The Bay of Smyrna is far famed as a fine one. The _imbat_, or sea-breeze, usually blows every day and all day long, so that, however close one may lie to the town, the odors from its filthy, narrow streets are all blown the other way--sufficiently rich, one would think, to fertilize any soil over which they may be wafted. I suppose there is no better instance of the whited sepulchre than Smyrna. The view of the city and its environs from an anchorage in the bay, with the sun shining upon its blue waters dancing and crisping under the brisk imbat; the Greek spires and the minarets of the mosques relieved by the cypresses of the graveyards; the amphitheatrical situation of the whole place, crowned by Mount Pagus with its picturesque ruined castle, and the fine mountain-scenery in the background,--must impress every visitor. And yet nowhere has the plague so often reaped its harvest, owing to neglect of everything which goes to make life clean and decent.
We had been many days in Smyrna, and had eaten many bunches of grapes, each as fine as any the spies brought from Eshkol. We had seen the famous _rahat-li-coom_ boiling in the caldrons, and then flavored and beaten and drawn, and then had eaten it. We had smoked many okes of Latakia. We had spent pleasant evenings among the foreign residents at Bournabat, where the dress-coat and claret-jug and piano represent Western civilization to the merchants and consuls tired after a long day in the hot, reeking, noisy town. We had learned to find our way through the bazaar without a guide, and had bought shawls and rugs in the Persian khan, driving close bargains, as we thought, after hours of patient sitting and much smoking and coffee-drinking, and being cheated frightfully, as we found out afterward on comparing notes with resident ladies. We had ridden up, on donkeys, to the huge ruined castle dominating the city, said, popularly, to have been built by the English Richard, and certainly dating from the thirteenth century, and we had come down from there in a high state of heat, dust and disgust. We had been to see figs packed for the market in a place and after a manner which made us think of the motto of the Garter. We had gone to see the Whirling Dervishes, and had witnessed the drill of the Turkish nizam at the grand new barracks. We had visited the English military cemetery formed in Crimean days, and had experienced a strange home-feeling as we read the familiar names on the headstones. We had had sailing-parties on the bay for consuls and consulesses, landing at Sanjak Kalessi to take luncheon and to see the huge old-fashioned guns in the fort, with their stone balls (of granite or marble, two feet in diameter), once thought so formidable. We had been the round of the Greek cafés which flourish in such numbers in Smyrna, where polyglot concerts and the worst features of the _café chantant_ seem never to tire their patrons. We had seen a Persian caravan start--a sight well worth rising early for, if only to see their outlandish drivers lash the loads upon the camels, which groan and bellow and scold during the operation, retracting their hare-lips, showing their long yellow teeth, and projecting from their mouths the very hideous and peculiar bag of flesh and blue color; in which condition they attain a point of repulsiveness possessed by no other animal I know of.
