Hardly were we well on board when a gray curtain seemed to stretch itself over Constantinople, upon which were portrayed the outlines of the Morravian and Hungarian Mountains and the Alps of Lower Austria. Such rapid changes of scene occur not infrequently upon the decks of outgoing steamers, where one is apt to recognize the features and hear beforehand the language of the country for which he is bound. On this occasion we found ourselves hemmed in by a circle of German faces and felt a premonitory breath of the cold and dampness of the North. Our friends have left us. Three white handkerchiefs fluttering from a distant kÄik show where they are threading their way through the dark mass of boats coming and going in front of the custom-house. We are in the same spot as that in which our Sicilian boat anchored on the day of our arrival. It is a lovely autumnal evening, clear and warm, and Constantinople has never appeared so vast nor so radiantly beautiful. Yet once again we endeavor to imprint upon our memories her mighty outlines, her matchless coloring, like that of an enchanted city, and for the last time drink in the unutterable beauties of the Golden Horn, so soon to be for ever hidden from our gaze. Now the white handkerchiefs have disappeared and our boat is in motion. Everything seems to have moved out of place: Skutari has come forward, Stambul stepped back, while Galata revolves around in a circle as though trying to see the last of us. Farewell to the Golden Horn! One forward bound of the vessel robs us of Kassim-Pasha, another carries off EyÛb, another the sixth hill of Stambul; then the fifth disappears, the fourth is hidden, the third vanishes, the second fades away; only the Seraglio Hill is left, and that—Heaven be praised!—will still remain to us for a little longer at least. Already we are in mid stream, advancing rapidly up the Bosphorus; TopkhÂneh flies by, then Fundukli, then the white and sculptured faÇades of DolmabÂghcheh; Skutari presents to us for the last time her amphitheatre of hills covered with gardens and villas.

Farewell, Constantinople, vast and dearly-loved city, dream of my childhood, desire of my youth, and unfading memory of my life! Farewell, exquisite and immortal queen of the Orient! May time soften thy lot without impairing thy beauty, and may my children one day greet thee with the same ecstasy of youthful enthusiasm with which I bid thee farewell!

The sadness of parting was, however, soon forgotten in the delight of finding a new Constantinople, even larger and more exquisitely lovely than the one we had left upon the banks of the Golden Horn, extending for about sixteen miles along the two most beautiful shores on earth.

The first village to come into sight upon our left—that is, upon the European shore—is Beshiktash, a large Turkish suburb of Constantinople, lying at the foot of a hill and enclosing a small harbor; behind it a charming valley—the ancient valley of the allori di Stefano of Byzantium—ascends in the direction of Pera; a group of plane trees rising in the midst of the houses marks the sepulchre of the famous corsair Barbarossa; and a large cafÉ, always crowded, extends out over the water supported on piles; the harbor is gay with kÄiks and other boats, the shore covered with people, the hillsides with verdure, and the valley filled with houses and gardens; but it is no longer like a suburb of Constantinople: already we note the distinctive character, the matchless radiance and charm peculiar to the villages along the Bosphorus; the objects are smaller, the foliage thicker, the coloring more brilliant: it is like a nest of smiling little houses suspended between sky and water, a tiny city inhabited by lovers and poets, only designed to last as long as the fires of passion or genius may burn, and placed there to gratify a whim on some fair summer’s night. Hardly have our eyes rested well upon it than it is already gone, and we find ourselves opposite the Cheragan palace, or rather row of white marble palaces, at once chaste and magnificent, adorned with long lines of columns and crowned with terraces and balconies, above which floats an airy cloud of innumerable white birds of the Bosphorus, standing out clearly against the brilliant foliage of the hillsides.

But now a most tantalizing experience begins. While our attention is concentrated upon one beautiful sight we are missing a thousand others. While we stand gazing at Beshiktash and Cheragan, the Asiatic shore, whose charming villages tempt one to buy and carry them off like jewels, is flying by. Kuzgunjik disappears, tinted with every color of the rainbow, where tradition says the heifer Io landed after swimming the Bosphorus in order to escape from the gad-flies of Hera; and Istavros, with its beautiful mosque and two minarets; and the imperial palace of Beylerbey, with its conical and pyramidal roofs and its gray and yellow walls, wearing the same strange, mysterious look that a convent of princesses might have; and then Beylerbey village, reflected in the water, with Mount BÛlgurlÛ rising behind it; and all those other villages, with houses grouped closely together or else scattered about at the foot of little bright green hills, and so overgrown with vegetation that it seems as though they would sink out of sight altogether. Long garlands of villas and little houses, and avenues of trees connect them, running along the bank or descending in zigzag lines from the neighboring heights to the water’s edge, through numberless flower and vegetable gardens, and meadows laid out in squares, connected by little flights of stone steps and bright with every conceivable shade of green.

