed to the Island of Rhodes—They return—The crew mutiny—The passengers gain the Island; and reach a hamlet—Our distressed situation—The Author departs for the town of Rhodes—Hassan Bey refuses assistance—The houses—Lady Hester ill of a fever—Lindo—Its port—The Archon Petraki—Reports that the party were lost—Lady Hester arrives at Rhodes—Town—Why Lady Hester chose the Turkish dress—Posting in Turkey—Mustafa.

We sailed from Constantinople on the 23rd of October, 1811. The party consisted of Lady Hester Stanhope, Mr. B., Mr. Henry Pearce, myself, an English maid servant, Mrs. Fry, a maître d’hôtel, four men servants, a cook, and a scullion, all Greeks. The master of the ship and his crew were likewise of that nation. Live sheep, poultry, wine, everything that could make the voyage comfortable, had been provided; and the hold of the ship had been partitioned into small cabins, so as to lodge every individual separately.

On quitting the Bosphorus, we encountered a contrary wind, which compelled us to take refuge among the Prince’s Islands, where we remained weatherbound five or six days. At last a north wind set in, and carried us, in a short time, through the Dardanelles, to the Island of Scio, where strong gales again detained us, but not unpleasantly, for ten days; since the vivacity of the inhabitants and the novelty and beauty of the country offered us much diversion. Our pleasure, however, was likely to have been damped by an accident not uncommon in Turkey. A Turkish soldier, who was passenger in a ship moored next to ours, having drunk too freely of wine, took umbrage at something that was said by one of our sailors, who was on the quarter-deck, and drew his pistol from his girdle and fired at him; but, not taking a just aim, the ball entered the ship’s quarter, and passed through the musquito-net suspended over Lady Hester’s bed. Fortunately, it so happened that Lady Hester had gone on shore to take a ride in the country; otherwise some mischief might have been done. On her return, the man was apprehended, and the governor of the town politely sent word that he should be punished in any way she might desire; but she said she required no other chastisement for him than such as he merited by the laws of his own country.

The wind now becoming fair, we unmoored, and were carried, without any accident, as far as Rhodes, where we stopped but a few hours to take in water and fresh bread; we then sailed, little imagining we should so soon return thither. It was on Saturday night, the 23rd November, that we quitted the island. We ran for two days under a press of sail, and must have made half our way to Alexandria, when the sky became lowering, and a southerly wind obliged us to beat to windward the whole of the 25th of November. In the evening, the gale having increased, we wore ship. On the 27th, the ship sprang a leak, and the cry of all hands to the pump immediately showed that some danger impended.

It is seldom that the Levantine ships have pumps, or, when they have, they are so little used as generally to be found unserviceable when wanted: and such was the case with ours. The water increased rapidly, and every exertion was necessary to check its progress. Mr. B., Mr. Pearce, myself, and all the servants, were unremittingly employed in raising and lowering the buckets, which were plied at the hatchways, as well as at the wells; whilst the pilot directed the ship’s course towards Rhodes.

In the mean time, Lady Hester, who had been informed of the leak, became aware, from the confusion which prevailed, that great danger was apprehended. She dressed herself, and quietly directed her maid to furnish a small box with a few articles of the first necessity, to be prepared against the worst. There was a cask of wine in the cabin, which had been brought to drink on the voyage. This her ladyship, with her own hands, drew and distributed among the sailors, to cheer them under the labour, which became very severe.

The wind had now risen to a complete gale, and, about twelve o’clock, the ship heeled gunwale down, and was so waterlogged that she never recovered an upright position afterwards. As our situation became more alarming, two or three of the Greek servants began to lose courage, and, throwing themselves flat on the deck, vented the most womanish lamentations, nor could they be induced by either threats or promises to work any more. One shook as if he had an ague fit; and another invoked the Virgin Mary, with continued exclamations of, “Panagia mou! panagia mou!”

