XIV.—CONSTANTINOPLE.

THE capital which we know as Constantinople, lying in two continents, presents itself as three cities. The long, hornshaped promontory, between the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, is the site of ancient Byzantium, which Constantine baptized with his own name, and which the Turks call Stamboul. The ancient city was on the eastern extremity, now known as Seraglio Point; its important position was always recognized, and it was sharply contended for by the Spartans, the Athenians, the Macedonians, and the Persians. Like the city of Romulus, it occupies seven hills, and its noble heights are conspicuous from afar by sea or land.. In the fourth century it was surrounded by a wall, which followed the water on three sides, and ran across the base of the promontory, over four miles from the Seven Towers on the Propontis to the Cemetery of Eyoub on the Golden Horn. The land-wall, which so many times saved the effeminate city from the barbarians of the north and the Saracens of Arabia, stands yet with its battered towers and score of crumbling gates.

The second city, on a blunt promontory between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, overlooks the ancient Byzantium, and is composed of three districts,—Galata and Tophanna, on the water and climbing up the hill; and Pera, which crowns the summit. Galata was a commercial settlement of the thirteenth century; Pera is altogether modern.

The third city is Scutari, exactly opposite the mouth of the Golden Horn, and a little north of ancient Chalcedon, which was for over a thousand years the camp of successive besieging armies, Georgians, Persians, Saracens, and Turks.

The city of the Crescent, like a veiled beauty of the harem, did not at once disclose to us its charms. It was at six o'clock in the morning on the eleventh day of blooming May, that we landed on the dirty quay of Tophanna. The morning was cloudy, cold, misty, getting its weather from the Black Sea, and during the day rain fell in a very Occidental dreariness. Through the mist loomed the heights of Seraglio Point; and a hundred minaret peaks and domes appeared to float in the air above the veiled city. Along the floating lower bridge, across the Golden Horn, poured an unceasing procession of spectres; ca飍ues were shooting about in every direction, steamers for the Bosphorus, for Scutari, for the Islands, were momently arriving and departing from their stations below the bridge, and the huge bulk of the Turkish ironclads could be discerned at their anchorage before the palace of Beshiktash. The scene was animated, but there was not visible as much shipping as I had expected to see in this great port.

The customs' official on the quay was of a very inquisitive turn of mind, but we could excuse him on the ground of his age and ignorance, for he was evidently endeavoring to repair the neglected opportunities of his youth. Our large luggage had gone to the custom-house in charge of Abd-el-Atti, who has a genius for free-trade, and only our small parcels and hand-bags were at the mercy of the inspector on the quay. But he insisted upon opening every bag and investigating every article of the toilet and garment of the night; he even ripped open a feather pillow which one of the ladies carried with her, and neither the rain on the open dock nor our respectable appearance saved our effects from his most searching attentions. The discoveries of General di Ces-nola and the interest that Europeans take in antiquities have recently convinced the Turks that these relics must have some value, and an order had been issued to seize and confiscate all curiosities of this sort. I trembled, therefore, when the inspector got his hands upon a baby's nursing-bottle, which I had brought from Cyprus, where it had been used by some Phoenician baby probably three thousand years ago. The fellow turned it round and regarded it with serious ignorance and doubt.

"What is that?" he asked Achmed.

"O, that's nothing but a piece of pottery, something for a child without his mother, I think,—it is nothing, not worth two paras."

The confiscator of antiquities evidently had not the slightest knowledge of his business; he hesitated, but Achmed's perfect indifference of manner determined him, and he slowly put the precious relic back into the box. The inspector parted from us with regret, but we left him to the enjoyment of a virtue unassailed by the least bribe,—an unusual, and, I imagine, an unwelcome possession in this region.

Donkeys were not to be had, nor carriages, and we climbed on foot the very steep hill to the hotel in Pera; ascending roughly paved, crooked streets, lined with rickety houses, and occasionally mounting stairs for a mile through a quarter that has the shabbiness but not the picturesqueness of the Orient. A squad of porters seized our luggage and bore it before us. The porters are the beasts of burden, and most of them wear heavy saddles, upon which boxes and trunks can be strapped. No drays were visible. Heavy burdens, hogsheads, barrels, and cases of goods were borne between two long stout poles carried by four athletic men; as they move along the street, staggering under the heavy load, everybody is obliged, precipitately, to make way for them, for their impetus is such that they cannot check their career. We see these gigantic fellows at every street-corner, with their long poles, waiting for a job. Sedan-chairs, which were formerly in much request, are gradually disappearing, though there is nothing at present to exactly take the place of these lumbering conveyances. Carriages increase every year, but they are expensive, and they can only ascend the height of Pera by a long circuit. The place of the sedan and the carriage is, however, to some extent supplied by a railway in Galata, the cars of which are drawn up by a stationary engine. And on each side of the Golden Horn is a horse-railway, running wherever the ground is practicable.

