The town isn’t mentioned in Murray’s handbook for Turkey of 1854, and though if the Turks in general get a somewhat better reference for their would-be employers, it isn’t by much. On reaching Constantinople: ‘Those that mean to confine their excursions to Stamboul and its vicinity want no weapons, but those that mean to go inland had better provide themselves with some portable efficacious arms, such as the smaller size of Colt’s revolvers.’
The traveller is told, with regard to the climate, that the ‘thin, pure and exciting air, is salubrious, but also very dangerous, and persons of a full habit, or those that are intemperate, are liable to acute diseases of an alarming character. Catching cold very frequently leads to bronchitis and pneumonia; intemperance produces dysentery.’
Access to the city seemed easier in those days to what it was to become later. ‘On arriving in the Bosphorus the kaiks are by far the safest boats, if one gets into them and out of them with proper care; and the Maltese, anywhere but in Malta, are among the greatest scoundrels in the Levant. The stranger, if conscious of having no goods liable to duty (and it would be strange if he had), should refuse to be taken to the Custom-house, where he would be detained to no purpose.’
If he does go through the Customs, however, he must, when finished, engage a hamal (porter) to carry his luggage. ‘The stranger should name the hotel he wishes to go to, and the hamal will conduct him. If more than one hamal seizes the luggage, they should be left to fight it out among themselves.’
Murray states that, as a general rule, ‘before the hamals are sent away it is necessary to have a preliminary settling with the landlord. The hotels, or rather the boarding-houses which are called hotels, are full to overflowing, and for one guest who leaves the house, deterred by the prices, the landlord may have two or three next day. In any case the stranger should refuse to settle the price with the landlady if the husband be absent. He should rather wait for the return of the master of the house, for, greedy and grasping as the Greeks are (most of the hotel-keepers are either Greeks or Maltese), the women are by far more greedy and grasping, and decide their bargains with an unblushing hardness which utterly confounds the wanderer.’
After more sermonizing on the incompetence and rapacity of the people, Murray goes on to say: ‘Though in the first instance it is necessary to go to an hotel, a prudent stranger will not remain here, but look out for some furnished lodgings.’ The only way to find them is to walk the streets, though the houses which display notices that rooms are to let are always full. However, should he at last find one he may be unlucky enough to be given dinner, which he will eat alone, ‘in the worst room of the house, served on a dirty tablecloth, by a grumbling servant, while the children of the house come in and look at the barbarian taking his meal’.
Having settled the price of all this: ‘The next proposition, which the stranger should resolutely decline, is to take the rooms by the month. Some trifling difference in the price is held out as a bait, but it should not be swallowed. If taken for a month the landlord will also insist on prepayment, and every complaint of rudeness, filth, and neglect, is after that met with the cool rejoinder, “You are perfectly at liberty to go if you don’t like the house.”’
If the traveller is lucky enough to get a room he should move in immediately, ‘for the landlords do not scruple to let the same room twice in a day, and he who comes first occupies it, while the man who comes too late is in a very awkward position, especially if he had given up his room in the hotel. A slow or careless person may most unexpectedly find himself on the pavement, with his traps loaded on the shoulders of two hamals, whose language he does not understand, but whose impatient gestures ask, as plain as words can tell, “Where in the name of all that is absurd, are we to go?”’
As for getting information from the landlord or waiters of a hotel, ‘they know nothing, and, generally speaking, are not even able to tell the traveller in which direction to go to the British legation’.
For those wanting to venture beyond Constantinople the guidebook says that travelling on horseback at the rate of twenty-five miles a day ‘involves hardships, exposure, and fatigue’. Even so, you are ‘in immediate contact with nature. A burning sun may sometimes exhaust, or a summer-storm may drench you, but what can be more exhilarating than the sight of the lengthened troop of variegated and gay costumes dashing at full speed along to the crack of the Tartar whip?’
If our traveller be rich, intrepid, valiant and not disposed to consider his personal comfort — indeed he may be delighted to disregard it — he could take the road to Baghdad, perhaps as an army officer retracing his leisurely steps to his regiment in India.
A steamship from Constantinople to Trebizond on the Black Sea would put him on the old Tartar road to Mosul, in modern-day Iraq. Not only that, but if he knew his classics he might choose to follow, though in reverse, the celebrated March of the Ten Thousand — Greek mercenaries commanded by Xenophon on their retreat from Persia where they had served under Cyrus in 401–399 BCE.
The guidebook tells us that, after Mosuclass="underline" ‘There is no danger whatever on the journey when the Beduin tribes are quiet; but if the traveller learns on inquiry that they are at war, either with each other or with the Sultan’s authorities, he should consult the Turkish officers and modify his plans accordingly.’
When the traveller is deep into Mesopotamia we are treated by Murray in the handbook of 1854 to a passage which deserves to be quoted in full, for there could surely have been no more amazing piece of advice.
If of an adventurous disposition, and not averse to run a certain degree of risk, the tourist might extend his sphere of observation by paying a visit to the great Bedouin tribe of Shammar. The first step is to get the consul at Moussul to send for some small sheikh of the tribe, who would not venture within a Turkish pasha’s grasp to meet a long account of plundered caravans unless he had the protection of a consulate. But with that assurance he arrives with 2 or 3 attendants on broken-down old mares or trotting dromedaries. He is remarkable for a scanty and unclean wardrobe, brilliant eyes and teeth, and a very dignified and gentlemanly deportment. A present must be made to him — a fur cloak for winter or a brace of Turkish pistols — to secure his good-will, conciliating him further by hints of additional largesse in the event of a safe return, and the traveller may then set out on his novel expedition.
The desert once gained, there will be abundant sources of gratification for the lover of nature. As he rides over the boundless waste of short grass, unbroken by the smallest attempt at cultivation, he will also observe the sharp look-out kept by the Bedouin escort. All around the horizon is a vast solitude, and the little party creeps across it like lonely pilgrims through a deserted world.
Suddenly is heard the word ‘horsemen’, uttered by some one perched on the back of a cameclass="underline" at once all is excitement; the sheikh scans the horizon, and announces strangers, though none are visible to less practised eyes. The escort is on the alert; the sheikh receives his spear from the hands of his henchmen; the camels are left in the charge of a boy; led horses are mounted; the priming of pistols and guns is looked to, and the whole party is ready to fight or retreat according as the enemy may be in strength or not. The sheikh gallops up a small height to reconnoitre; comes back at full speed; shouts ‘enemies’, and in a greater force than their own.