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WITH THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA MINOR. 83
Our illustration represents the fertile plain below, rich in various productions, full of
gardens and shrubs, where the song of the nightingale seldom ceases, and is reported to
be particulady sweet and plaintive. High above are the ridges of the great chain of
Albanian mountains, which the ancients called Acroceraunian, because their summits were
always splintered with thunderbolts ; of these sublime hills, five distinct and mighty pinnacles can be traced from hence to the Adriatic. Reposing on the inclined plane of the
mountain-side, is the city with its fortress, surrounded with lofty forests of plane-trees,
and in front is one of those ancient arches, which indicate the early but unrecorded
founder of the city.
THE SULTANA IN HER STATE ARRHUBA.
This carriage, peculiarly Turkish, we have already described among the conveyances
that thronged the social meetings at the Sweet Waters of Asia. It is here presented as
the principal and most conspicuous object of our illustration. The ponderous body of
the machine, placed on wheels without springs; the heavy but gilded and gaudy carved-
work which covers it; the long-horned oxen which drag it; the singular arches dangling
with tassels, to which their tails are generally tied; the dense mass of hair drawn down
before, and carefully dyed, like the ladies' nails, with henna; and the amulets pending
over their noses, to guard them from the effects of an evil eye—are here accurately
represented. Beside the draught-beasts walks the Greek arrhubagee, leading the docile
animals by the horns; and next the carriage is one of the black eunuchs, with his drawn
sabre, threatening with instant death the passenger, whose profane eye shall dare to
glance at his sacred charge within. It was formerly the indispensable usage, that every
arrhuba should be closely covered with silken curtains, so that the inmates were
never seen, except when the wind, or the jolting on an uneven road, moved the curtains
aside, and revealed for a moment the mysteries of the interior; but recent approximation
to European usages has removed this veil, and even open carriages on springs have been
seen in the Turkish capital, filled with the secluded females of the harem.
Our illustration represents the Asma Sultana driving from her palace at Eyoub,
through the Valley of the Sweet Waters. Crowds of females line one side of the road ;
and, with the jealous sense of Turkish propriety, the males, separated from them, line the
other. A train of arrhubas follow in the rear, with various ladies of the seraglio.
THE TOMB OF ALI PASHA AND FATIMA,
JOANNINA, ALBANIA.
The wild mountains of Albania had long slumbered in obscurity, and, though in the
immediate vicinity of civilized Europe, and in sight of the coast of Italy, had never been
visited by the curious traveller, till AH Pasha, like some lurid meteor, blazed out in this |