To one coming from the West, I suppose that Constantinople would present a very mixed and bizarre appearance, and that he would be impressed by the silence of the busiest streets, in which the noise of wheels and the hum of a Western capital is wanting. But to one coming from the East, Galata and Pera seem a rather vulgarized European town. The Frank dress predominates, although it is relieved by the red fez, which the Turks generally and many Europeans wear. Variety enough there is in costumes, but the Grecian, the Bulgarian, the Albanian, etc., have taken the place of the purely Oriental; and the traveller in the Turkish capital to-day beholds not only the conflux of Asia and Europe, but the transition, in buildings, in apparel, in manners, to modern fashions. Few veiled women are seen, and they wear a white strip of gauze which conceals nothing. The street hawkers, the sellers of sweets, of sponges, and of cakes, are not more peculiar in their cries than those of London and Paris.

When we had climbed the hill, we came into the long main street of Pera, the street of the chief shops, the hotels and foreign embassies, a quarter of the city which has been burned over as often as San Francisco, and is now built up substantially with stone and brick, and contains very little to interest the seeker of novelty. After we had secured rooms, and breakfasted, at the hotel Byzance, we descended the hill again to the water, and crossed the long, floating bridge to Stamboul. This bridge is a very good symbol of the Sultan's Empire; its wooden upper works are decayed, its whole structure is rickety, the floats that support it are unevenly sunken, so that the bridge is a succession of swells and hollows; it is crowded by opposing streams of the most incongruous people, foot and horse jumbled together; it is encumbered by venders of eatables and auctioneers of cheap Wares, and one has to pay toll to cross it. But it is a microcosm of the world. In an hour one may see pass there every nationality, adventurers from every clime, traders, priests, sailors, soldiers, fortune-hunters of Europe, rude peasants of the provinces, sleek merchants of the Orient, darwishes, furtive-eyed Jews; here is a Circassian beauty seeking a lover through the carriage window; here a Turkish grandee on a prancing, richly caparisoned horse; here moves a squad of black soldiers, and now the bridge shakes under the weight of a train of flying artillery.

The water is alive with the ticklish ca飍ues. The caique is a long narrow boat, on the model of the Indian birch-bark, canoe, and as thin and light on the water; the passenger, if he accomplishes the feat of getting into one without overturning it, sits upon the bottom, careful not to wink and upset it; the oars have a heavy swell near the handle, to counterbalance the weight of the long blade, and the craft skims the water with swiftness and a most agreeable motion. The ca飍ues are as numerous on the water as the yellow, mangy dogs on shore, and the two are the most characteristic things in Constantinople.

We spent a good part of the day in wandering about the bazaars of Stamboul, and we need not repeat what has been heretofore said of these peculiar shops. During our stay in the city we very thoroughly explored them, and visited most of the great khans, where are to be found the silks of Broussa, of Beyrout and Damascus, the rugs of Persia, the carpets of Asia Minor, the arms and the cunning work in gold, silver, and jewels gathered from every region between Ispahan and Darfour. We found the bazaars extensive, well filled and dear, at least the asking price was enormous, and we wanted the time and patience which are needed for the slow siege of reducing the merchants to decent, terms. The bazaars are solidly roofed arcades, at once more cleanly and less picturesque than those of Cairo, and not so Oriental or attractive. Book-stalls, which are infrequent in Cairo, abound here; and the long arcades lined with cases of glittering gems, enormous pearls, sparkling diamonds, emeralds fit for the Pope's finger, and every gold and silver temptation, exceed anything else in the East in magnificence. And yet they have a certain modern air, and you do not expect to find in them those quaint and fascinating antique patterns of goldsmiths' work, the inherited skill of the smiths of the Pharaohs, which draw you into the dingy recesses of the Copt artificers in the city of the Nile.

