The Life of Lord Byron Part 11

The port was full of small craft, which in their voyage to the Archipelago had put in to wait for a change of wind, and a crowd of Turks belonging to these vessels were lounging about on the sh.o.r.e.

The town was then in ruins, having been burned to the ground by a Russian squadron in the year 1807.

Next morning, Byron, with a party of officers, left the s.h.i.+p to visit the ruins of Alexandria Troas, and landed at an open port, about six or seven miles to the south of where the Salsette was at anchor. The spot near to where they disembarked was marked by several large cannon-b.a.l.l.s of granite; for the ruins of Alexandria have long supplied the fortresses of the Dardanelles with these gigantic missiles.

They rambled some time through the s.h.a.ggy woods, with which the country is covered, and the first vestiges of antiquity which attracted their attention were two large granite sarcophagi; a little beyond they found two or three fragments of granite pillars, one of them about twenty-five feet in length, and at least five in diameter.

Near these they saw arches of brick-work, and on the east of them those magnificent remains, to which early travellers have given the name of the palace of Priam, but which are, in fact, the ruins of ancient baths. An earthquake in the course of the preceding winter had thrown down large portions of them, and the internal divisions of the edifice were, in consequence, choked with huge ma.s.ses of mural wrecks and marbles.

The visitors entered the interior through a gap, and found themselves in the midst of enormous ruins, enclosed on two sides by walls, raised on arches, and by piles of ponderous fragments. The fallen blocks were of vast dimensions, and showed that no cement had been used in the construction--an evidence of their great antiquity. In the midst of this crushed magnificence stood several lofty portals and arches, pedestals of gigantic columns and broken steps and marble cornices, heaped in desolate confusion.

From these baths the distance to the sea is between two and three miles--a gentle declivity covered with low woods, and partially interspersed with spots of cultivated ground. On this slope the ancient city of Alexandria Troas was built. On the north-west, part of the walls, to the extent of a mile, may yet be traced; the remains of a theatre are also still to be seen on the side of the hill fronting the sea, commanding a view of Tenedos, Lemnos, and the whole expanse of the AEgean.

Having been conducted by the guide, whom they had brought with them from Tenedos, to the princ.i.p.al antiquities of Alexandria Troas, the visitors returned to the frigate, which immediately after got under way. On the 14th of April she came to anchor about a mile and a half from Cape Janissary, the Sygean promontory, where she remained about a fortnight; during which ample opportunity was afforded to inspect the plain of Troy, that scene of heroism, which, for three thousand years, has attracted the attention and interested the feelings and fancy of the civilized world.

Whether Lord Byron entertained any doubt of Homer's Troy ever having existed, is not very clear. It is probable, from the little he says on the subject, that he took no interest in the question. For although no traveller could enter with more sensibility into the local a.s.sociations of celebrated places, he yet never seemed to care much about the visible features of antiquity, and was always more inclined to indulge in reflections than to puzzle his learning with dates or dimensions. His ruminations on the Troad, in Don Juan, afford an instance of this, and are conceived in the very spirit of Childe Harold.

And so great names are nothing more than nominal, And love of glory's but an airy l.u.s.t, Too often in its fury overcoming all Who would, as 'twere, identify their dust From out the wide destruction which, entombing all, Leaves nothing till the coming of the just, Save change. I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, And heard Troy doubted--time will doubt of Rome.

The very generations of the dead Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb, Until the memory of an age is fled, And buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom.

Where are the epitaphs our fathers read, Save a few glean'd from the sepulchral gloom, Which once named myriads, nameless, lie beneath, And lose their own in universal death?

No task of curiosity can indeed be less satisfactory that the examination of the sites of ancient cities; for the guides, not content with leading the traveller to the spot, often attempt to mislead his imagination, by directing his attention to circ.u.mstances which they suppose to be evidence that verifies their traditions.

Thus, on the Trojan plain, several objects are still shown which are described as the self-same mentioned in the Iliad. The wild fig- trees, and the tomb of Ilus, are yet there--if the guides may be credited. But they were seen with incredulous eyes by the poet; even the tomb of Achilles appears to have been regarded by him with equal scepticism; still his description of the scene around is striking, and tinted with some of his happiest touches.

There on the green and village-cotted hill is Flanked by the h.e.l.lespont, and by the sea, Entomb'd the bravest of the brave, Achilles-- They say so. Bryant says the contrary.

And farther downward tall and towering still is The tumulus, of whom Heaven knows it may be, Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus,-- All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us.

High barrows without marble or a name, A vast untill'd and mountain-skirted plain, And Ida in the distance still the same, And old Scamander, if 'tis he, remain; The situation seems still form'd for fame, A hundred thousand men might fight again With ease. But where I sought for Ilion's walls The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.

Troops of untended horses; here and there Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth, Some shepherds unlike Paris, led to stare A moment at the European youth, Whom to the spot their schoolboy feelings bear; A Turk with beads in hand and pipe in mouth, Extremely taken with his own religion, Are what I found there, but the devil a Phrygian.

It was during the time that the Salsette lay off Cape Janissary that Lord Byron first undertook to swim across the h.e.l.lespont. Having crossed from the castle of Chanak-Kalessi, in a boat manned by four Turks, he landed at five o'clock in the evening half a mile above the castle of Chelit-Bauri, where, with an officer of the frigate who accompanied him, they began their enterprise, emulous of the renown of Leander. At first they swam obliquely upwards, rather towards Nagara Point than the Dardanelles, but notwithstanding their skill and efforts they made little progress. Finding it useless to struggle with {156} the current, they then turned and went with the stream, still however endeavouring to cross. It was not until they had been half an hour in the water, and found themselves in the middle of the strait, about a mile and a half below the castles, that they consented to be taken into the boat, which had followed them.

