24 AUGUST 1844, Page 16

EoTHEN, OR TRACES OF TRAVEL.

Tins is a better book than its strangely affected title might in- duce one to suppose. Graphic in delineation, animated in style, frank in manner, and artistical in the choice and treatment of the subjects selected for presentation, Eothen (metaphorically "from the East ") possesses more interest than might have been supposed possible in the account of a peregrination over often-travelled ground. These good qualities, however, are dashed by con- terminous faults. The writer sometimes obtrudes himself and his family-feelings too much upon the reader ; his frankness becoming forwardness, and his familiarity passing the limits of good taste. There is also too much of art if not of effort visible in his sketches, and manner is sometimes made to do duty for matter. The author in his preface partly admits and partly excuses these faults, on account of the book having originally been commenced under the idea of addressing a friend who contemplated a similar tour. This, how- ever, seems a literary ruse ; for Euthen would furnish little practical information to any one, and the friend had finished his journey before his book was ready for him. But even were the fact correct, it would not change the nature of the effect upon the reader.

The author's route in E5then extends from Belgrade to Cairo, through Adrianople, Constantinople, the Plain of Troy, Smyrna, the Holy Land, and the Desert. It is not as a book of travels, however, that it claims attention ; for it does not profess to be a continuous narrative. The author selects only such points of his journey as made a strong impression upon his own mind ; and these are not always such as might a priori have appeared the most striking. Eotheit is in reality a series of Oriental sketches, much the same in kind as Boz makes in London, or TITMARSH in Ireland, or Sir FRANCIS HEAD at the Brunnens, and innumerable persons in many magazines. The inherent picturesqueness and character of Oriental subjects, with their novelty to English readers, gives a more fresh and striking air to the sketches in &When. Perhaps, too, there is less of professional skill about them. The author is more like a pleasant and pointed raconteur than a literary crafts- man. Yet is the book one of the most effective set of travelling- sketches that has appeared since Miss PARDOE'S City of the Sultan and SLADE'S work. In a literary point of view, we prefer E0then to either of them, from the absence of mere technical skill, or it may be from the presence of the ars celare artem.

We have said the work does not profess to be a continuous narrative. When there is nothing to narrate, we are carried as " swift as a glance of the mind" over time and space. There is, however, no lack of incident. The journey from Belgrade to Constantinople was made on horseback with a Tartar. Cairo was infested with the plague at the time our author was there ; every European who could had left the city ; and he, self-willed, remained, adopting the idea of non-contagion. Through the ignorance of a guide, he was lost in the desert bordering on the Dead Sea, and went through several adventures. He sometimes got along in native Greek vessels ; whose mode of navigation, and the character of their crews, introduce a new subject—almost as difficult to find as a new pleasure. His journey, made in 1835, was performed at a period when the Oriental mind was undergoing a revolution through the conquest of Syria by IBRAHIM Pacha, the enforcement of a general toleration, and some vague expectation of European interference, all the more imposing because its time and form and objects were a mystery. Of this change in Mahometan feelings the traveller himself was not disposed to take much advantage ; but his

Dragoman, (Anglia, interpreting courier,) a grave and zealous Christian Greek, was not so self-denying ; and several characteristic incidents sprung out of his disposition to domineer in the name of an Englishman. But after all, the interest of Eothen is in the man- ner of the author—in the style by which the characteristic traits of things are brought out.

In saying that the book furnishes no information, we must be understood as meaning no information of a practical or guide-book kind, touching prices, routes, sights, and "that sort of thing." Of the larger species of information which consists in conveying an idea of Oriental life and scenery, Eothen will furnish more than some professed books of travel, from the character of the com- position. A writer who confines himself to the mere matter of fact conveys no general picture at all, and very often not a true picture of the particular thing be is describing ; for he may omit the very traits which conduce to its peculiarity. The artist, by omitting that which is common, and inserting some things which if not there ought to be, not only exhibits a more vivid but a more generalized impression ; so that fiction becomes truer than literal truth, provided the describer can rise to these effects : if he cannot, he is bosh—" nothing "—neither fact nor fiction. At the same time, as REYNOLDS has remarked, a well-introduced detail in a picture sometimes affects the spectator to an extraordinary degree, by im- pressing him with a sense of reality : but it must be a truth, we imagine, larger than the detail itself. See how a single touch of this kind illustrates

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE PYRAMIDS.

I went to see and to explore the Pyramids. Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forma of the Egyptian Pyramids; and now, as I ap- proached them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes were there : there was no change; they were just as I had always known them. I straightened myself in my stirrups, and strived to persuade my understanding that this was real Egypt, and that those angles which stood up between me and the West were of harder stuff, and more ancient, than the paper pyramids of the green portfolio. Yet it was not till I came to the base of the Great Pyramid that reality began to weigh upon my mind. Strange to say, the bigness of the distinct blocks of stone was the first sign by which I attained to feel the immensity of the whole pile. When I came, and trod, and touched with my hands, and climbed, in order that by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then, and almost suddenly, a cold sense and understanding of the Pyramid's enormity came down over- casting my brain.

THE TURKISH TONGUE.

The structure of the language, especially in its more lengthy sentences, is very like to the Latin. The subject-matters are slowly and patiently enume- rated, without disclosing the purpose of the speaker, until he reaches the end of his sentence' and then at last there comes the clenching word which gives a meaning and connexion to all that has gone before. If you listen at all to speaking of this kind, your attention, rather than be suffered to flag, must grow more and more lively as the phrase marches on.

