The Argosy — page 228: what you’re looking at

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

214 Remembrances of Constantinople, these melt into air, and, “like the baseless fabric of a vision,” dissolve, and leave not a wreck behind ? I was too entranced to speak. Mechanically I nodded assent, as a kind, loquacious “ compagnon de voyage,” willing to do the honours of the landscape, pointed to the shore, and said : “That on the left is Stamboul, the true Turkish city. See, its houses rise like an amphitheatre, tier above tier, crowned by the mosques with tall minarets, whose warning points stand high above the earth, directing the imagination heavenward. ' Some of the mosques have as many as eight of these elegant monitors ; for any pious person may build one, provided he endow it with funds to pay a muezzin or servant of the mosque, who, from its highest gallery, calls, with shrill cries, the faithful to prayer. Observe those old walls that have stood many a siege. They enclose Stamboul within a triangle. The stream beneath us, the Golden Horn, washes the north side of the triangle. That palace. standing out into the water is called ‘Seraglio Point.’ There terminates the sea of Marmora. To your right, on the other side of the Golden Horn, you see Pera, the Frank quarter, between which and yonder Asiatic Scutari flows the never-ceasing current of the historic Bosphorus.” I was not sorry when the stream of my companion’s eloquence was diverted into another channel. How could I enter into details, while every faculty was absorbed in admiration of the dazzling beauty of the scene before me ? As at the first glance, so do I now feel, at the latest retrospect, that the predominant impression made by Constantinople is its brightnéss, its colour. Sky, sea, houses, people, all are bright; a very kaleido- scope of tints. All the hues of the rainbow were flashed before us, as swift caiques, with gaily-clad freights, darted under our bows. Some of these boats, conveying great Pachas from their marine palaces on the Bosphorus to the city, were resplendent with paint and gilding. They were often rowed by ten or a dozen boatmen, who rose to their feet and sat down again at every stroke of the oars, and wore dark baggy trowsers and white shirts, made of that [Eastern material that looks like lace insertion. Large barges passed us conveying solemn-looking Turks by fifties and sixties ; government employés, in dark blue coats and red fezes, who were on their way to their offices. At.last we ourselves and our belongings were transferred to a small boat, and landed at Tophana, the Wapping of Pera. - Before we were permitted to disembark, a custom-house official, with bare legs, and wearing a pink shirt and a dark blue cloak with a red lining, came, and, squatting himself at the end of the boat, ordered sundry of our packages to be unlocked! ' Instead,’ however comichooks.com