Cities Of The Dawn Part 2

In due time we reach Attica, and are landed at the Piraeus, which is busy now as when Themistocles planned the harbour and Pericles planted its walls, five miles in length. The town has quite a modern look; nothing of its ancient glory remains. Its modern history dates from 1834. A modern lighthouse marks the site of the tomb of Themistocles. A railway, made in 1869, now connects the Piraeus with Athens, and it grows apace.

In old times there was rarely to be seen any boat in the harbour. In 1871 the population was only 11,000; in 1890 it had grown to 36,000, About 6,000 vessels of over two and a half millions of tonnage, one half of which is in Greek bottoms, enter the harbour annually. As a town, it consists chiefly of commercial buildings and unpretending private residences. It has, however, an a.r.s.enal, a military and naval school, several handsome churches for the orthodox members of the Greek Church, an interesting museum of antiquities, and a gymnasium. Trains run to Athens through the whole day until midnight. We land in a homely quarter of the town. 'It is in the spring,' writes Edmond About, 'one sees Attica in her glory, when the air is so clear and transparent that it seems as if one had only to put forth one's hand to touch the furthest mountains; when it carries sounds so faithfully that one can hear the bleating of flocks half a mile away, and the cries of great eagles, which are lost to sight in the immensity of the skies.'

I find Athens hot and dusty-a fine white dust, which makes everything look desolate. I get hold of a plan of Athens, showing me how to make the most of six days, but as I have not that time to spare, one's first thoughts turn naturally to the Acropolis, a rocky plateau of crystallized limestone, rising to about 200 feet. Romans, Goths, Byzantines, and Turks have done their best to make Athens a heap of ruins. It was well that Lord Elgin did so much to preserve some of the choicest relics of Athens by bringing them to England and sending them to the British Museum. Had he not done so, they would have been inevitably destroyed by the unspeakable Turk, a fact deeply to be deplored.

One night we had an amusing ill.u.s.tration of the qualification of the fair s.e.x for the right to rule over man. There was a concert in the smoking-room, the finest apartment in the ship. Amongst the performers were some ladies, and a good many were auditors. Suddenly a large rat made its appearance, when all the ladies, shrieking, fled. I may not be equal to the New Woman-of course she is far above me-but, at any rate, I am not afraid to face a rat. Fancy a rat appearing in the House of Commons with a lady speaker on her legs, and a Government of ladies seated gracefully and in the loveliest of toilettes! The result would be appalling and disastrous.

The country through which we pa.s.sed was quite dried up, and quite prepared me for the tasteless beef and skinny fowl of which I was to partake afterwards at the Hotel Grand Bretagne, where they charged me two francs for a cigar; and where, when I remonstrated, I was told that the taxes were so high that they could not afford to let me have one for less. There are a great many trees about, but they have all a dwarfed and dried-up appearance. Far off rises the great Acropolis; you may see it from the steps of the hotel, and the ruins on its top. The life of the streets amuses me. It is incessant and ever varying. The soldier is conspicuous, as he is everywhere on the Continent; priests in black robes and peculiar black hats are plentiful, grave and black-bearded, though I am told that in reality they have little hold on the people of Athens. I have been in one of the churches, very dark, and with a lot of ornamentation; and quite a number of people-very old ones-came and crossed themselves, after the Greek fashion, before a picture just inside the door. Ladies are to be seen, few of them with any particular personal charm, but all in the latest fashions of Paris; and there come the girls with pigtails. I see one of the French ill.u.s.trated newspapers everywhere. Among the daily papers published in Athens are the _Ora_ (Hour), the _Plinghensia_ (Regeneration), _Neai Ideai_ (New Idea), _Aion_ (Era), _Toia_ (Morning), and _Telegrafui_ (The Telegram). The most curious people you see are the men from the country, with black waistcoats, white petticoats-I can give them no other name-dark hose, and antique-looking shoes turned up at the toes and decorated-why, I know not-with enormous tufts. The living objects I most pity are the forlorn, half-starved donkeys, loaded fore and aft with luggage, while in the centre, on his saddle, is seated his hard-hearted proprietor. Some of the shops are fine, but few of the houses are lofty-the most striking being modern buildings, built on the plan to admit as much air as possible, and to exclude the light. But you see no beggars in the streets, and that is a good sign. Greece has, as you know, the most democratic Government of any. The King, who is not very popular, reigns, but does not govern. The real power is in the hands of the Legislative Chamber-there is no Upper House-consisting of 150 members, all paid for their services, and elected by means of universal suffrage and the ballot every four years. The population of Athens is about 160,000, with the addition of 3,000 Armenian refugees who have found there a city of refuge. Education is free and compulsory, reaching from the lowest strata to the University, so that every lad of talent has a chance. If democracy can make a people happy and content and prosperous, the Greeks ought to be content. There must be a good many wealthy men at Athens, however, whom the democracy have wisely spared. It is not right to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as is desired by some of our Socialists.

