A Phantom from the East (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. Thursday, October 6. T dawn, an official, in a strange tongue comes to warn the passengers in their cabins that we are just entering the Bosphorus. I had only just fallen asleep--having spent the night in dreaming--and I awake with a start, my heart in a tumult at the mere word Bosphorus. On the bridge, where it is cold, the passengers appear, one by one, indifferent and rather disappointed with what is shown to them. Certainly, the entrance to the Bosphorus is somewhat dull, down between those 47 mountains obscurely outlined in gloomy colours. It is the dawn of an autumn day, grey and misty under an unchanging, low sky. We shall see hardly anything through these banks of mist, which hang down like a veil. It is very disappointing for these tourists; the effect of the arrival will be missed. As for me, I shall have but two days and a half--only two days and a half--for my pilgrimage; and I reflect that, if the winter sets in already, if it rains, as is probable, everything will be sadder, more complicated for me, and my researches more difficult. Last night I did not see the third-class passengers, who now crowd on the bridge--real Turks these, the men in caftans, the women veiled. Then, all of a sudden, as we approach the land, there comes to us a penetrating, peculiar scent, exquisite to my senses--a scent once so wellknown and long forgotten--the scent of the Turkish earth, something which comes from the plants or from the people, I do not know, but which has not changed, and which, in an instant, brings back to me a world of bygone impressions. Suddenly, those ten years seem to drop out of my life, with all that has happened in them since that day of agony when I quitted Stamboul, and I find myself again in Turkey--even before I have put ...