The Argosy — page 227: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

213 REMEMBRANCES OF CONSTANTINOPLE. HOW A FIRST VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE STRIKES A STRANGER. HE days of Turkish rule in Europe are numbered. At any rate, stagnation, the special characteristic of Mohammedan dominion, can no longer sway the capital of a great empire, once the seat of learning and civilisation, Whatever may be the upshot of the perplexing “‘ Eastern Question,” there is no doubt that Western light cannot much longer be shut ont. A change, and a radical change, must come over Turkey. She must awake from her sleep, longer than that of the famous seven sleepers in the “ Gesta Romanorum ”—a sleep that has rested on her govern- ment and her people ever since the fatal day when Mohammed the Second planted the crescent over the walls of the ancient capital of the first Christian Emperor. Before light has been admitted into the narrow streets ; before turbans, slippers, and yashmaks have disappeared for ever; I ask my readers to peep with me at the City of the Sultan, over which I saw the sun rise one fine September morning. As I stood gazing from the deck of the steamer that had brought us from Malta my first emotion was one of disappointment. The air was chilly, the landscape enveloped in mist, behind which rose, darkly and indistinctly, the red houses of the town; and above them, like dim shadows, loomed the mosques. All was undefined— the picture was crowded and muddled, without a principal object. Slowly our vessel threaded its way amid craft of every description into the harbour, and one by one the half-awakened passengers retreated to the cabin. When, after about an hour, refreshed by breakfast, we again emerged on deck, we were passing “ Seraglio Point,” the mist had cleared off, and there burst upon us the full glory of a scene that has few rivals in the world. Springing, as it does, out of the waters, which wash the feet and enter beneath the walls of one of its finest palaces, Constantinople, at a first glance, has something unreal about it. I almost feared to close my eyes, lest, on opening them again, I should find the whole city had disappeared like the fairy scene in a pantomime. Would not those toy-like houses of all colours, red, blue, and green; those graceful minarets, so charming in their Oriental novelty.; those airy domes, clustered in bewildering profusion—would nof all comliichooks.com