Modern Greece, with the exception of America, is the most republican Government in existence; at any rate, it is ahead of England in this respect. We want, or, rather, some people do, who do not know any better, to agitate for payment of members. I object because I have seen the mischief of paid members in all our colonies, and because when I part with my scanty cash I like to have value for my money; and as I know the average M.P., I think he is dear at any price. The men in office are bitterly opposed by the men who languish in the cold shade of Opposition, and that really seems the only line of cleavage. For instance, if a Minister proposes that a certain work should be done by a certain number of horses, the Opposition argue that oxen should be used, and so the battle rages, for the modern Greek, degenerate though he is, is still as fond of talk and windy declamation as any long-winded and ambitious M.P.

at home. Ministers, though appointed by the King, are amenable to the Chamber, but under this system we do not hear of the great Parliament, such as we have at home or in Italy or France.

For administrative purposes Greece is divided into sixteen monarchies, governed by munic.i.p.alities, who alone have the power to levy rates and taxes. These monarchies are divided into eparchies and domarchies, the later under the control of the mayor, elected by the people. Thus in Greece alone, in the Old World, we have government of the people and for the people. For purposes of justice there are local courts; five Courts of Appeal, and a Supreme Court at Athens. In matters of education, again, Greece is far ahead of us. We want to connect the people with the Universities, so that the poorest lad may have his chance. In Greece this result is obtained. Ample provision is made for the elementary schools, leading from the lowest strata of society up to the Universities, free and compulsory-not that the latter provision needs to be enforced, as naturally there is a great desire for education all over the land. The Greek Church is the established one, but any undue zeal on the part of the priest is held in check both by law and the spirit of religious toleration. Among her subjects Greece reckons as many as 25,000 Moslems.

[Picture: Temple Of Victory. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)]

Pa.s.sing out of the Piraeus, to our right we notice a monument to the memory of one of the wild heroes of Grecian Independence, whose insolent followers were a great trouble to our Lord Byron during his fatal sojourn at Missolonghi. In due time we arrive within sight of the Temple of Theseus and the other well known landmarks familiar to the cultivated reader. Nevertheless, the approach to Athens is not very interesting, as we enter through one of its most homely quarters. The princ.i.p.al modern inst.i.tutions are the Polytechnic School, divided into three branches-the School of Fine Art, the Industrial School, and the Holiday School, where on Sundays and feast-days instruction is given in writing, elementary drawing, etc.; there is also a School of Telegraphy. In the same neighbourhood is also to be found the Academy of Science; next to the Academy is the University, adorned with statues of the famous men who helped to make modern Greece. The cla.s.ses at the University are practically free, and the number of students attending is generally between 3,000 and 4,000. The library in connection with the University has 100,000 volumes.

It is impossible to do justice to the activity of the life in these parts; there are many steamers in the harbour-I saw two steam away one morning. Naples seems a very sleepy place compared to the Piraeus.

Little white boats, with leg-of-mutton sails, skim the blue waters of the harbour all day long, and the men are lean and dark, and wonderfully active, a great contrast to our English sailors. Once upon a time, coming from New York, we called off Portland Bill for a pilot. It was midnight, and dark as Erebus, but we all sat up waiting for the pilot, to hear the English news. Suddenly there climbed up the ship's side, and stood on the deck in the full glare of light, two awful living mountains of flesh, as fat as beer and bacon could make them-a couple of English pilots. We had some skinny American ladies on board, and when they saw these men they uttered quite an appalling shriek. They had never seen such specimens of humanity before. I own I felt really ashamed of my fellow-countrymen, and asked myself why on earth men should make themselves such guys. Happily, in Australia I lost a couple of stone, and I have been mercifully preserved from laying on flesh ever since.

Flesh is the great source of human depravity. With Falstaff, I hold the more of it the more frailty.