Things wore this unpromising appearance when, about three o’clock, the south-west point of the island of Rhodes was discovered on our weather bow. The pilot immediately put the ship’s head as direct to it as the wind would permit. Every person took fresh courage, and our exertions became greater than ever. But the ship was no longer obedient to the helm, and we lost, in lee-way, what we gained in progress. We were perhaps not more than two miles from the island, and it was resolved to let go an anchor. The anchor, however, proved of no use, and the ship still drove.

The leak had now gained so much upon us that there was every probability the ship could not long keep afloat, and it was resolved that the long-boat should be hoisted out as our only resource. This was made known to Lady Hester, and, the order having been given that no one should burden the boat with luggage, it was with much difficulty lowered into the sea. Whilst this was doing, I went down into the cabin, and took from my trunk a bag of dollars, which, with my sabre and a pistol, was all that I saved.

I hastened upon deck, and, jumping into the boat, where already twenty-four persons had got before me, we let go the rope, and placed all our hopes on reaching a rock, which was about half a mile to leeward of us. No sooner were we free from the lee of the ship than the danger to which we were exposed became still more formidable than before. Almost every wave beat over us. Providence, however, watched over our safety; and we at last got to the leeward side of the rock, where a little creek, just large enough to shelter the boat, received us, and we landed. But, when we came to reflect on our position, it seemed still very deplorable. There was only one place, a sort of cavity in the rock, which afforded shelter from the spray. There was no fresh water, and, in the hurry of quitting the ship, that, as well as provisions, had been forgotten. Fatigue, however, was at present the most urgent sensation; and we all composed ourselves, in our wet clothes, to sleep; the cave in the rock being assigned to Lady Hester and her maid.

About midnight the wind abated a little, and the master proposed attempting to reach the land; averring it was as well to perish at once as to be starved to death. He suggested that, if the crew only was taken with him, there would be a much better chance of effecting his purpose; and that, once arrived, he could provide boats for our deliverance: whereas, if all went, the boat would in all probability sink. These arguments were deemed valid, and, accompanied by our prayers, they launched off. It was agreed that, when they reached the shore, they should make a fire as a signal of their safety; and, in the course of two hours, we saw the wished-for blaze.

Daylight came, and we remained without food or drink, anxiously looking out for the return of the crew. Our reflections were by no means comfortable: for, knowing the character of the Greeks, we could not be sure that, once safe themselves, they would not abandon us to our fate. We watched all day, and it was not until about a quarter of an hour before sunset, that a black speck was seen on the sea, which we at length distinguished to be a boat. It contained the crew, but without the captain, who had declined the danger of coming off again. They brought us bread, cheese, water, and arrack; and thus, after thirty hours’ fasting, we satisfied our hunger and thirst.

But another danger now stared us in the face. The sailors had found liquor on shore, and had made themselves drunk. They grew riotous and insolent, and, in the course of the night, declared their resolution of rowing back again. In vain we requested they would wait till daylight, till the wind abated, and till the rain was over. They were determined; and, as those who remained behind could have no chance but to perish, we were compelled to go with them. The sea was high; and, as they were pulling almost in the face of it, the labour of the sailors was very severe. But, for the same reason, the nearer we approached the shore the smoother the water became. At last the stern touched, and a wave, that filled her from head to stern, at once overwhelmed us. Lady Hester was hoisted out of the boat, and each made his way on shore as he could. The boat, soon after, was swamped and staved.

Close to where we landed there was a small windmill, where we accommodated Lady Hester and her maid in the best manner we could, whilst a blazing fire was made on the outside, round which we all collected. But we were soon joined by Mrs. Fry, who was so terrified by the rats, which ran up and down the ropes in the mill, that nothing could induce her to remain with her mistress. The rain all this time fell in torrents. The miller was despatched to his village, which was near at hand, to bring down conveyances to carry us to a place of shelter. At daylight he returned, and with him several peasants with mules and asses, which we mounted, and reached in a short time a hamlet, the most miserable that can be conceived as the habitation of human beings. Among all the cottages, there was not one into which the rain did not penetrate, whilst the filth within and about them was to the last degree disgusting: add to which they all swarmed with fleas. Yet, in other parts of the island of Rhodes, we had reason to admire the neatness and comfort of the peasants’ habitations.