From the Valideh Khan we ascended to the public square, where stands the Seraskier's Eire-tower; a paved, open place, surrounded by government buildings of considerable architectural pretensions, and dedicated, I should say, to drumming, to the shifting about of squads of soldiers, and the cantering hither and thither of Turkish beys. Near it is the old mosque of Sultan Beyezid II., which, with its magnificent arabesque gates, makes a fine external impression. The outer court is surrounded by a cloister with columns of verd-antique and porphyry, enclosing a fountain and three stately, venerable, trees. The trees and the arcades are alive with doves, and, as we entered, more than a thousand flew towards us in a cloud, with a great rustling and cooing. They are protected as an almost sacred appendage of the mosque, and are said to be bred from a single pair which the Sultan bought of a poor woman and presented to the house he had built, three centuries and a half ago. This mosque has also another claim to the gratitude of animals; for all the dogs of Stamboul, none of whom have any home but the street, nor any other owner than the Prophet, resort here every Friday, as regularly, if not as piously, as the Sultan goes to pray, and receive their weekly bread.

Near this mosque are lines of booths and open-air shops, which had a fascination for me as long as I remained in the city. They extend from the trees in the place of the mosque down through lanes to the bazaars. The keepers of them were typical Orientals, honest Jews, honest Moslems, withered and one-eyed waiters on Providence and a good bargain, suave, gracious, patient, gowned and turbaned, sitting cross-legged behind their trays and showcases. These are the dealers in stones, both precious and common, in old and new ornaments, and the thousand cheap adornments in glass and metal which the humbler classes love. Here are heaps of blood-stones, of carnelians, of agates, of jasper, of onyx, dishes of turquoise, strings of doubtful pearls, barbarous rings and brooches, charms and amulets,—a feast of color for the eye, and a sight to kindle the imagination. For these bawbles came out of the recesses of the Orient, were gathered by wild tribes in remote deserts, and transported by caravan to this common mart. These dealers buy of the Persian merchants, and of adventurous Jew travellers who range all the deserts from Teheran to Upper Nubia in search of these shining stones. Some of the turquoises are rudely set in silver rings, but most of them are merely glued to the end of little sticks; these generally are the refuse of the trade, for the finer stones go to the great jewellers in the bazaar, or to the Western markets. A large and perfect turquoise of good color is very rare, and commands a large price; but the cunning workmen of Persia have a method of at once concealing the defects of a good-sized turquoise which has the true color, and at the same time enhancing its value, by engraving upon it some sentence from the Koran, or some word which is a charm against the evil eye; the skill of the engraver is shown in fitting his letters and flourishes to the flaws in the surface of the stone. To further hide any appearance of imperfection, the engraved lines are often gilded. With a venerable Moslem, who sat day after day under a sycamore-tree, I had great content, and we both enjoyed the pleasure of endless bargaining without cheating each other, for except in some trifles we never came to an exact agreement. He was always promising me the most wonderful things for the next day, which he would procure from a mysterious Jew friend who carried on a clandestine commerce with some Bedawee in Arabia. When I was seated, he would pull from his bosom a knotted silk handkerchief, and, carefully untying it, produce a talisman, presenting it between his thumb and finger, with a lift of the eyebrows and a cluck of the tongue that expressed the rapture I would feel at the sight of it. To be sure, I found it a turquoise set in rude silver, faded to a sickly green, and not worth sixpence; but I handed it back with a sigh that such a jewel was beyond my means, and intimated that something less costly, and of a blue color, would suit me as well. We were neither of us deceived, while we maintained the courtesies of commercial intercourse. Sometimes he would produce from his bosom an emerald of real value or an opal of lovely hues, and occasionally a stone in some peculiar setting which I had admired the day before in the jewelry bazaar; for these trinkets, upon which the eye of the traveller has been seen longingly to rest, are shifted about among this mysterious fraternity to meet him again.

I suppose it was known all over Stamboul that a Prank had been looking for a Persian amulet. As long as I sat with my friend, I never saw him actually sell anything, but he seemed to be the centre of mysterious transactions; furtive traders continually came to him to borrow or return a jewel, or to exchange a handful of trumpery. Delusive old man! I had no confidence in you, but I would go far to pass another day in your tranquil society. How much more agreeable you were than the young Nubian at an opposite stand, who repelled purchasers by his supreme indifference, and met all my feeble advances with the toss of the head and the cluck in the left cheek, which is the peremptory "no" in Nubia.

In this quarter are workers in shell and ivory, the makers of spoons of tortoise-shell with handles of ivory and coral, the fabricators of combs, dealers in books, and a long street of little shops devoted to the engraving of seals. To wander about among these craftsmen is one of the chief pleasures of the traveller. Vast as Stamboul is, if you remove from it the mosques and nests of bazaars, it would not be worth a visit.