[Picture: The Parthenon. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)]

And now let me return to Athens, the Acropolis of which I see in all its glory, and on which by night lights gleam that you can see in the harbour, crowning the belt of bright lamps which by night glorify the whole front of the town. They show you Mars' Hill, where Paul preached the unknown G.o.d; the porch of the Erechtheum, sacred to the olive-tree, brought to Greece by Athene; and the Parthenon, which still attests the genius of Phidias. Of Athens it may be said:

'Her sh.o.r.es are those whence many a mighty bard Caught inspiration glorious in their beams; Her hills the same that heroes died to guard, Her vales that fostered Art's divinest dreams.'

Modern Athens is bright and cheerful, the shops gay and lofty, with well-known Greek names. The latter remark also applies to the streets.

The hotels are magnificent. The Hotel d'Angleterre is well spoken of, and the dragoman Apostoles will be found an intelligent servant, who will arrange for the traveller who is disposed to make an excursion in the Morea for food, lodging, mules or horses at a reasonable rate. The Hotel Grand Bretagne, just opposite the palace-and a far finer building to look at-is about as good a hotel as I was ever in. The rooms seem awfully dark as you enter from the glare of the ever-shining sun, but the rooms are lofty, well ventilated, and everywhere you have marble floors and marble columns, and the feeding is good, considering what a parched-up land Greece is, and how dried-up its beef and skinny its poultry. I have seen cheaper hotels in Athens, such as the Hotel des Iles Ionienic, the proprietor of which, a Greek from Corfu, strongly recommended it to me; but on the whole, in such a place as Athens, I should think it preferable to pay a little more for the comfort of a first-cla.s.s hotel, even though it may make one indifferent to the 'Laurels' or the 'Cedars' of his own native land.

How to live rationally is an art the majority of Englishmen have not yet acquired. I leave Athens with regret; its people are all industrious.

At any rate, there are no beggars in its streets; and if this be the result of its democratic Government, so much the better for the coming democracy, which, whether we like it or not, is sure to rule at home.

Here the Government is popular, and the people are content. Manufactures are almost unknown. They have a woollen factory at Athens, and a cotton-mill in the Piraeus, and there must be a busy agricultural population, as a good deal of the land between the Piraeus and the capital is laid out in market-gardens. I am troubled as I think of our great cities, with their vices and slums. I hold, with the poet, G.o.d made the country and man the town.

It is a chequered history, that of Athens. Once it was occupied by the Goths. The Romans fortified it; but the ancient walls, which had been strengthened by Sylla, were unequal to its defence, and the barbarians became masters of the n.o.ble seats of the Muses and the Arts. Zosimus tells us that the walls of Athens were guarded by the G.o.ddess Minerva, with her formidable aegis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles, and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile G.o.ds of Greece.

Yet, nevertheless, Alaric a second time mastered the city by means of his barbarian troops. It is wonderful that any remains of the Athens of its prime exist. As it is, it requires a good deal of enthusiasm to 'do' its ruins, with which photography has long made the world familiar. The glory of the Parthenon, however, remains. Gibbon tells us in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were about to set fire to them, when one of the chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design by the profound observation that as long as the Greeks were exercised in the study of books they would never apply themselves to the exercise of arms. But, as Gibbon writes, the Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establishment of a new religion, whose masters resolved every question into an article of faith, and condemned the infidel to eternal flames.

For centuries Athens had flourished by means of her schools. After the settlement of the Roman Empire, it was filled with scholars from every part of the known world, even including students from Britain. In the suburbs of the city tradition still lingered of the Academy of the Platonists, the Lycaeum of the Peripatetics, the Portico of the Stoics, and the Garden of Epicurus. The Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy maintained their reputation from the Peloponnesian war to the reign of Justinian. It was he who suppressed the school which had given so many sages to mankind, and whose influences have quickened and invigorated the human intellect ever since. The art of oratory may soon be held to be almost a doubtful boon-at any rate, so far as senates and parliaments are concerned. It was not so when the eloquence of Demosthenes

'shook the a.r.s.enal, And fulmined over Greece.'

Some of my fellow-pa.s.sengers made their way to Eleusis, but they came back disappointed, and covered with dust. It was enough for me to study the life of the streets-full of soldiers and black-robed priests.