Well, there is no help for it; we must resign ourselves to catching nothing more than a flying glimpse of it all, and can only get that by turning our heads from side to side with the monotonous regularity of automatons.

After leaving Cheragan behind, we see on our left the large village of Orta, above which appears the shining dome of the mosque erected by the ValidÉh Sultan, mother of Abdul-Aziz, and the graceful roofs of the palace of Riza-Pasha at the foot of a hill from whose summit the light and shining walls of the imperial kiosk of the Star peep out from amid a dense mass of foliage. Orta Keui contains the residences of a number of Greek, Armenian, and Frankish bankers, and as we passed, the Constantinople boat was in the act of landing her passengers. A crowd of persons went ashore, other crowds stood waiting to embark; there were Turkish and Armenian gentlemen, officers, monks, eunuchs, dandies, fezzes, turbans, hats like bushel-measures, little caps, all jumbled together—a scene similar to that which may be witnessed at any one of the twenty boat-landings along the Bosphorus, more especially toward evening. Opposite Orta Keui is the gay little village of Chengel—village of the anchor; from an old iron anchor found on its shore by Muhammad II.L It is surrounded by villas, while on the shore stands that imperial kiosk of infamous celebrity from which Murad IV., transported with envious rage, ordered the execution of those groups of country-people whom he saw passing happily through the fields singing as they went.

Turning again toward the shore of Europe, we find ourselves on a line with the pretty village and charming harbor of Kuru Chesmeh, the ancient Anaplus.M Here Medea landed with Jason and planted the famous laurel tree. Then, looking back again to Asia, we see the smiling villages of Kulehli and Vani spread out along the shore to right and left of a huge barrack whose reflection in the water resembles more that of a royal palace. Back of the two villages rises a hill whose summit is crowned by a large garden, in the midst of which, barely discernible among the branches of the trees, glimmers the white kiosk where Suleiman the Great passed three years of his life, hidden away in a little tower, to escape the spies and executioners of his father, Selim. While we are trying to identify the tower amid the trees the steamer has passed ArnaÛt-Keui—the Albanian village—now peopled by Greeks, whose houses surround a small bay in the European shore full of sailing vessels. But there is no use in attempting to see everything. One village draws away our attention from another; a beautiful mosque distracts us from an exquisite landscape; and while we are gazing at villages and harbors we have missed palaces of viziers, pashÂs, sultans, chief eunuchs, and other prominent persons; yellow, blue, and purple houses hung with vines and creepers, seeming to float upon the top of the waves or overflow with bloom, half buried in groves of cypress, laurel, and orange trees; buildings with Corinthian faÇades ornamented with rows of white marble columns; Swiss chÂlets, Japanese huts, little Moorish palaces, Turkish kiosks, whose three stories project one beyond the other, the grated galleries of their harems overhanging the Bosphorus, while little flights of stairs lead down to gardens washed by the waves. All the buildings are small, light, unsubstantial, corresponding precisely to the nature of the power wielded by those who inhabit them—the triumph of youth, the success of an intrigue, a high office which may be forfeited to-morrow, a glory doomed to end in exile, a fortune destined to evaporate, a greatness which will crumble away. There is hardly an unoccupied spot on the Bosphorus: it is like a sort of Grand Canal running through a huge rural Venice. Villas, kiosks, and palaces rise one behind the other, so placed as to leave the faÇade of each in view, those in the rear seeming to perch upon the roofs of those in front, while between and behind them is a mass of green, the tops and points of oaks, plane trees, maples, poplars, pines, and fig trees, through whose branches may be seen sparkling fountains and the gleaming domes of lonely tÜrbehs and solitary mosques.

