The Argosy — page 242: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

228 Remembrances of Constantinople. We hardly gave ourselves time to admire the beauty of the azure- waved bay, or the picturesque aspect of the town, above which, on the face of the mountain, were clusters of houses, here and there a mosque with graceful minarets, and two or three cypress-marked cemeteries, the whole crowned by a romantic-looking ruined castle. Nor did we then stay to admire the more distant hills, amid which ran a valley whose deep shades of foliage invited the eye to penetrate into its purple-tinted recesses. We were all impatience to land and visit the bazaar. On approaching it we found our progress impeded by what I took for bales of merchandise, but on perceiving some movement in the mass I made a nearer inspection, and discovered a string of five or six camels lying in the path. The sight of these ungainly animals made one realise better than anything else the being in Asia. The popular idea in Europe respecting the “ patient camel” is extremely erroneous. They are strong and capable of enduring hunger, thirst, and fatigue; but they are ugly, grunting, grumbling, sighing brutes, whose complaints, under the very lightest loads, made me think of the epithet Miss Harriet Martineau bestowed on them. If any luckless living creature stand in the camel’s path, unlike the horse or elephant, he does not stop or move on one side, but bears on, regardless, sense- less, over the impediment. It happened to me several times in the crowded lanes to be suddenly startled by the dangerous proximity of one of these creatures, sighing as it tramped along. The bazaar at Smyrna, though very poor compared with that of Con- stantinople, was amusing. The shops are nearly all kept by Greeks _and Armenians—handsome, but very cunning-visaged. Many of them wore their bright and elegant native costumes of richly embroidered jackets, and full, many-plaited white petticoats, some of which are fifty-five yards round, but so admirably adjusted that they set close to and take the form of the wearer’s figure. The Greek men carry to excess the dandyism of a small waist. I am told that the scarf which is so Ornamental is sometimes bound so tightly round the figure as to leave a black mark on the skin where it presses. One of the sights that every stranger must see in Smyrna is the packing of figs for the English market. All the best figs brought here grow in the vicinity of Smyrna. At the proper season they are gathered and spread out in the sun to dry. When fit, they are packed in tall baskets, put on the backs of camels, and so brought into the town, and shot out on to the floors of great sheds or barns. Herea number of women and children, mostly Armenians, are employed in getting them ready for packing. Each fig is placed in the left hand, and so pressed with the right thumb that the little stalk is in the centre of a circle. By the position of the stalks it may be infallibly told whether figs come from Smyrna or from Spain. As each fig is pressed, it is passed on to a man to be packed in a drum or box, on the top of comicbooks.com