with a great deal of expressive gesture, at which my friend seemed very provokingly amused. I sipped my coffee, and wondered what could have led one of these silent gray-beards into an amusing story, till a pause gave me an opportunity to ask a translation. Hearing that we were Americans, the Egyptian had begun by asking whether there was a superstition in our country against receiving back money in change. He explained his question by saying that he was in a café, at Tophana, when a boat's crew, from the American frigate, waiting for some one at the landing, entered, and asked for coffee. They drank it very quietly, and one of them gave the cafejee a dollar, receiving in change a handful of the shabby and adulterated money of Constantinople. Jack was rather surprised at getting a dozen cups of coffee, and so much coin for his dollar, and requested the boy, by signs, to treat the company at his expense. This was done, the Turks all acknowledging the courtesy by laying their hands upon their foreheads and breast, and still Jack's money lay heavy in his hands. He called for pipes, and they smoked awhile; but finding still that his riches were not perceptibly diminished, he hitched up his trousers, and with a dexterous flirt, threw his piastres and pares all round upon the company, and rolled out of the café. other sailors at this remarkable flourish, the old Egyptian and his fellow cross-legs had imagined it to be a national custom!

From the gravity of the

Idling along through the next village, we turned to admire a Turkish child, led by an Abyssinian slave. There is no country in the world where the children are so beautiful, and this was a cherub of a boy, like one of Domenichino's angels. As we stopped to look at him, the little fellow commenced crying most lustily.

"Hush! my rose !" said the Abyssinian, "these are good Franks! these are not the Franks that eat children! hush!"

It certainly takes the nonsense out of one to travel. I should never have thought it possible, if I had not been in Turkey, that I could be made a bugbear to scare a child!

We passed the tomb of Frederick Barbarossa, getting between the walls of the palaces on the water's edge, continual and incomparable views of the Bosphorus, and arrived at Beshiktash (or the marble cradle), just as the troops were drawn up to the door of the mosque. We took our stand under a plane-tree, in the midst of a crowd of women, and presently the noisy band struck up the sultan's march, and the led horses appeared in sight. They came on with their grooms and their rich housings, a dozen matchless Arabians, scarce touching the ground with their prancings! Oh, how beautiful they were! Their delicate limbs, their small, veined heads and fiery nostrils, their glowing, intelligent eyes, their quick, light, bounding action, their round bodies, trembling with restrained and impatient energy, their curved, haughty necks, and dark manes flowing wildly in the wind! El Borak, the mare of the prophet, with the wings of a bird, was not lighter or more beautiful.

The sultan followed, preceded by his principal officers, with a stirrup-holder running at each side, and mounted on a tamelooking Hungarian horse. He wore the red Fez cap, and a cream-colored cloak, which covered his horse to the tail. His face was lowering, his firm, powerful jaw, set in an expression of fixed displeasure, and his far-famed eye had a fierceness within its dark socket, from which I involuntarily shrank. The women, as.

he came along, set up a kind of howl, according to their custom, but he looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed totally

He was quite

unconscious of any one's existence but his own. another-looking man from the Mahmoud I had seen smiling in his handja-bash on the Bosphorus.

As he dismounted and entered the mosque, we went on our way, moralizing sagely on the novel subject of human happiness— our text, the cloud on the brow of a sultan, and the quiet sunshine in the bosoms of two poor pedestrians by the way-side.

LETTER XLIII.

Punishment of Conjugal Infidelity-Drowning in the Bosphorus-Frequency of its occurrence accounted for-A Band of Wild Roumeliotes-Their Picturesque Appearanco-Ali Pacha, of Yanina-A Turkish Funeral-Fat Widow of Sultan Selim-A Visit to the Sultan's Summer Palace-A Travelling Moslem-Unexpected Token of Home.

A TURKISH Woman was sacked and thrown into the Bosphorus this morning. I was idling away the day in the bazar and did not see her. The ward-room steward of the "United States," a very intelligent man, who was at the pier when she was brought down to the caique, describes her as a young woman of twentytwo or three years, strikingly beautiful; and with the exception of a short quick sob in her throat, as if she had wearied herself out with weeping, she was quite calm and submitted composedly to her fate. She was led down by two soldiers, in her usual dress, her yashmack only torn from her face, and rowed off to the mouth of the bay, where the sack was drawn over her without resistance. The plash of her body in the sea was distinctly seen by the crowd who had followed her to the water.

It is horrible to reflect on these summary executions, knowing as we do, that the poor victim is taken before the judge, upon the least jealous whim of her husband or master, condemned often upon bare suspicion, and hurried instantly from the tribuna!

SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.

361

to this violent and revolting death. Any suspicion of commerce with a Christian particularly, is, with or without evidence, instant ruin. Not long ago, the inhabitants of Arnaout-keni, a pretty village on the Bosphorus, were shocked with the spectacle of a Turkish woman and a young Greek, hanging dead from the shutters of a window on the water's side. He had been detected in leaving her house at daybreak, and in less than an hour the unfortunate lovers had met their fate. They are said to have died most heroically, embracing and declaring their attachment to the last.

Such tragedies occur every week or two in Constantinople, and it is not wonderful, considering the superiority of the educated and picturesque Greek to his brutal neighbor, or the daring and romance of Europeans in the pursuit of forbidden happiness. The liberty of going and coming, which the Turkish women enjoy, wrapped only in veils, which assist by their secrecy, is temptingly favorable to intrigue, and the self-sacrificing nature of the sex, when the heart is concerned, shows itself here in proportion to the demand for it.

An eminent physician, who attends the seraglio of the sultan's sister, consisting of a great number of women, tells me that their time is principally occupied in sentimental correspondence, by means of flowers, with the forbidden Greeks and Armenians. These platonic passions for persons whom they have only seen from their gilded lattices, are their only amusement, and they are permitted by the sultana, who has herself the reputation of being partial to Franks, and old as she is, ingenious in contrivances to obtain their society. My intelligent informant thinks the Turkish women, in spite of their want of education, somewhat remarkable for their sentiment of character.