Looking back at Constantinople, we can still make out, indistinctly, the Seraglio Hill and the huge dome of St. Sophia rising darkly against the gold and limpid background of the evening sky; meanwhile, ArnaÛt-Keui, Vani, Kulehli, Chengel, Orta have all disappeared, and our surroundings undergone an entire change. We now seem to be on an immense lake; to right and left on either shore there opens a little bay; around that on our left lies in a semicircle the pretty Greek town of Bebek shaded by lofty trees, among which stand a fine old mosque and the imperial kiosk of Humayun-Habad, where in former days the sultans used to grant secret audiences to foreign ambassadors; on one side the town is buried in the thick foliage of a little valley, on the other it climbs the steep ascent of a hill covered with oak trees and crowned by a grove famous for its echo, where the noise of a single horse’s hoofs resounds like the tramp of a regiment. The view here would throw a queen into raptures, and yet it is straight-way forgotten when we turn to look at the opposite shore. There, indeed, it is a veritable earthly paradise which is spread out before our eyes. Kandili, variegated as a town of Holland, with its white mosque and train of villas, describes a wide arc upon a bold promontory; behind it rises the flowery hill of IgiadiÉ, crowned by a battlemented tower where a watchman is stationed to keep a lookout for any appearance of fire on either shore. Two valleys open on the bay to the right of Kandili, and quite close together, called respectively Big and Little Blue River, and between them are the charming grounds of the Sweet Waters of Asia, planted with sycamore, oak, and plane trees, above which stands the magnificent kiosk erected by the mother of Abdul-Mejid in the style of the DolmabÂghcheh palace, surrounded by its gardens all red with roses. Beyond the “Large Blue River” may be seen the brilliant colors of Anadoli Hissar, built upon the side of a hill upon whose summit rise the graceful towers of the Bayezid Ilderim, which exactly faces the castle of Muhammad II. on the opposite shore.

At that hour this enchanting part of the Bosphorus is full of life and movement; hundreds of little boats cover the bays and inlets of the European shore; steamers and sailing vessels pass, bound for the harbor of Bebek; Turkish fishermen busy themselves with their nets suspended over the water from lofty poles and cross-beams; a throng of passengers disembark from the Constantinople boat upon the stairs of the European town—Greek gentlemen, Lazarists, students from the American Protestant college, and family parties laden with shawls and wraps. On the other side we can see with the aid of the glass parties of Mussulman ladies walking about beneath the trees of the Sweet Waters or seated in little groups on the banks of the “Blue Water,” while numberless kÄiks and small boats with awnings, filled with Turkish men or women, come and go along the shore. It is all so festive, so Arcadian, so irresistibly charming, that I feel as though I must fling myself overboard, and, swimming to one or the other of the two banks, plant myself there with the fixed determination, come what may, to live and die in the midst of that Mussulman paradise. All at once, with a new change of scene, such ideas take flight: the Bosphorus now stretches away directly ahead of us, with something of the look of the Rhine, only it is a modified, softened Rhine, decked with the gorgeous and varied coloring of the Orient. On the left a cemetery shaded by groves of cypresses and pines forms the first break in the hitherto uninterrupted chain of villages, and immediately after it, on the rocky sides of Mount HermÆon, rise the three large towers of Rumili Hissar, the Castle of Europe, surrounded by battlemented walls and lesser towers, covering the incline to the water’s edge with picturesque ruins. This is the renowned fortress erected by Muhammad II. a year before the conquest of Constantinople in defiance of the indignant remonstrances of Constantine, whose envoys, as every one knows, were sent back threatened with death by way of reply. This is the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, it being here only eight hundred and ten yards wide, and the current is consequently so swift that it has obtained the name of the “Great Current” from the Greeks and the “Devil’s Current” from the Turks. It was here that Mandrokles of Samos constructed the bridge of boats across which Darius conducted his seven hundred thousand soldiers, and, as it is supposed, that the “Ten Thousand” crossed on their return from Asia; but no trace can now be found either of the two pillars of Mandrokles nor of the rock-hewn throne of Mount HermÆon from whence the Persian king watched the passage of his army. A little Turkish village nestles at the foot of the castle, and the Asiatic shore stretches away in the distance, ever greener and more picturesque. There is an unbroken succession of boat-landings, little houses, gardens, tiny valleys overflowing with vegetation, small inlets across which the limbs of the gigantic trees which line their banks nearly meet, while beneath white-sailed fishing-boats pass slowly along on the placid surface of the water, and charming pleasure-grounds, gay with flowers, shelve gently down to the shore, or terraced gardens framed in verdure, while from the summits of the neighboring hills gleam the white stones of little cemeteries.

