On the 15th of May, 1838, we bade adieu to Constantinople, and standing on the deck of the Odessa steamer, as it entered the Bosphorus, we could not withdraw our eyes from the magnificent panorama we were leaving behind us.
Constantinople then appeared to us in all its grandeur and beauty. Seated like Rome on its seven hills, exercising its sovereignty like Corinth over two seas, the vast city presented to our eyes a superb amphitheatre of palaces, mosques, white minarets and green plane-trees glistening in an Asiatic sunshine. What description could adequately depict this marvellous spectacle, or even give an idea of it? Would it not be wronging creation, as Lamartine has said, to compare Constantinople with any thing else in this world?
Meanwhile, we were advancing up the Bosphorus, and the two shores, fringed all along to the Black Sea with cypress groves, and half hidden beneath their sombre shade, invited a share of that attentive gaze we had hitherto bestowed only on the great city that was vanishing in our wake. The Bosphorus itself presented a very animated scene. A thousand white-sailed caiques glided lightly over the waves, coming and going incessantly from shore to shore. As we advanced, the Bosphorus widened more and more, and we soon entered that Black Sea, whose ominous name so well accords with the storms that perpetually convulse it. A multitude of vessels of all kinds and dimensions, were anchored at the entrance of the channel, waiting for a favourable wind to take them out of the straits, which alone present more dangers than the whole navigation of the Black Sea. The difficulties of this passage are further augmented in the beginning of spring and the end of autumn by dense fogs, which have caused an incalculable number of vessels to be wrecked on the steep rocks of these iron-bound coasts.
The passage from Constantinople to Odessa is effected in fifty hours in the Russian steamers, which ply twice a month from each of these ports. Those who are accustomed to the comfort, elegance, and scrupulous cleanliness of the Mediterranean and Atlantic steamers, must be horrified at finding themselves on board a Russian vessel. It is impossible to express the filth and disorder of that in which we were embarked. The deck, which was already heaped from end to end with goods and provisions, was crowded besides with a disgusting mob of pilgrims, mendicant monks, Jews, and Russian or Cossack women, all squatting and lying about at their ease without regard to the convenience of the other passengers. Most of them were returning from Jerusalem. The Russian people are possessed in the highest degree with the mania for pilgrimages. All these beggars set off barefooted, with their wallets on their backs, and their rosaries in their hands, to seek Heaven's pardon for their sins; appealing on their way to the charity of men, to enable them to continue that vagabond and miserable life which they prefer to the fulfilment of homely duties.
It was a sorry specimen of the people we were going to visit that we had thus before our eyes, and our repugnance to these Muscovites was all the stronger from our recollections of the Turks, whose noble presence and beauty had so lately engaged our admiration.
On the morning of the second day, we saw on our left a little island called by the sailors the Island of Serpents. The Russians have retained its Greek name of Fidonisi. It was anciently called Leucaia, or Makaron Nesos (Island of the Blest), was sacred to Achilles, and contained a temple, in which mariners used to deposit offerings. It is a calcareous rock, about thirty yards high and not more than 600 in its greatest diameter, and has long been uninhabited. Some ruins still visible upon it would probably be worth exploring, if we may judge from an inscription already discovered.
Soon afterwards we were made aware of our approach to Odessa, our place of destination, by the appearance of the Russian coast with its cliffs striated horizontally in red and white. Nothing can be more dreary than these low, deserted, and monotonous coasts, stretching away as far as the eye can reach, until they are lost in the hazy horizon. There is no vegetation, no variety in the scene, no trace of human habitation; but everywhere a calcareous and argillaceous wall thirty or forty yards high, with an arid sandy beach at its foot, continually swept bare by the waves. But as we approached nearer to Odessa, the shore assumed a more varied appearance. Huge masses of limestone and earth, separated ages ago from the line of the cliffs, form a range of hills all along the sea border, planted with trees and studded with charming country-houses.