The weather now became beautifully fine, as if to mock our misfortunes. Nothing had been saved from our ship: no one had linen to change: and some speedy means were to be contrived, to remedy these inconveniences. Accordingly, it was settled that I should set off for the town of Rhodes, and, by means of the English agent, whom we had already seen, provide a few necessaries for Lady Hester, and, at the same time, try to procure money; since what I had saved was only enough for our immediate wants.

On the following morning, mounted on a mule and with a peasant for my guide, I set off for the town, which I reached on the second day in the evening. Not having ink or paper with me, I was unable to write down what I saw; but I have a perfect recollection of the beauty of the country, of the groves of myrtle and oleander, of the clean houses of the peasants, of their dresses of white cotton, and of their hospitality. For, having slept the first night at a cottage where I was entertained with a plentiful supper and accommodated with a clean bed, on asking my guide what recompense I should make, he told me that twenty paras was quite enough, which were about equal to an English sixpence.

The news of our shipwreck had already reached the town by the captain, who had made the best of his way thither the moment he had landed. A large bundle of linen was immediately packed up, and sent back by the mule which brought me. The next day I paid a visit to the governor, Hassan Bey, to whom I represented the situation of Lady Hester and her party, and asked him to advance some money, until measures could be taken for obtaining some from Smyrna: but, ignorant who we were, he refused to lend assistance in any way. I found him seated on the landing-place of the staircase of his palace, and of so mean an appearance, that I had fairly passed him unnoticed, until Mr. Illarick called me back, and whispered, “There’s the bey.” On approaching him, one of his people roughly drove me back, and desired me to pull my shoes off. The reason for this probably was that my dress, spoiled by sea-water, was not such as to inspire much respect, and no one but a privileged person is allowed to dispense with this ceremony, according to Turkish usages.

As nothing was to be done with the bey, and as there was no time to be lost, Mr. Illarick’s assistance was put in requisition to the utmost. A house was prepared for Lady Hester, and another for the rest of her party.

The houses in the town of Rhodes are incapable of lodging more than one or two persons, if fixed bedsteads are used; for they consist, generally at least in the Frank quarter, of no more than two rooms, or three or four at the utmost. In those that I saw, the room on the ground floor was paved with pebbles of different colours, of the size of a hen’s egg, artificially and prettily arranged in stars, lozenges, and other devices. At one end there was a gallery, raised five or six feet, with a railing of unpainted fir. This served as a sitting-room by day and a sleeping-room by night, for the principal part of the family. On the first floor was a single room, floored, and ornamented with a few open cupboards, painted red or some glaring colour, with birds or trees upon them. Sometimes it had a recess in the wall for containing beds and coverlets, which are placed there the moment they are done with. The display of a store of these articles is a strong evidence of good circumstances, not only at Rhodes, but, as I have since observed, in other parts of Turkey.

In the midst of my preparations for Lady Hester’s reception, I was alarmed by the arrival of a peasant in the night with a letter, by which my immediate attendance was required at Lindo, on the east side of the island, where Lady Hester, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, had fallen ill of a fever. It appeared that, after my departure from the hamlet, the party had set off, and the route by the above-named town had been suggested to them as least fatiguing. In it there lived a Greek of rank, who had retired from Constantinople to this, his native place. He had afforded them hospitality, and had offered to provide for their wants, until they should receive succour from the city: and it was at his house that Lady Hester was taken ill. A long day’s journey through a country still more beautiful than that which I had passed on the western side brought me to Lindo. Her Ladyship grew better after a few days’ repose, and I then found leisure to perambulate the environs of the town. I will leave Lady Hester herself to describe her situation.

