LETTER XXXIV.

The Bosphorus-Turkish Palaces-The Black Sea-Buyukdore.

WE left the ship with two caiques, each pulled by three men, and carrying three persons, on an excursion to the Black Sea. We were followed by the captain in his fast-pulling gig with six oars, who proposed to beat the feathery boats of the country in a twenty miles' pull against the tremendous current of the Bosphorus.

The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves à la Turque, in the bottom of the sharp caique, and as our broad-brimmed pagans, after the first mile, took off their shawled turbans, unwound their cashmere girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered jackets, and with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample trousers to embarrass their action, commenced "giving way," in long, energetic strokes-I say, just then, with the sunshine and the west wind attempered to half a degree warmer than the blood (which I take to be the perfection of temperature), and a long, long autumn day, or two, or three, before us, and not a thought in the company that was not kindly and joyous-just then, I say, I dropped a "white stone" on the hour, and said, "Here is a moment, old Care, that has slipped through your rusty fingers'

You have pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless mark your cross on the future-but the present, by a thousand pulses in this warm frame laid along in the sunshine, is care-free, and the last hour of Eden came not on a softer pinion !"

We shot along through the sultan's fleet (some eighteen or twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they lie at anchor in this narrow strait, of a supernatural size), and then, nearing the European shore to take advantage of the counter-current, my kind friend, Mr. H., who is at home on these beautiful waters, began to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with many a little history of their occupants between, to which in a letter, written with a traveller's haste, and in moments stolen from fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep, I could not pretend to do justice.

The Bosphorus is quite there can be no manner of doubt of it-the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets, and its hundred small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses and turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretching back into the hills, of which every summit and swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide, and the palaces of the sultan and his ministers, and of the wealthier Turks and Armenians, are built half over the water, and the ascending caique shoots beneath his window, within the length of the owner's pipe; and with his own slender boat lying under the stairs, the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cushions of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which bears him (so built

on the water's edge is this magnificent capital) to almost every spot that can require his presence.

A beautiful palace is that of the "Marble Cradle," or Beshiktash, the sultan's winter residence. Its bright gardens with latticed fences (through which, as we almost touched in passing, we saw the gleam of the golden orange and lemon trees, and the thousand flowers, and heard the splash of fountains and the singing of birds) lean down to the lip of the Bosphorus, and declining to the south, and protected from everything but the sun by an enclosing wall, enjoy, like the terrace of old King René, a perpetual summer. The brazen gates open on the water, and the palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the oriental style, of a bright pink, stands between the gardens, with its back to the wall.

The summer palace, where the "unmuzzled lion," as his flatterers call him, resides at present, is just above on the Asian side, at a village called Beylerbey. It is an immense building, painted yellow, with white cornices, and has an extensive terracegarden, rising over the hill behind. The harem has eight projecting wings, each occupied by one of the sultan's lawful wives.

Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the European shore, stands the serai of the sultan's eldest sister. It is a Chinese-looking structure, but exceedingly picturesque, and like everything else on the Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene. There is not a building on either side, from the Black Sea to Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries; and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation perspectives, lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks, seem as naturally the growth of the climate as the pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid

sultana lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of condition, a little empress in an empire sufficiently large (for a woman), seeing no bearded face, it is presumed, except her black eunuchs' and her European physician's, and having, though a sultan's sister, less liberty than she gives even her slaves, whom she permits to marry if they will. She can neither read nor write, and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish.

A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantastical little palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sultana, who is to be married to Haleil Pacha, the commander of the artillery. She is about twenty, and, report says, handsome and spirited. Her betrothed was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favoritism. By the laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he is to be banished to a distant pachalik after living with his wife a year, his connexion with blood-royal making him dangerously eligible to the throne. His bride remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if she has one), and lives the remainder of her life in a widow's seclusion, with an allowance proportioned to her rank. His consolation is provided for by the mussulman privilege of as many more wives as he can support. Heaven send him resignation-if he needs it notwithstanding.

The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a handsome palace on the same side of the Bosphorus; and the Armenian seraffs, or bankers, though compelled, like all rayahs, to paint their houses of a dull lead color (only a mussulman may live in a red house in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that of the sultan himself. They have a singular effect, those black, funereal

houses, standing in the foreground of a picture of such light and beauty!

We pass Orta-keni, the Jew village, the Arnaoutkeni, occupied mostly by Greeks; and here, if you have read "the Armenians,” you are in the midst of its most stirring scenes. The story is a true one, not much embellished in the hands of the novelist, and there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands the house of the heroine's father, the old seraff Oglou, and, behind the garden, you may see the small cottage, inhabited, secretly, by the enamored Constantine, and here, in the pretty village of Bebec, lives, at this moment, the widowed and disconsolate Veronica, dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately refusing all society but her own sad remembrance. I must try to see her. Her "husband of a night" was compelled to marry again by the hospidar, his father (but this is not in the novel, you will remember), and there is late news that his wife is dead, and the lovers of romance in Stamboul are hoping he will return and make ? happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The "orthodox catholic Armenian, broker and money-changer to boot," who was to have been her forced husband, is a very amiable and goodlooking fellow, now in the employ of our chargé d'affaires as second dragoman.

We approach Roumeli-Hissar, a jutting point almost meeting a similar projection from the Asian shore, crowned, like its vis-a-vis, with a formidable battery. The Bosphorus here is but half an arrow-flight in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their nearest approach, stand looking each other in the face, like boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and a most formidable row of teeth on either side. The current scampers through between the two castles, as if happy to get out of the way, and,