Next Kaneijeh comes unexpectedly into view, its red houses covering two rocky promontories on the Asiatic shore, against whose bases the waves break with a musical sound, while above, the minarets of its two charming mosques glisten among a dark mass of cypress trees and umbrella pines. Along here the gardens rise one above the other like terraces, and the villas recommence, among the latter being the marvellously beautiful palace of the celebrated Fuad PÂsha, poet and diplomat, vain, voluptuous, and charming, who has been called the Ottoman Lamartine. A little farther on we come to the pretty village of Balta LimÂn, situated at the opening of a small valley on the European shore, through which a narrow stream flows, emptying itself into the harbor. Above rises a hill whose sides are covered with villas, conspicuous among which is the ancient palace of Reshid PÂsha. Then comes the bay of Emir Ghian Oghlu Bagche, whose waters look green from the surrounding cypress trees, among which gleams, white as snow, a solitary mosque surmounted by a great globe with golden rays. The boat meanwhile approaches first one shore and then the other, close enough for us to distinguish clearly all the little details of the landscape. Now it is the vestibule of the selamlik of a wealthy Turk, opening on the water, in front of which a big majordomo is stretched upon a divan smoking; then a eunuch who stands upon the lowest step of a landing-stair assisting two veiled Turkish ladies into a kÄik; farther on an old Turk is seated cross-legged, meditating upon the Koran, at the foot of an immense plane tree, which shades a garden enclosed between green hedges; family parties are assembled upon the terraces of their country-houses; herds of sheep and goats feed upon high pasture-lands; horsemen gallop along the shore, and strings of camels pass across the brows of the hills, their strange, unfamiliar shapes outlined against the clear sky.

All at once the Bosphorus widens out, and the aspect of everything changes anew. Again we are between two bays, in the centre of a large lake: that on the left is narrow and deep, and around it lies the little Greek city of Stenia, formerly called Sosthenius from the temple and winged statue placed there by the Argonauts in honor of their tutelary genius, who had awarded them the victory in their encounter with Amycus, king of Bebryces. Thanks to the inward course of the steamer at this point, we are able to distinguish quite clearly the cafÉs and small, closely-built houses along the shore, the villas scattered about among their vineyards and olive trees, the valley opening up from the harbor, the cascade which falls from a neighboring height, and the celebrated Moorish fountain of pure white marble, shaded by a group of huge maple trees, from whose branches fish-nets are suspended above the groups of Greek women who pass back and forth carrying amphora upon their heads. Opposite Stenia, on the bay in the Asiatic coast, is the Turkish village of ChibÛkli, where the famous Monastery of the Sleepless once stood, whence prayer and praise ascended to Heaven without interruption day and night. Both shores of the Bosphorus from one sea to the other teem with associations connected with those fanatical monks and anchorites of the fifth century, who wandered over the hills and valleys laden with crosses and chains, wore hair-cloth and iron collars, and remained immovable for weeks and months at a time in the branches of a tree or upon the summit of a column, while princes, magistrates, soldiers, and churchmen prostrated themselves at their feet, fasting, praying, beating their breasts, imploring advice or a blessing as though seeking a favor from God.

The Bosphorus has, however, one striking characteristic, that of drawing away the thoughts of the traveller who passes through it for the first time, from the past to the present. All the associations, dreams, fancies, memories awakened by familiarity with its history or legends are put to flight, driven back by the extraordinary richness of the vegetation, the pomp of color, exuberance of life, and magnificent abandonment of nature, in which everything appears as though it were wreathed in smiles and decked for a fÊte. It is even difficult to realize that these same waters, these enchanting scenes, were the witnesses of those furious sea-battles when Bulgarians and Goths, Byzantines, Russians, and Turks fell upon one another, fought, bled, and were vanquished or overcame in turn; the very fortresses which frown from the heights fail to awaken a spark of that romantic horror which such ruins always inspire when seen at other places; they seem more like artificial adjuncts to the landscape than the stern and actual records of a past which has seen them vomit fire and death. Over all there hangs a veil of languor and quiescence which suggests no thoughts other than dreams of idleness and an immense longing for peace.