The following is a fair enough explanation of what we are apt to charge upon the Orientals and many other nations as a matter of fraud—asking two prices. Our greater straightforwardness in ilealing (it can hardly be called honesty) is the effect of civiliza- tion, whose tendency is to make a few work for the many.

TURKISH DISCOURSE AND DEALINGS.

The Osmanlees speak well. In countries civilized according to the European plan, the work of trying to persuade tribunals is almost all performed by a set of men, the great body of whom very seldom do any thing else ; but in Turkey, this division of labour has never taken place, and every man is his own advo- cate. The importance of the rhetorical art is immense - for a bad speech may endanger the property of the speaker, as well as the soles of his feet and the free enjoyment of his throat. So it results that most of the Turks whom one sees have a lawyerlike habit of speaking connectedly and at length. The treaties continually going on in the bazaar for the buying and selling of the merest trifles are carried on by speechifying rather than by mere colloquies ; and the eternal uncertainty as to the market-value of things in constant sale, gives room for endless discussion. The seller is for ever demanding a price Immensely beyond that for which he sells at last, and so occasions unspeakable disgust to many Englishmen, who cannot see why an honest dealer should ask more for his goods than he will really take : the truth is, however, that an ordinary tradesman of Constantinople has no other way of finding out the fair market-value of his property. The difficulty under which be labours is easily shown by comparing the mechanism of the commercial system in Turkey with that of our own country. In England, or in any other great mercantile country, the bulk of the things which are bought and sold goes through the bands of a wholesale dealer; and it is he who higgles and bargains with an entire nation of purchasers by entering into treaty with retail sellers. The labour of making a few large contracts is sufficient to give a clue for finding the fair market-value of the things sold throughout the country; but in Turkey, from the primitive habits of the people, and partly from the absence of great capital and great credit, the importing merchant, the warehouseman, the wholesale dealer, the retail dealer, and the shopman, are all one person. Old Moostapba, or Abdallah, or Hadgi Mohamed, waddles up from the water's edge with a small packet of merchandise, which he has bought out of a Greek brigantine; and when at last he has reached his nook in the bazaar, he puts his goods before the counter, and himself upon it—then, laying fire to his tchi- bouque, he "sits in permanence," and patiently waits to obtain "the best price that can be got in an open market." This is his fair right as a seller ; but he has no means of finding out what that best price is, except by actual experi- ment. He cannot know the intensity of the demand, or the abundance of the supply, otherwise than by the offers which may be made for his little bundle of goods; so he begins by asking a perfectly hopeless price, and thence descends the ladder until he meets a purchaser.

JEWS AT SMYRNA.

The Jews of Smyrna are poor ; and, having little merchandise of their own to dispose of, they are sadly importunate in offering their services as inter- mediaries: their troublesome conduct has led to the custom of beating them in the open streets. It is usual for Europeans to carry long sticks with them for the express purpose of keeping off the chosen people. I always felt ashamed to strike the poor fellows myself; but I confess to the amusement with which I witnessed the observance of this custom by other people. The Jew seldom got hurt much, for he was always expecting the blow, and was ready to recede from it the moment it came: one could not help being rather gratified at seeing him bound away so nimbly with his long robes floating out in the air, and then again wheel round, and return with fresh importunities.

APPROACH TO THE DEAD SEA.

I went on, and came near to those waters of Death : they stretched deeply into the Southern desert ; and before me, and all around as far away as the eye could follow, blank hills piled high over hills, pale, yellow, and inked, walled up in her tomb for ever, the dead and damned Gomorrah. There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air; but, instead, a deep stillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand : but, in mockery of all life, there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of the long, silent years.

SWIMAIING IN THE DEAD SEA.

I bathed in the Dead Sea. The ground covered by the water sloped so gra. dually, that I was not only forced to "sneak in," but to walk through the water nearly a quarter of a mile before I could get out of my depth. When at last I was able to attempt a dive, the salts held in solution made my eyes smart so sharply, that the pain which I thus suffered, acceding to the weakness occa- sioned by want of food, made me giddy and faint for some moments ; but I soon grew better. I knew beforehand the impossibility of sinking in this buoyant water ; hut I was surprised to find that I could not swim at my accustomed pace : my legs and feet were lifted so high and dry out of the lake, that my stroke was baffled, and I found myself kicking against the thin air instead of the dense fluid upon which I was swimming. The water is perfectly bright and clear ; its taste detestable. After finishing my attempts at swimming and diving, I took some time in regaining the shore; and before I began to dress, I found that the sun had already evaporated the water which clung to me, and that my skin was thickly incrusted with sulphate of magnesia.

FUNERALS AT CAIRO.

The funerals in Cairo take place between daybreak and noon ; and as I was generally in my rooms during this part of the day, I could form some opinion as to the briskness of the plague. I don't mean this for a sly insinuation that I get up every morning with the sun. It was not so; but the funerals of most people in decent circumstances at Cairo are attended by singers and howlers ; and the performances of these people woke me in the early morning, and pre- vented me from remaining in ignorance of what was going on in the street below.. These funerals were very simply conducted. The bier was a shallow wooden tray carried upon a light and weak wooden frame. The tray had, in general, no lid, but the body was more or less hidden from view by a shawl or scarf. The whole was borne upon the shoulders of men, who contrived to cut along with their burden at a great pace. Two or three singers generally preceded the bier ; the howlers (who are paid for their vocal labours) followed. after ; and last of all came such of the dead man's friends and relations as could keep up with such a rapid procession : these, especially the women, would get terribly blown, and would straggle back into the rear; many were fairly "beaten off." I never observed any appearance of mourning in the mourners; the pace WAS too severe for any solemn affectation of grief.