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Updated: June 16, 2025
And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near the overhanging latticed balcony of the façade, before me to the north lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead! waking me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness.
And all that land is misty and fragrant with the perfume of the softest Latakia, and the gardens are musical with the bubbling of countless narghiles; and I must say that to the Christian soul which enters that paradise the whole place has, certainly, a rather curious air, as of a highly transcendental Cremorne.
There, on a table, surrounded at some distance by a large and luxurious divan, every species of tobacco known, from the yellow tobacco of Petersburg to the black of Sinai, and so on along the scale from Maryland and Porto-Rico, to Latakia, was exposed in pots of crackled earthenware of which the Dutch are so fond; beside them, in boxes of fragrant wood, were ranged, according to their size and quality, pueros, regalias, havanas, and manillas; and, in an open cabinet, a collection of German pipes, of chibouques, with their amber mouth-pieces ornamented with coral, and of narghiles, with their long tubes of morocco, awaiting the caprice or the sympathy of the smokers.
Notwithstanding the azure skies, bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant narghiles, I begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient friends, Scribe, Bayard, and Melesville.
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