Beyond Stenia the Bosphorus becomes still wider, and in a few moments we are greeted with the finest of any of the views we have had up to this time. Looking toward Europe, we see directly before us the little Greek and Armenian city of Yeni, built upon the side of a hill covered with vineyards and groves of pine trees, and extending around in the shape of a bow above a rocky shore against which the current sweeps with great violence; a little beyond is the beautiful bay of Kalender, crowded with boats, surrounded by small houses with gardens; and garlanded with luxuriant vegetation, while overhanging it are the aËrial terraces of an imperial kiosk. Turning to the other shore, we find it curving in a large semicircle, above which rises a hill, and in the natural amphitheatre thus formed are a number of villages and harbors: Injir Keui—the Fig village—set in a circle of gardens; Sultanieh, half hidden in a forest; and the large village of Beikos, surrounded by kitchen-gardens and vineyards and shaded by tall walnut trees, whose buildings are reflected in the waters of the most beautiful gulf in the whole Bosphorus, the very spot on which the king of Bebryces was defeated by Pollux, and where the enchanted laurel tree stood whose branches caused all who touched them to become insane. Some distance beyond Beikos may be seen Yali, the ancient village of Amea, looking like a bunch of red and yellow flowers thrown down on a great green carpet. All of this, however, is but the merest sketch of that wonderful picture; to which must be added the indescribably soft lines of those lovely hills, looking as though made to stroke with the hand; the innumerable little nameless villages, which seem to have been thrown in here and there as the artist had need of them; that vegetation belonging to every climate; that architecture representing every land; those terraced gardens and cascades of water; the dark shadows, shining mosques, deep blue sea dotted with white sails, and over all that sky flushed by the setting sun. At this point, however, I was seized with that sensation of weariness and satiety which at some part or other of the Bosphorus is pretty sure to attack the traveller. The endless succession of soft lines and brilliant colors becomes tiresome, the very monotony of its beauty dulling one’s sense of enjoyment. You feel at last that it would be a relief to come upon some huge, rugged, misshapen mass of rock sticking out from the land, or even a long desert strip of coast, wild, desolate, strewn with the fragments of a wreck. There is nothing to do, then, but turn your attention to the water. The Bosphorus is like an enormous port: we pass close beneath the shining guns of the Ottoman men-of-war, through fleets of merchantmen from every country in the world, with sails of all colors, queerly-shaped bows, and crowds of foreign-looking men upon their decks; we meet and pass outlandish craft from the Asiatic ports of the Black Sea; beautiful little sloops belonging to the various embassies; gentlemen’s yachts shoot by like arrows from the bow, taking part in races which are witnessed from the shore by crowds of spectators; rowboats of every pattern, filled with persons of all colors, push off from the shore or draw up at the thousand landing-stairs of the two continents; kÄiks dart in and out among long lines of barges, heavily laden with merchandise, towing slowly up the stream; navy-launches flying flags from their sterns; fishermen’s rafts; gilded kÄiks belonging to wealthy pashas; and steamboats from Constantinople filled with turbans, fezzes, and veils, which zigzag back and forth from one continent to the other in order to touch at every landing. All these sights seem to revolve around us as the steamer pursues its winding course; the promontories shift their positions; the hills unexpectedly change their outlines; villages glide out of sight, to suddenly reappear with an entirely new aspect; and both in front and back of us the Bosphorus keeps altering its character: now it is shut in like a big lake; now it opens out into a long chain of smaller lakes, with hills in the distance; then suddenly the hills close in again before and behind, and we are encircled by a green basin from which there is no apparent outlet, but before there is time to exchange more than half a dozen words with a neighbor the basin has disappeared in its turn, and once again we find ourselves surrounded by new heights, new towns, new harbors.

