But the goal is gained, and the caïque has discharged its gloomy freight. All around is life, and light, and loveliness. The surface of the channel is crowded with boats, filled with busy human beings, hurrying onward in pursuit of pleasure or of gain; a thousand sounds are on the wind. The swift caïques dart like water-fowl past the Maiden’s Tower, and few within them waste a thought upon the anguish which it conceals!
A few paces from the spot whence you look down upon this various scene—a few paces, and from the refuge of the dying you gaze upon the resting-place of the dead. Where the acacia-trees blossom in their beauty, and shed their withered flowers upon a plain of graves on the right hand, immediately in a line with the European cemetery, is the burial-ground of the Armenians. It is a thickly-peopled spot; and as you wander beneath the leafy boughs of the scented acacias, and thread your way among the tombs, you are struck by the peculiarity of their inscriptions. The noble Armenian character is graven deeply into the stone; name and date are duly set forth; but that which renders an Armenian slab (for there is not a head-stone throughout the cemetery) peculiar and distinctive, is the singular custom that has obtained among this people of chisselling upon the tomb the emblem of the trade or profession of the deceased.
Thus the priest is distinguished even beyond the grave by the mitre that surmounts his name—the diamond merchant by a group of ornaments—the money-changer by a pair of scales—the florist by a knot of flowers—besides many more ignoble hieroglyphics, such as the razor of the barber, the shears of the tailor, and others of this class; and, where the calling is one that may have been followed by either sex, a book, placed immediately above the appropriate emblem, distinguishes the grave of the man.
Nor is this all: the victims of a violent death have also their distinctive mark—and more than one tomb in this extraordinary burial-place presents you with the headless trunk of an individual, from whose severed throat the gushing blood is spirting upwards like a fountain, while the head itself is pillowed on the clasped hands! Many of the more ancient among the tombs are very richly and elaborately wrought, but nearly all the modern ones are perfectly simple; and you seldom pass the spot without seeing groups of people seated upon the graves beneath the shadow of the trees, talking, and even smoking. Death has no gloom for the natives of the East.
The Turkish cemetery stretches along the slope of the hill behind the barrack, and descends far into the valley. Its thickly-planted cypresses form a dense shade, beneath which the tall head-stones gleam out white and ghastly. The grove is intersected by footpaths, and here and there a green glade lets in the sunshine, to glitter upon many a gilded tomb. Plunge into the thick darkness of the more covered spots, and for a moment you will almost think that you stand amid the ruins of some devastated city. You are surrounded by what appear for an instant to be the myriad fragments of some mighty whole—but the gloom has deceived you—you are in the midst of a Nekropolis—a City of the Dead. Those chisselled blocks of stone that lie prostrate at your feet, or lean heavily on one side as if about to fall, and which at the first glance have seemed to you to be the shivered portions of some mighty column—those turban-crowned shafts which rise on all sides—those gilt and lettered slabs erected beside them—are memorials of the departed—the first are of ancient date; the earth has become loosened at their base, and they have lost their hold—the others tell their own tale; the bearded Moslem sleeps beside his wife—the turban surmounting his head-stone, and the rose-branch carved on her’s, define their sex, while the record of their years and virtues is engraven beneath. Would you know more? Note the form and folds of the turban, and you will learn the rank and profession of the deceased—here lies the man of law—and there rests the Pasha—the soldier slumbers yonder, and close beside you repose the ashes of the priest—here and there, scattered over the burial-ground, you may distinguish several head-stones from which the turbans have been recently struck off—so recently that the severed stone is not yet weather-stained; they mark the graves of the Janissaries, desecrated by order of the Sultan after the distinction of their body; who himself stood by while a portion of the work was going forward; and the mutilated turbans that are half buried in the long grass beside these graves are imperishable witnesses to their disgrace—a disgrace which was extended even beyond the grave, and whose depth of ignominy can only be understood in a country where the dead are objects of peculiar veneration.
Those raised terraces enclosed within a railing are family burial-places; and the miniature column crowned with a fèz, painted in bright scarlet, records the rest of some infant Effendi. At the base of many of the shafts are stones hollowed out to contain water, which are carefully filled, during the warm season, by pious individuals, for the supply of the birds, or any wandering animals.
The Turks have a strange superstition attached to this cemetery. They believe that on particular anniversaries sparks of fire exude from many of the graves, and lose themselves among the boughs of the cypresses. The idea is at least highly poetical.
But Constantinople boasts no burial-place of equal beauty with that of Scutari, and probably the world cannot produce such another, either as regards extent or pictorial effect. A forest of the finest cypresses extending over an immense space, clothing hill and valley, and overshadowing, like a huge pall, thousands of dead, is seen far off at sea, and presents an object at once striking and magnificent. Most of the trees are of gigantic height, and their slender and spiral outline cutting sharply against the clear sky is graceful beyond expression. The Turks themselves prefer the great cemetery of Scutari to all others; for, according to an ancient prophecy in which they have the most implicit faith, the followers of Mahomet are, ere the termination of the world, to be expelled from Europe; and, as they are jealous of committing even their ashes to the keeping of the Giaour, they covet, above all things, a grave in this Asiatic wilderness of tombs. Thus, year after year, the cypress forest extends its boundaries, and spreads further and wider its dense shadows; generation after generation sleeps in the same thickly-peopled solitude; and the laughing vineyard and the grassy glade disappear beneath the encroachments of the ever-yawning sepulchre—the living yield up their space to the dead—the blossoming fruit trees are swept away, and the funereal and feathering boughs of the dark grave-tree tower in their stead.
It is not without a sensation of the most solemn awe that you turn aside from the open plain, and abandon the cheerful sunshine, to plunge into the deep gloom of the silent forest; scores of narrow pathways intersect it in all directions; and, should you fail to follow them in your wanderings, your every step must be upon a grave. Here a group of lofty and turban-crowned columns, each with a small square slab of stone at its base, arrests you with a thrill of sickening interest, for that silent and pigmy slab tells you a tale of terror—each covers the severed head of a victim to state policy, or state intrigue—Vizirs and Pashas, Beys and Effendis—the eye that blighted, and the brow that burned, are mouldering, or have mouldered there—the fever of ambition, the thirst of power, the wiliness of treason, and the pride of place—all that frets and fevers the mind of man, is there laid to rest for ever—and the stately turban towers, as if in mockery, above the trunkless head which festers in its dishonoured grave!
Those gilded tombs enclosed within their circling barrier are inscribed with the names and titles of some powerful or wealthy race that has carried its pride beyond the grave, and not suffered even its dust to mingle with that of more common men—the prostrate and perished columns on one hand have yielded reluctantly to time, and now cumber the earth in recordless ruin; while the stately head-stones on the other, yet bright with gilding, and elaborate with ornament, point out to you the resting-places of the newly dead—the pomp of yesterday speaks far less sadly to the heart than the hoar and letterless remains of by-past centuries.
Suddenly a bright light flashes through the gloom; the warm sunshine falls in a flood of radiance, the more startling from the darkness that surrounds it, upon a limited and treeless space, on which time or the tempest have done their work;