There are several hotels on the Bosphorus, which are occupied during the summer, and all of the great nations, except the United States, have handsome residences for their embassies in a water suburb known as Therapia. The Russian embassy is the last and looks directly up the narrow throat which leads from the Bosphorus into the Black Sea. Both sides of this passage are guarded by heavyearthworks against a Russian invasion. Turkey fears no other nation and Russia cannot reach her southern coast by sea without going through Turkish waters. This situation has exasperated every Russian since Peter the Great, who is supposed to have left a will in which he admonished his successors never to rest until they have added the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn to the Russian Empire.
Robert College, an American institution which has turned out some of the best men in the East, and an old Byzantine castle which dates back many centuries, are the most conspicuous objects on the European side, and near them is a sightly location where Dr. Mary Patrick has erected new buildings for the American College for Girls, with funds contributed by friends in the United States. Her former buildings in Scutari were not half big enough, since the constitution was adopted, to accommodate the young Turkish women who want an education.
The first town of importance, sailing eastward from Constantinople along the southern coast of the Black Sea, is the ancient City of Samsoun, founded by the Greeks more than two thousand five hundred years ago, and always of consequence commercially. It has a splendid location, sloping gradually upward from the sea, but like many people, as well as towns, does not fulfil the expectations excited by its appearance from a distance. There is a big hospital for soldiers upon a slight eminence back of the town; several minarets show where the mosques are; the five domes of a Greek church glisten in the sun; several imposing business blocks and residences line up well along the seashore and give a brave appearance to the place: but when you land, you are disappointed to find the streets narrow and dirty, with a mixture of smells arising from unknown sources, wretched pavements, and mangy dogs lying around in the sun scratching themselves in a way that is more suggestive than comfortable. Scratching is sometimes contagious.
But the narrow streets are interesting, and the market place, with a circular fountain and an ancient mosque, offers one of the quaintest and most picturesque Oriental scenes you could imagine. In the foreground a butter dealer in an indescribable costume of more colours than Joseph could possibly have had in his coat, was ladling greasy-looking stuff from a great tub with a wooden spoon and, on his scales, he used stones for weights. The vegetables and oranges were fine. Onions and garlic could be felt in the air, both in the raw material and in the finished form of odours. Turks are largely vegetarians. Vegetables, fruits, and soups made of grain are the chief articles of their diet. We were told that Samsoun is a great place for apples, so much so that the bears come down in droves from the mountains back of the town when the fruit is ripe and rob the orchards. We tried some of the apples which the peasants sell by weight in the market place, and found them dry and tasteless, but I don't think they were to blame. No apples are good in May.
There is a cafe every few yards on every street, where it seemed as if the entire male population were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. We saw a few nargiles — those long-tubed water pipes which are generally associated with cross-legged Turks — in Constantinople, but did not find one anywhere else. I suppose they are out of style, for all the Turks that we met were smoking cigarettes instead.
Quantities of licorice root are shipped from Samsoun. It grows wild in the mountains. The quality, as well as the value, might be improved by cultivation, but such a thing has never been attempted on a large scale. The sheep upon the mountain sides furnish cargoes of wool, and the cattle we saw grazing in large herds add many hides, but tobacco is the chief article of export from Samsoun, and a boy who voluntarily attached himself to our party and followed us along, chattering as he went, told us that a large establishment surrounded by a high wall belonged to Americans.