Just before I reached Constantinople there was a camelopard (giraffe) in the menagerie; but at the time of my visit it was dead and buried. However, I had its bones dug up for the purpose of examining them. The creature is much taller in front than behind, and on that account unfit for carrying burdens or being ridden. It is called a camelopard because its head and neck are like a camel’s, while its skin is spotted like a pard (panther).
If I had not visited the Black Sea, when I had an opportunity of sailing thither, I should have deserved to be blamed for my laziness, since the ancients held it to be quite as great an exploit to have visited the Black Sea, as to have sailed to Corinth. Well, we had a delightful voyage, and I was allowed to enter some of the royal kiosks. On the folding doors of one of these palaces I saw a picture of the famous battle[121] between Selim and Ismael, King of the Persians, executed in masterly style, in tesselated work. I saw also a great many pleasure-grounds belonging to the Sultan, situated in the most charming valleys. Their loveliness was almost entirely the work of nature; to art they owed little or nothing. What a fairyland! What a landscape for waking a poet’s fancy! What a retreat for a scholar to retire to! I do declare that, as I said just now, these spots seem to grieve and ask for Christian help and Christian care once more; and still truer are these words of Constantinople, or rather of the whole of Greece. That land was once most prosperous; today it is subject to an unnatural bondage. It seems as if the country, which in ancient times discovered the fine arts and every liberal science, were demanding back that civilisation which it gave to us, and were adjuring us, by the claim of a common faith, to be its champion against savage barbarism. But it is all in vain. The princes of Christendom have other objects in view; and, after all, the Greeks are not under heavier bondage to the Turks, than we are to our own vices—luxury, intemperance, sloth, lust, pride, ambition, avarice, hatred, envy, malice. By these our souls are so weighed down and buried, that they cannot look up to heaven, or entertain one glorious thought, or contemplate one noble deed. The ties of a common faith, and the duty we owe our brethren ought to have drawn us to their assistance, even though glory and honour had no charm for our dull hearts; at any rate, self-interest, which is the first thing men think of nowadays, should have made us anxious to rescue lands so fair, with all their great resources and advantages, from the hand of the barbarian, that we might hold them in his stead. At present we are seeking across the wide seas the Indies[122] and Antipodes. And why? It is because in those lands there are simple, guileless creatures from whom rich booty may be torn without the cost of a single wound. _For these expeditions religion supplies the pretext and gold the motive._