SCUTARI. 54
Horror-stricken at so dreadful a denunciation, the agonized Sultan caused the erection of the Guz-couli, or Maiden's Tower, wherein he immured his lovely daughter; in order, by thus cutting her off from the very earth until the faithful period should be overpast, to remove even the possibility of the threatened calamity. "But," pursues the legend, "who can war against his kismet?(*) Who can control his felech?(+) What is written, is written; and the page of the future had been read." Death come to the princess in a case of fresh figs from Smyrna, in which a small asp had been concealed; and she was found on her eighteenth birth-day dead upon her sofa, with the fruit beside her; and the reptile, like that which poisoned the crimson tide in the veins of the imperial Cleopatra, lying gorged and loathsome upon her bosom!
The tale is a pretty one; but there is another tradition, which terminates somewhat differently, and which clothes the serpent in the garb of a young Persian Prince, whose curiosity having been aroused by the marvellous whisperings around him of the matchless beauty of the imprisoned fair-one, had dared to row his caique by night beneath the very walls of the Guz-couli; and had contrived an interview with the captive, won her heart, and contrived by means of a silken cord and a strong arm, to carry her off at the very crisis of her fate! The reader can select his own version of the "eventful historie."
The Fruit-market of Scutari touches on the shore; and in the midst stands an ancient fountain, of simple but pleasing architecture. The volume of water is very great, and its quality almost unrivalled; it descends from the dusky mountain of Bulgurlhu; and from some superstition, which it would be difficult to comprehend, the Turks never permit its supply to be appropriated by the inhabitants of the European shore of the channel, even on occasions of the greatest drought; and thus, in 1836, when the water was frightfully scarce, and was transported from the villages at the very mouth of the Black Sea to the thirsting city, at immense cost both of time and money, the fountain of Scutari was suffered to run to waste, and to pour the overflow of its tempting and abundant streams into the Bosphorus.
The view from the market across the Channel is very beautiful; and the locality in itself eminently characteristic and interesting. The profuse supply of the most luscious and delicious fruits is amazing to an European eye, while the prices at which they are sold are equally astonishing. The grapes and melons of Scutari are renowned throughout the East;