By that time the coldness of the water had so benumbed their limbs that they were unable to stand, and were otherwise much exhausted.

The second attempt was made on the 3rd of May, when the weather was warmer. They entered the water at the distance of a mile and a-half above Chelit-Bauri, near a point of land on the western bank of the Bay of Maito, and swam against the stream as before, but not for so long a time. In less than half an hour they came floating down the current close to the s.h.i.+p, which was then anch.o.r.ed at the Dardanelles, and in pa.s.sing her steered for the bay behind the castle, which they soon succeeded in reaching, and landed about a mile and a-half below the s.h.i.+p. Lord Byron has recorded that he found the current very strong and the water cold; that some large fish pa.s.sed him in the middle of the channel, and though a little chilled he was not fatigued, and performed the feat without much difficulty, but not with impunity, for by the verses in which he commemorated the exploit it appears he incurred the ague.

WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS

If in the month of dark December Leander who was nightly wont (What maid will not the tale remember) To cross thy stream, broad h.e.l.lespont,

If when the wintry tempest roar'd He sped to Hero nothing loath, And thus of old thy current pour'd, Fair Venus! how I pity both.

For me, degenerate modern wretch, Though in the genial month of May, My dripping limbs I faintly stretch, And think I've done a feat to-day.

But since he crossed the rapid tide, According to the doubtful story, To woo, and--Lord knows what beside, And swam for love as I for glory,

'Twere hard to say who fared the best; Sad mortals thus the G.o.ds still plague you; He lost his labour, I my jest-- For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

"The whole distance," says his Lords.h.i.+p, "from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles, though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circ.u.mstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other (Byron) in an hour and ten minutes. The water was extremely cold from the melting of the mountain snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chilliness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anch.o.r.ed below the castles, when we swam the straits as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic fort. Chevallier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions it having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul (at the Dardanelles), Tarragona, remembered neither of these circ.u.mstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance and the only thing that surprised me was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability."

While the Salsette lay off the Dardanelles, Lord Byron saw the body of a man who had been executed by being cast into the sea, floating on the stream, moving to and fro with the tumbling of the water, which gave to his arms the effect of scaring away several sea-fowl that were hovering to devour. This incident he has strikingly depicted in The Bride of Abydos.

The sea-birds shriek above the prey O'er which their hungry beaks delay, As shaken on his restless pillow, His head heaves with the heaving billow; That hand whose motion is not life, Yet feebly seems to menace strife, Flung by the tossing tide on high, Then levell'd with the wave-- What reeks it tho' that corse shall lie Within a living grave.

The bird that tears that prostrate form Hath only robb'd the meaner worm.

The only heart, the only eye, That bled or wept to see him die, Had seen those scatter'd limbs composed, And mourned above his turban stone; That heart hath burst--that eye was closed-- Yea--closed before his own.

Between the Dardanelles and Constantinople no other adventure was undertaken or befel the poet. On the 13th of May, the frigate came to anchor at sunset, near the headland to the west of the Seraglio Point; and when the night closed in, the silence and the darkness were so complete "that we might have believed ourselves," says Mr Hobhouse, "moored in the lonely cove of some desert island, and not at the foot of a city which, from its vast extent and countless population, is fondly imagined by its present masters to be worthy to be called 'The Refuge of the World.'"

CHAPTER XXIII

Constantinople--Description--The Dogs and the Dead--Landed at Tophana--The Masterless Dogs--The Slave Market--The Seraglio--The Defects in the Description

The spot where the frigate came to anchor affords but an imperfect view of the Ottoman capital. A few tall white minarets, and the domes of the great mosques only are in sight, interspersed with trees and mean ma.s.ses of domestic buildings. In the distance, inland on the left, the redoubted Castle of the Seven Towers is seen rising above the gloomy walls; and, unlike every other European city, a profound silence prevails over all. This remarkable characteristic of Constantinople is owing to the very few wheel-carriages employed in the city. In other respects the view around is lively, and in fine weather quickened with innumerable objects in motion. In the calmest days the rippling in the flow of the Bosphorus is like the running of a river. In the fifth canto of Don Juan, Lord Byron has seized the princ.i.p.al features, and delineated them with sparkling effect.

The European with the Asian sh.o.r.e, Sprinkled with palaces, the ocean stream Here and there studded with a seventy-four, Sophia's cupola with golden gleam; The cypress groves; Olympus high and h.o.a.r; The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream, Far less describe, present the very view Which charm'd the charming Mary Montague.

In the morning, when his Lords.h.i.+p left the s.h.i.+p, the wind blew strongly from the north-east, and the rus.h.i.+ng current of the Bosphorus dashed with great violence against the rocky projections of the sh.o.r.e, as the captain's boat was rowed against the stream.

The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades.

'Tis a grand sight, from off the giant's grave, To watch the progress of those rolling seas Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease.

"The sensations produced by the state of the weather, and leaving a comfortable cabin, were," says Mr Hobhouse, "in unison with the impressions which we felt, when, pa.s.sing under the palace of the sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypresses, which rise above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." The description in The Siege of Corinth of the dogs devouring the dead, owes its origin to this incident of the dogs and the body under the walls of the seraglio.

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall, Hold o'er the dead their carnival.

Gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb, They were too busy to bark at him.

From a Tartar's scull they had stripp'd the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh, And their white tusks crunched on the whiter scull, As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull.

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed.

So well had they broken a lingering fast, With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

And Alp knew by the turbans that rolled on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band.

Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven and bare.

The scalps were in the wild dogs' maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw.

But close by the sh.o.r.e on the edge of the gulf, There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills but kept away, Scared by the dogs from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Pick'd by the birds on the sands of the bay.