Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/53



, or Giaour Izmir, as the Mussulmans call it, is the main point of commercial contact betwixt Europe and Asia; you are there surrounded by the people, and the confused customs of many, and various nations—you see the fussy European adopting the East, and calming his restlessness with the long Turkish pipe of tranquillity—you see Jews offering services, and receiving blows —on one side you have a fellow whose dress and beard would give you a good idea of the true oriental, if it were not for the gobe-mouche expression of countenance with which he is swallowing an article in the National, and there, just by, is a genuine Osmanlee, smoking away with all the majesty of a Sultan, but before you have time to admire sufficiently his tranquil dignity, and his soft Asiatic repose, the poor old fellow is ruthlessly "run down" by an English midshipman, who has set sail on a Smyrna hack. Such are the incongruities of the "infidel city," at ordinary times; but when I was there, our friend Carrigaholt had imported himself, and his oddities, as an accession to the other and inferior wonders