We are now between the two bays of Therapia—formerly Pharmakia, from Medea’s poisons—and Hunkiar Iskelesi, or Landing-place of the Sultan, where the famous treaty of 1833 was signed which closed the Dardanelles to foreign fleets. At this spot the spectacle of the Bosphorus reaches the penultimate stage of its beauty. Therapia is the finest of the towns which grace its banks, after Buyukdereh, while the valley which extends behind Hunkiar Iskelesi is the greenest, most charming and romantic valley to be found from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea. Therapia is built partly upon a level strip of shore at the foot of a large hill, and partly around a deep bay, which forms its harbor and is filled with small boats and shipping. Back of it opens the narrow valley of Krio-nero, where more of the town is squeezed in between the green sides of the hills. The shore is dotted with picturesque-looking cafÉs extending out over the water, handsome hotels, gay little houses, and groups of lofty trees which shade open squares and marble fountains; back of these are the summer residences of the French, Italian, and English ambassadors, and beyond these, again, stands an imperial kiosk. All up the hillsides are terrace upon terrace, garden upon garden, villa upon villa, grove upon grove; people dressed in vivid colors crowd in and out of the cafÉs, stream over the harbor and shore and up the paths leading to the tops of the hills, just as though some great fÊte were in progress. The Asiatic shore, on the contrary, is tranquillity itself. The little village of Hunkiar Iskelesi, a favorite place of residence among the wealthy Armenians of Constantinople, sleeps quietly among its plane and cypress trees and about its diminutive harbor, on the bosom of whose waters a few boats may be seen gliding peacefully along. High above the village, upon the summit of a vast incline of terraced gardens, towers the solitary and magnificent kiosk of Abdul-Aziz, beyond which, again, extends the favorite valley of the pÂdishahs half hidden under dense masses of tropical vegetation and surrounded by a dreamy mystery.

All of this marvellous beauty, however, fades into nothing a mile farther on, when, the steamer having arrived off the Bay of Buyukdereh, we are confronted by the crowning, the supreme glory of the Bosphorus. Here he who has become weary of its beauty, and possibly allowed himself to give utterance to some irreverent criticism, is forced to bow his head and humbly beg for pardon. We are in the centre of a large lake, so surrounded and hemmed in by marvels of every description that there seems nothing for it but to begin spinning around in the bow, like dervishes, so as to see all the shore and all the hills at once.

On the European side, extending around a deep bay where the swift current dies away in gentle little waves, and below a large hill whose sides are dotted with innumerable villas, lies the town of Buyukdereh, large, colored like a huge bed of flowers, and entirely composed of small palaces, kiosks, and villas planted in the midst of a mass of vegetation of the most vivid green imaginable, which seems to pour out over the roofs and walls and overflow into the streets and squares. To the right the town extends as far as an inlet like a smaller bay in the large one, surrounded by the village of Kefeli; behind this a wide valley opens, green with meadows and sprinkled with white houses, following which one can reach the aqueduct of MahmÛd and the forest of BelgrÂd. Tradition says that the armies of the first Crusaders encamped in this valley in 1096, and one of the seven gigantic plane trees for which the spot is famous is called the plane tree of Godfrey de Bouillon. Beyond Kefeli Keni is still another small bay, colored with white and green reflections from the neighboring houses and trees, and beyond this, again, Therapia is visible scattered along the base of her dark-green hills.

Having allowed our gaze to wander thus far, we turn once more toward Asia, and find with astonishment that we are opposite the loftiest hill on the Bosphorus, the Giant’s Mountain, shaped like a huge green pyramid, on whose summit is the celebrated grave to which three separate legends have given the names, respectively, of “The Couch of Hercules,” “The Grave of Amycus,” and “The Tomb of Joshua.” It is now guarded by a couple of dervishes and visited by sick Mussulmans, who carry thither the rags of their clothing according to a practice in vogue among them. The forest-clad and vine-decked sides of the mountain extend to the very water’s edge, where, between two bright green promontories, lies the pretty bay of Umur Yeri, all streaked with the hundred different colored reflections of a Mussulman village on its shore, from which strings of villas and houses extend like wings across the adjoining fields or like masses of flowers thrown about at random. But the entire view is not confined to this body of water: directly ahead of us glimmers the Black Sea, and looking back toward Constantinople, we behold on the other side of Therapia, in the dim purple distance, the bay of Kalender, Yeni Keui, Injir Keui, and Sultanieh, looking far more like imaginary scenes from some dream-world than actual towns and villages.

