BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS. 50
PLATE: CEMETERY OF SCUTARI.
SCUTARI.
---- the place of thousand tombs
That shine beneath, while dark above
The sad but living cypress glooms
And withers not, though branch and leaf
Are stamp'd with an eternal grief,
Like early unrequited love."
BYRON.
THE first object connected with the city of Constantinople visible to the voyager who approaches it from the Dardanelles, is the cypress canopy of the great Cemetery of Scutari. Its dark mass of funeral foliage rests like a thundercloud "no bigger than a man's hand" against the clear blue sky for a time; and then, as the vessel ploughs her way through the yielding waters, gradually looms out larger and larger upon the horizon, until the mind begins to take in some idea of its vast extent.
This extraordinary necropolis, perhaps the largest and most picturesque in the world, stretches its cold and silent shadows over hill and valley, covering upwards of three miles of country with the sable livery of death, and shutting out the sun-light from unnumbered graves. The Moslem, when he breathes his last, may truly be said to have sung into "the quiet grave;" for his ashes are never desecrated for the sake of the poor space which they fill up; no second tenant ever crushes yet more deeply the remains of the original occupant of each narrow tomb; and thus the burial-places yearly extend themselves in every direction, and form a prominent feature in the Turkish landscape.
Nothing can be conceived more solemn than the effect of the deep and chilling gloom of the Cemetery of Scutari, with its thousand intersecting paths dimly perceptible in the noon-day twilight; and its million head-stones leaning against each other, as though to dispute every inch of the thrice-holy earth they occupy.
As the Turks have s superstition, in which they place implicit faith, that ere the end of the world the Mahommedans are to expelled from Europe, they universally covet a grave in this Asiatic wilderness of tombs, in order to preserve their ashes from the contaminating contact of the giaour;