The traveller who, remembering the long period of Turkish sway, counts on receiving an Oriental impression from the aspect of Athens is doomed to disappointment. Even the national garb is fast disappearing. It may still be worn by a few elderly Athenians. These, and a peasant here and there selling milk or cheese, recall the day when their dress was the national one. The wide blue trousers of the aegean islanders are not less rare, nor is there much chance of seeing them at the Piraeus, among the craft from the various islands moored along the quays. The uglier and cheaper product of the slop-shop has replaced the picturesque drapery of the olden time.

Sooner or later Athens is sure to become a winter resort not less favoured than any on the Mediterranean, and the permanent home of many foreigners. The opinion thus confidently expressed is strengthened by the fact that few who have lived for some length of time within its gates pa.s.s out of them without regret, or fail to re-enter them with pleasure.

At any rate, so writes a learned American.

A gentleman has written explaining that Greece is bankrupt because she is so small. He says that out of 5,000,000 Greeks who rose in 1821 against the Turk, less than 1,000,000 were allowed to form part of the h.e.l.lenic kingdom. The obvious reply to this is, Why don't they go and live in Greece if they really want to? n.o.body forces them to live elsewhere, and they can hardly be waiting till Constantinople, Asia Minor and Cyprus are added to King George's kingdom. The truth is that in business Greek would rather not meet Greek; there is more money in meeting somebody else. The rich Greeks will always be found outside Greece.

CHAPTER VII.

CONSTANTINOPLE.

I am in Constantinople, founded 658 B.C. by Byza, King of Megara, after whom it was called Byzantium. After some hundreds of years it fell into the hands of the Romans, who, like the Scotch, kept everything they could lay their hands on; and then came Constantine the Great, whose mother, some people say, lived in East Anglia, who enlarged and beautified the city, built the Hippodrome (one of the wonders of the place), and would have made it the capital of his enormous empire. No one can blame the Emperor for preferring Constantinople to Rome.

The city soon became worthy to be the seat of empire. It commanded from its seven hills the opposite sh.o.r.es of Asia and Europe. The climate was healthy, the soil fertile, and the harbour capacious and secure. The Bosphorus and the h.e.l.lespont were its two gates, which could always be shut against a hostile fleet. A hundred years after its foundation, a writer, quoted by Gibbon, describes it as possessing a school of learning, a circus, two theatres, eight public and a hundred and fifty-three private baths, fifty-two porticos, five granaries, eight aqueducts, four s.p.a.cious halls for the meetings of the senate and courts of justice, fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, and four thousand three hundred private houses, which from their size and beauty deserved to be distinguished from the mult.i.tude of plebeian buildings. Successive wars and invasions impaired the wealth and the magnificence of the city. Of the time of Constantine little remains but the ruins of the Hippodrome.

The Christian Church of St. Sophia, which he erected to the Eternal Wisdom, and from the pulpit of which Gregory of n.a.z.ianzen and Chrysostom the golden-mouthed thundered, was burnt in the reign of Justinian, and his Church of St. Sophia is now a Turkish mosque. The city was the seat and centre of the controversies originated in Alexandria as to the nature of the Trinity, and its rival factions, the Greens and the Blues, were ever ready to engage in b.l.o.o.d.y and disastrous conflict. As a rule, a man's zeal is according to his ignorance, and at Constantinople the meanest mechanics spent most of their time in discussing mysteries of which the acutest intellects can never even form an adequate idea, and which no human creed can properly define and express. The Crusaders, who knew little of these matters, seem to have been quite awestruck when they made their way to Constantinople. 'That such a city could be in the world,' writes one of the old chroniclers, 'they had never conceived, and they were never weary of staring at the high walls and towers with which it was entirely compa.s.sed; the rich palaces and lofty churches, of which there were so many that no one could have believed it if he had not seen with his own eyes that city-the queen of all cities.'

There are few places naturally so picturesque-no city where the suburbs are so charming. One never wearies of Scutari, Gallipoli, washed by the splendid waters of the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, or those of that magnificent harbour, the Golden Horn, which extends eight miles, and affords an anchorage for a fleet of twelve hundred vessels. Indeed, whether viewed from sea or land, or from such a wonderful standpoint as the marble tower of the Seraskierat, Constantinople on its seven hills, divided as it were between Europe and Asia, presents a marvellous display of scenic beauty. You gaze on stately white palaces, surrounded by domes, towers, cupolas, standing amidst tier above tier of many-coloured dwellings, surrounded on all sides by graceful ma.s.ses of dark cypresses and sombre pines. High above all rises the grand marble mosque of St.