The sun is setting: a delicate veil of pale blue and gray begins to fall over the European shore, but Asia is still bathed in golden light; across the sparkling water numbers of boats filled with married couples and lovers, excursionists from Constantinople, press toward the European shore, meet and stop one another, and overtake others filled with parents and children from the neighboring villas. Bursts of music and song come from the cafÉs of Buyukdereh; eagles circle above the summit of Giant’s Mountain, the white lights on the shore fly by, kingfishers gleam through the water, dolphins swim about the ship, the fresh wind of the Black Sea blows in our faces. Where are we? whither are we bound? It is a moment of rapture, of intoxication, in which the sights of the past two hours, both shores of the Bosphorus, all that we have felt and seen, melt and blend together in one glowing, rapturous vision of a single vast city ten times the size of Constantinople, peopled by all the nations of the earth, visited by every blessing from the Almighty, and given over to an endless series of feastings and merrymakings, the contemplation of which fills one with despairing envy.

This is our last vision. The steamer issuing rapidly from the bay of Buyukdereh, we see on our right a small inlet formed by the ancient promontory of Simas, upon which rose the temple of Venus Meretricia, for whom Greek sailors had an especial veneration; then comes the village of Yeni Mahalleh; then the fort of Deli Tabia, facing another small fort which is stationed on the opposite shore at the foot of Giant’s Mountain; next is the castle of Rumili Kavak, whose rugged outlines are clearly defined against the rosy sky tinged by the setting sun. Opposite Rumili Kavak stands another fort, crowning the point upon which rose the temple of the Twelve Gods erected by the Argive Phrygos near to one dedicated to Jupiter, the “distributor of favorable winds,” by the Chalcedons, and converted by Justinian into the church of Michael the Archangel. Here the Bosphorus narrows in for the last time between the outer spur of the Bithynian mountains and the extreme point of the Hemus chain. This was always considered the first place of importance in the strait to be defended from the north, and consequently has been the scene of many hard-fought battles between Byzantine and barbarian, Venetian, and Genoese fleets. Two ruined towers can be made out indistinctly marking the sites of the Genoese castles, which faced each other here, and between which an iron chain was stretched to stop the passage of unfriendly fleets. From this point the Bosphorus widens out to the sea, the banks grow high and steep like two huge ramparts, bare apparently, save for occasional groups of poor-looking houses, a solitary tower or two, the ruins of a monastery, or remains of some ancient mole. After proceeding for some distance we again see the gleaming lights of a village, BeuyÜk LimÂn, and opposite it others shine from the fort which stands upon the promontory of the Elephant. On our left is the great mass of rock called by the ancients Gypopolis, upon which rose the palace of Phineas infested by the Harpies, and on the right Poiras Point shows dim and indistinct against the gray sky. The two shores are now far apart, and the strait seems more like a wide gulf. Night is falling, and the sea-breeze whistles through the rigging, while the broad surface of the melancholy Mare Cimmerium stretches away before us gray and restless; and still we are unable to detach our minds from those wonderful scenes through which we have just passed, so crowded with romantic and historical associations, especially now, when our senses are no longer overpowered by the sight of their natural beauties. In fancy we explore that left shore as far as the foot of the Little Balkans, search for Ovid’s tower of exile and the marvellous Anastasian Wall; then, crossing to Asia, wander over a vast volcanic tract of land, through forests infested by wild boars and jackals, amid the huts of a savage and cruel people, whose sinister shadows we seem to see as they congregate upon the precipitous bank invoking disaster for us on the fera litora Ponti. The darkness is broken for the last time by two flaming points looking like the fiery eyes of two Cyclops set to guard the approach to that enchanted strait; they are Anadoli Fanar, the lighthouse on the Asiatic side, and Rumili Fanar, at whose feet the rugged profile of the Symplegades can be dimly discerned in the shadow of the banks. Then the coasts of Asia and Europe are merely two black lines, and then, Quocumque adspicias nihil est nisi Pontus et aer, as poor Ovid sang.

But I see her still, my beloved Constantinople, beyond those two fading shores. I see her larger and more radiant than she ever appeared when I gazed upon her from the ValidÉh Sultan bridge or from the heights of Skutari, and I talk with and salute and adore her as the last and fondest dream of a youth which is passing away. But a dash of salt water, striking me full in the face and knocking off my hat, rouses me abruptly from my dreams. I look around: the bow is deserted, the sky obscured, a raw autumnal wind chills me to the bone; poor Yunk, attacked by sea-sickness, has withdrawn; nothing is heard but the rattle of the ship’s lanterns and creaking of the vessel as she flies along, rocked and beaten by the waves, into the darkness of the night. My beautiful Oriental dream is ended.