Lady Hester Stanhope to ——.

Rhodes, Dec. 1811.

My dear ——,

I write one line by a ship which came in here for a few hours, just to tell you we are all safe and well. Starving thirty hours on a bare rock, even without fresh water, being half-naked and drenched with wet, having traversed an almost trackless country, over dreadful rocks and mountains, partly on foot and partly on a mule for eight hours, laid me up at a village for a few days: but I have since crossed the island on an ass, going for six hours a day, which proves I am pretty well now at least.

The Consul here is a dear old fellow of seventy-five, who thinks he cannot do too much for us; but the bey pretends to be so poor, that he cannot give us more than thirty pounds, which will neither clothe nor feed eleven naked people for long; so we must send an express to Smyrna to get what we want. My locket, and the valuable snuff-box Lord Sligo gave me, and two pelisses, are all I have saved;—all the travelling equipage for Syria, &c., all gone;—the servants naked and unarmed: but the great loss of all is the medicine-chest, which saved the lives of so many travellers in Greece. How to repair it, I know not. I expected more medicine out by Mr. Liston; but whether he has forwarded it, or kept it, I know not: if you could assist me in this once more, I should thank you much. I may be able to get a little at Smyrna, but I am told all the medicine-shops were burnt by the late fire. The moment I can get a few necessaries from Smyrna, I shall depart to Tripoli, in Syria; therefore if you can assist me about medicine, pray forward it to Mr. Werry, and he will send it by the first opportunity.

B——, Mr. Pearce, and the doctor, are quite well. They have saved nothing; but do not fancy us dull, for we (myself included) danced the Pyrrhic dance with the peasants in the villages in our way hither.

We have lost a poor dog, which was quite a treasure; it was so frighted and so sick, we could not get it into the boat. I lament this every day, and little else, except the most beautiful collection of conserves for you and two other people, violets, roses, orange-flowers, and almost every sort of fruit.

Wynne is here, and is very kind to me. You will receive a longer letter through Mr. Werry. I enclose a line to Coutts and to my brother, whom I heard from at Scio. By accident, the young man you intrusted with my letters came there for a day. Remember me most kindly to Mr. Taylor: tell him I make conquests of Turks everywhere. Here they are ten times more strict than in Constantinople; yet a Turk has lent me a house and bath in the middle of an orange-grove, where I go to-morrow. The houses on the outsides of the walls where Franks live are only fit for poultry.

Adieu, my dear General,

Believe me, ever yours, most sincerely,

H. L. Stanhope.

There is something curious in the situation of Lindo. It stands on a tongue of land cut off from the island by a rocky mountain, which can be crossed only at a foot pace, by a mule path, and which in some places is so steep as to have made it necessary to hew out rough steps. Looking down from the summit of this mountain, you behold a neat town of about 200 houses, commanded by a castle, built on an elevation at the extremity of the tongue of land. There is an indentation in the line of coast to the left of the town which forms a small bay; whilst, on the right, a roomy basin, scooped by the hand of Nature out of the solid rock, with an entrance half as narrow as its breadth within, seems to want nothing but a little squadron to give a maritime importance to the place. There was no vessel in either port.

The only spot of ground which the inhabitants seemed to have for cultivation, was on the strand to the north. This strand went traditionally by the name of the Arena, and seemed well adapted for such games as the ancients gave in places of that denomination. To the south-west of the town, but overhanging it, were to be seen the remains of an ancient temple excavated in the rock, of which so much still was left, as to show that it had Ionic pilasters. In the front was an altar also hewn out of the rock.

The house in which Lady Hester was belonged to a person named Philippaki. He was nearly allied to a prince, and consequently was an archon himself. Mrs. Fry, however, Lady Hester’s maid, who had a great aversion to learning languages, and a strong predilection to her native one, as well as a habit of anglicising foreign words, used to call the archon Philip Parker; just as Mustapha, who was at one time our janissary, was metamorphosed into Muster Farr.