Sophia, resplendent with mosaics, and sending up heavenwards its lofty minarets, whence five times a day the cry of the muezzin calls the world to prayer. As you look and admire, you feel, with the poet,

'That every prospect pleases, And only man is vile'-

that is, ever since the Turk has been there. And thus it appears that Constantinople has been, socially and politically, a centre of abominations. It was in 1453 that Mahomet II. took it as his own, and it is there that the unspeakable Turk has ever since remained, and mainly in consequence of English diplomacy and the prodigal expenditure of English treasure and blood. The climax was reached in the days of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe-the Great Elchi, as he was termed. He insisted on reforms, and the Sultan granted them. He insisted that all religions should be equal in the eye of the law, and the precious boon was at once declared.

[Picture: A busy street in Constantinople. (From a photograph)] Under the pressure of the Great Elchi, the Sultan issued a proclamation, stating his desire of renewing and enlarging the numerous improvements suggested in his inst.i.tutions, with a view of making them worthy of the place which his empire held among civilized nations. He was anxious, he said, to promote the happiness of his people, who in his sight were all equal and equally dear. 'Every distinction or designation tending to make any cla.s.s of subjects of my empire inferior to any other cla.s.s on account of their religion, language, or race shall be for ever effaced.'

No one was to be hindered in future on account of his religious creed; no one was to be compelled to change his religion. Such was the spirit of the famous _hatti Humayun_ of 1856. Then came the Treaty of Paris, to destroy the influence of England in the East. The French cared nothing for Turkish reform, and have cared nothing ever since. Bulgarian atrocities, murder and ma.s.sacre in Cyprus, murder and ma.s.sacre on a larger scale in Armenia or wherever Armenians are gathered together-of these things the gay world of Paris takes little heed, except when an occasion offers to sneer at John Bull. What cares La Belle France, so long as it has its boulevards and theatres, for the deadly sufferings of any nationality? When did it ever fight for men and women dying by the thousand-ay, tens of thousands, under the despotic sway of a Sultan Abdul Hamid? France does not fight; its aim is to sneer at others and to glorify itself, to make better people as heartless, as cynical, as frivolous as itself. And are we much better-we, whose people, and n.o.bles, and courtiers, and statesmen, and princes, have just done throwing themselves under the feet of [Picture: A Mosque on the Bosphorus. (From a photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate)] the Czar?

Yes, but John Bull can act when he has a mind-that is, when he has his inferiors to deal with. It was beautiful when we brought Greece on her knees over the Don Pacifico affair! How bitterly we made China pay for her attack on the _Arrow_! How we settled the would-be Sultan of Zanzibar! How we have smitten the Dervishes hip and thigh! When I was in Ceylon, I had an interesting interview with Arabi Pasha. I left him hoping, and that is what we all do as regards Turkish affairs-hoping for what never comes.

In the Dardanelles we make our first acquaintance with the Turk. He arrives in a small steamer, with a crew of men wearing the red fez, and at the stern of his boat floats the red flag of Turkey, bearing the crescent. He gives us permission to pursue our way past the forts on either side at the mouth and along the Dardanelles, at the entrance to which point are lying off on our right the far-famed plains of windy Troy. I see also a couple of ironclads, but of what nationality I cannot exactly make out. We are soon out of the Dardanelles, and at Gallipoli, the last town on the European side, and we enter the Sea of Marmora. In current language, Constantinople includes Stamboul, Galata, and its suburbs, which stretch up both sides of the Bosphorus. Galata, the mercantile and shipping quarter, occupies the point and slopes at the right-hand side of the Golden Horn.

Constantinople looks best at a distance. It is true here that distance lends enchantment to the view. Outside it glitters with magnificence.

Inside it is foul and beastly, with pavements detestable to walk along or drive, with ruins at every corner, and with refuse [Picture: The Quay, Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] lying to fester in the blazing sun all day long-certainly a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of what Lord Palmerston affirmed, that dirt was only matter in the wrong place. If you drive you are choked with dust, and the streets are by no means broad enough for the constant business and bustle. Enter the mosques, and you are astonished at their grandeur and the air of desolation and neglect all round. On the waters you miss the gay caique, now superseded by the steam-ferries, ever vomiting clouds of sulphurous smoke. In the city you see the tramcar, a very shabby one, doing a roaring trade. Down by the harbour you see the police, well armed and in small detachments, carefully guarding the streets. The men, with the exception of the red fez, mostly wear the European costume. The women you see in the streets are old and ugly, and, happily, veiled, so that you see nothing of their ugliness but the nose and eyes. Some of the little urchins and girls are very bright-looking, but I fancy they are mostly Greeks. The Turkish boy of the middle cla.s.s seemed to me very heavy, but, however that may be, he develops into a fine man, with a grand dark face and powerful nose, and looks especially well when on his Arab steed-small, but active and strong, as if he were born to drive everyone before him. Alas! in his little shop he seems very listless and apathetic, but the man in the street is very pertinacious, and I have just bought an elegant walking-stick for half a crown, after being asked four shillings, which I hold to be the cheapest bargain I have made for some time.

