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28 CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS ENVIRONS ;
The rich valley through which this river winds its way, was formerly filled with many
famous cities, and some distinguished for that luxury and effeminacy which a balmy
climate and a fertile soil are apt to generate. Tralles and Alabanda sent from hence
their swarms of " esurient Greeks," with their cargoes of figs and prunes, to taint the
Roman citizens, already sufficiently corrupt. Notwithstanding the desolation which
Turkish indolence and barbarism brought into these fertile regions, the active spirit of
the ancient Greeks still seems to animate their oppressed descendants. The whole plain
is seen by the traveller in the highest state of cultivation: corn, wine, and oil, the
evidence and emblem of fatness and fertility, are now abundant here, as in the days of the
free Greek cities,—pastures covered with sheep and oxen, fields waving with golden crops
of wheat, vineyards bending under vast clusters of grape, and gardens shaded by the broad
foliage of the fig, are still the prospects which present themselves.
In the midst of this abundance is situated the town of Guzel-Hissar, appropriately
called " the Castle of Beauty," which its name imports. It lies on a small stream,
about ten miles from the Meander, and on an eminence which commands a prospect of
the lovely vale through which the river winds its way. Our illustration presents a view
of it, with Mount Thorax rising behind it, and the ridges of the Messogeis before it—
the wooded plain of the Meander lying between, and spread out under the city. Both
seem to partake of the same quality of rank vegetation. Among minarets, and domes,
and houses, rise cypress, terebinth, and oriental platanus, so that the whole is a forest of
mingled spires and trees; among these, myriads of turtle-doves take up their abode, and
they and their progeny, in surprising numbers, covering the branches and roofs, fill the
air all day long with their incessant and plaintive cooing. The town is the residence of
a pasha, but its edifices have little to boast of; they are mean and ragged, and travellers
complain of the caravansaries, as being more comfortless and destitute than even Turkish
khans. The inhabitants feel the effects of a rank and exuberant vegetation. During
the sultry months, a mal-aria is generated, highly pestilential. The plague sometimes
rages with mortal malignity; and the traveller, shut up in a small and naked room of a
filthy house, panting with heat and devoured with insects, rather endures any thing within,
than walk abroad, and encounter the ghastly and infected objects that stalk along, and
carry contagion with them through the streets.
GREEK CHURCH OF BALOUKLI,
NEAR CONSTANTINOPLE.
There is no superstition so strong in the Greek church as the efficiency ascribed to
fountains, and there are no objects of veneration to which they are more fondly attached.
Like their pagan ancestors, they consecrate a well to some presiding being, and ascribe to
it corresponding virtues. The efficacy, however, is not of the same character. A modern
Greek recognizes no Hippocrene, whose draughts inspire him with poetry; but he has |