As soon as Lady Hester was well enough to resume her journey, we left Lindo for the town of Rhodes. We slept one night at a village called Archangelo, and arrived at Rhodes on the second evening.

Hassan Bey was not so polite to the party as most Turks would have been in his situation. The master of the ship, besides being suspected of having checked the bey’s civilities by not speaking of his passengers in proper terms, was supposed to have had some interest in destroying the vessel. It was accordingly determined not to make him any recompense for the losses he pretended to have suffered. The sailors, on the contrary, were rewarded liberally—more, perhaps, than their exertions merited. Lady Hester wrote from this place the following letter to a friend:—

Lady Hester Stanhope to ——

Rhodes, Dec. 19, 1811.

My dear ——,

I wrote to you by a vessel going to Malta, but must write again through Mr. Werry. We are all safe and well at this place. My health has suffered less than I expected; but I was sadly fatigued one day’s journey from where we landed at the extremity of this island. The wet, the starvation for thirty hours on a bare rock in the middle of the sea, eight hours’ scrambling over rocks and mountains, laid me up for a day or two at the house of a most hospitable Greek.

We can get nothing here, and have sent to Smyrna for clothes and money. We all mean to dress in future as Turks. I can assure you that if I ever looked well in anything, it is in the Asiatic dress, quite different from the European Turks.

When I went on shore at Scio, I slept two nights at a Turkish house, and they would not admit even a dragoman; but I contrived to make myself understood, got an excellent breakfast, and set it all out in my own way, which amused them of all things; and one of their friends lent me a horse and a black slave to attend me. I do not know how it is, but I always feel at home with these people, and can get out of them just what I like; but it is a very different thing with the Greeks, who shuffle and shuffle, and you never can depend upon them for one moment.

The late Grand-Vizier was exiled here, and is forbid to see people; but I mean to introduce myself into his society. I paid a visit to one at Scio, who was deposed when Turkey made peace with us, and a very gentlemanlike deep sort of a person he seemed to be.

Adieu; remember me kindly to Mr. Taylor, if he is with you, and pray write to me soon.

Yours most sincerely,

H. L. Stanhope.

As many things that were necessary for us in our destitute situation could not be procured at Rhodes, arrangements were made for my immediate departure for Smyrna, in order to purchase a refit for the whole party. It will be thought by many persons, that Lady Hester Stanhope violated too far the regard due to her sex in the resolution she now adopted of equipping herself as a man, and as a Turk. But let it be recollected that she had lost everything in the shipwreck, and that even the cities of the Levant, had she been in one, had neither milliners nor mantua-makers, who understand how to make European female dresses, nor materials for them, could she have made them herself. The impossibility of getting what she wanted was therefore so evident, that she unavoidably made choice of the Turkish costume, in which the long robes, the turban, the yellow slippers, and pelisses, have really nothing incompatible with female attire. Thus she was enabled to travel unveiled, which, in woman’s clothes, would have been contrary to the usages of the country: and, as Lady Hester decided on abandoning the English costume, the rest of the party did the same.

My journey to Smyrna was to be made post, which, in Turkey, signifies riding postillion fashion one’s self, and, instead of changing chaises, changing horses only, and galloping from stage to stage, as fast as mountains and forests will permit.

As I had never made an essay in this sort of travelling, it was necessary that I should be provided, if not with a Tartar, (Tartars being the proper couriers), at least with a person furnished with his powers. Application was therefore made to Hassan Bey, to select such a man from his people, and to regulate the price that should be paid him for going and returning. He fixed on a robust fellow, of a dark stern countenance and of rough manners, with a yatagan full three feet in length, and a large brace of pistols in his girdle. He settled this man’s recompense at 100 piasters, and his maintenance: and furnished me with an order to have post-horses on the road.

CHAPTER VII.