We are quite mistaken in England as to the safety of walking the streets in Constantinople. I heard of a row last night, but by day the streets are quite as secure as they are in London. One thing that astonishes me is the utter ignorance of the people of what is going on outside respecting Turkish affairs, and the action, if any, of the diplomatists.

You never hear a word on the subject. To sell seems to be the only aim of the Turk. The shops are prodigious. In London their owners would be a great middle cla.s.s, and form an enlightened public opinion. Here they do nothing of the kind, and there is not a street that has a decent pavement nor a corner that is not a dunghill. There seems to be no attempt at improvement. The dogs-very much like Australian dingoes-bark and bite all day and howl all night. Confusion and decay seem to reign paramount. Now and then you come to an open s.p.a.ce-as at the old slave-market, the mosques, and the Hippodrome, where a few trees, chiefly acacias, manage to live, and then you plunge into Holywell Street as it existed half a century back, and all is darkness and dirt again.

Constantinople seems to live chiefly on corn imported from Roumelia and Bulgaria; but they say they are going to open up Asia Minor by means of railways, and the wheat-grower there will then have his chance. There are few liquor-shops, but many for the sale of lemon-and-water and grapes and melons. In many a shop I see Sunlight Soap and the biscuits of Huntley and Palmer and Peek and Frean. The donkeys and horses have an awful time of it as they go along the narrow streets, with panniers on each side, which appear to get in everyone's way. Then comes a rickety waggon, drawn by two big oxen, which seem as if they must grind the pedestrian to powder. Then follows the porter, perspiring and bending under his heavy load, and the aged crone, more or less veiled, as if she had-which she has not, unhappily-a glimpse of female charm to display.

Now and then you meet a priest with his red-and-white turban and long brown robe, and if you make your way into a mosque-and they are all worth visiting-there, in a little wooden recess, seated cross-legged on an Indian mat, you will find a priest or devout layman by himself, repeating verses of the Koran. The mosques are grotesque outside, but inspiring from their size inside.

Constantinople is not the place to come to on a hot November day, and the commercial port is, I hold, utterly unfit for shipping. We have a good deal of diarrhoea on board, nor can you wonder, when you remember that into this one spot flows all the filth and sewage of Galata. It is worse than Naples; it is worse than Athens, and that is saying a good deal.

Coleridge's Cologne, with its numerous stenches, is nothing to it. If there be any truth in sanitary science, there must be an awful waste of life in these parts. Here we hear not a whisper of the Turkish crisis, or of the driving out of the Turk, 'bag and baggage,' as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe wrote fifty years before Mr. Gladstone adopted the celebrated phrase. Be that as it may, Constantinople gives you an idea of a densely-populated city. It is with real difficulty that you make your way anywhere. The fat official Turk, who dines in some gorgeous palace-and the place is full of them-and drives in his brougham and pair, may have an easy time of it; but the majority of the inhabitants, in their narrow shops and darkened houses, must have a bad time of it. I sigh for the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest. Under this pestiferous atmosphere and bright, blazing sun, it is impossible to do anything but sleep; but that is not easy in one's small cabin, floating on this wide waste of sewage. There seems nothing to amuse the people. In the course of my peregrinations I met with but one minstrel, and he was far away. Next to the mosques, the coolest place I have yet visited is the new museum, with a [Picture: Galata Bridge, Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] fine collection of Greek and Roman and Egyptian antiquities; but I am no friend to a hurried visit to a museum, which leaves the mind rather confused and uninformed. As yet I have made no attempt to penetrate into the mysteries of the harem. For one thing, I am rather past that sort of thing. But if I may judge from what I have seen outside the harem, there can be but little to tempt one to enter within; and with the poet I exclaim, 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'

I fancy we are most of us tired of Constantinople. To me it is a place where a little sight-seeing goes a long way. Our gallant captain, on the contrary, tells me that he could put in three months here very well. As it is, there are about 2,000 English here, to say nothing of naturalized Greeks and Maltese. I suppose Constantinople is not a bad place for a short residence. The hotels are good, and in some you may have a bedroom for four francs a day. Provisions are not dear, but house-rent is very expensive. The population of the place is dense, at which I wonder, as Constantinople seems to me the most unhealthy city I have ever seen. The only nuisances are the guides, who will persist in following you everywhere, and whose knowledge of English and of the things you really want to know is very limited. For instance, I pa.s.sed two obelisks one day. I asked my guide about them. 'They come from Egypt,' was his reply. I could have told him as much myself.

If you need rest, seek it not in Constantinople, with its noisy crowds by day and its noisy dogs by night; seek it not in its narrow streets, where horses and a.s.ses and big bullocks, dragging along the most rickety of waggons, are ever to be seen; seek it not as you drive along its uneven and disgracefully-paved streets. The mosques are cool and s.p.a.cious-there you may rest; but if there is a service, you are not permitted to remain unless you are a Mohammedan. One advantage of the mosques is that there is generally a large open s.p.a.ce attached to them, where people can wash themselves and also hold a market. People seem to [Picture: An old street, Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] do much as they like, as they talk and smoke and play cards, and indulge in coffee or lemon-and-water. I have never yet seen a drunken man or-what is worse-a drunken woman, and yet an English lady, a clergyman's wife, told me that she only went on sh.o.r.e once, and was so shocked that she resolved never to set foot in the place again. The people were so degraded; the poor porters were so overburdened; and, then, they were all such awful idolaters. I presume the lady knows nothing of parts of London where worse sights are to be seen every day.

The Bosphorus is beautiful beyond description. It beats the Rhine, it beats the American Hudson; indeed, it is the grandest panorama in the world. At its back rise the green wooded hills, and the front is lined with pleasant villas and palaces-white or yellow, built in Turkish fashion, with innumerable windows everywhere. There must be great wealth in the district to build and support such places. Everywhere there is a great appearance of religion. Go into a mosque any hour you will, and you see a priest or layman sitting in a quiet corner, fenced with a wooden rail, cross-legged, repeating the Koran. One of the oddest sights I saw in the grand Mosque of St. Sophia was that of an old-fashioned London clock. One of my troubles as I explored the mosque-the floor of which is lined with Indian matting-was to keep on my Turkish slippers.

An attendant who followed me had to stoop down every minute to put them on, that I might not reveal the deck-shoes which I wore inside. A gentleman who had visited the mosque told me that on one occasion, when he took off a pair of new boots there which he was wearing, he never saw them again.

It is wonderful how cheap provisions are: beef, threepence a pound; bread, a halfpenny; grapes, a halfpenny; fowls for sevenpence; and mountains of melons everywhere. There is free education, and an abundant supply of schools. The labouring cla.s.ses are well employed. The English here are chiefly merchants or agents or engineers. On our way back we pa.s.s that favourite resort of the Turkish holiday-makers-the Valley of Sweet Waters-and have a good view of the hospital at Scutari, built by Florence Nightingale-now utilized as barracks-and of the monuments in front of the cemetery in memory of the British officers and soldiers who died during the Crimean War.

It is a relief to us all to get back into the Dardanelles and sail over the spot where Xerxes built his famous bridge, the narrow strait across which Leander swam nightly to visit his lady-love-a feat performed by our great poet Byron at a later age-and wander in fancy as we again catch sight of the plains of Troy, the spot where the Greek hero Protesilaus first struck the Trojan strand, and thus gave occasion to our Wordsworth to write his immortal poem-a poem that will be read and admired when all the puny poets of the present age are dead and forgotten. Out in the aegean Sea the weather is almost cool and delightfully refreshing, just like a fine morning in spring at home. The first isle of any importance we make is Tenedos, behind which, on the mainland, lies Troas, visited by the Apostle Paul. To the north lies Besika Bay, where once the French and English fleets a.s.sembled prior to their pa.s.sage of the Dardanelles, and where the British fleet, under Admiral Hornby, lay in 188788 during the Russo-Turkish War. Next we reach the ancient Lectum, the most westernly point of Asia, and get a glimpse of the beautiful island of Mitylene, the ancient Lesbos. Mitylene, on the east coast, is prettily situated, and does a considerable trade. There are few remains of the ancient city. The island has 115,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks.