The Near East / Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

distressed me. For days I could not release myself from the obsession of its angry tumult. Much of it seems to be in a perpetual rage, pushing, struggling

Arabs, Turks? They have no time or desire to be courteous, to heed any one but themselves. They push you from the pavement. They elbow you in the road. Upon the two bridges they crush past you, careless if they tread upon you or force you into the mud. If you are in a caique, traveling over the waters of the Golden Horn, they run into you. Caique bangs into caique. The boatmen howl at one another, and somehow pull their craft free. If you are in a carriage, the horses slither round the sharp corners, and you come abruptly face to face with another carriage, dashing on

eption of what the spectacular monster really was, what it wanted, what it meant, what it was about to do, I had at length fallen asleep toward dawn, I was wakened by a prolonged, clattering roar beneath my windows. I got up, opened the shutters, and looked out. And below me, in the semi-darkness, I saw interminable lines of soldiers passing: officers on horseback, men tramping with knapsa

atures uneasily housed in one perturbed body. These two natures were startlingly different the one from the other. One was to me hateful-Pera, with Galata touching it. The other was not to be understood by me, b

no discipline. Motor-cars make noises there even in the dead of night, and when standing still, such as I never before heard or imagined. They have a special breed of cars in Pera. Bicyclists are allowed to use motor sirens to clear the way before them. One Sunday when, owing to a merciful strike of the coachmen, there was comparative calm, I saw a boy on horseback going at full gallop over the pavement of the Grande Rue. He passed and repassed me five times, lashing his horse till it was all in a lather. Nobody stopped him. You may do anything, it seems, in

CONSTANTINOPLE

o watchfulness, no swiftness of action, can prevent flames from continually sweeping through Stamboul, leaving waste places behind them, but dying at the feet of the mosques. As one looks at Stamboul from the heights of Pera, it rises on its hills across the water, beyond the sea of the Golden Horn, like a wonderful garden city, warm, almost rud

at it has known! What a core of red violence that heart has and always has had! When the sunset dies away among the autumnal houses and between the minarets that rise above the city like prayers; when the many cypresses that echo the minarets in notes of dark green become black, and the thousands of houses seem to be subtly run together into a huge streak of umber above the lights at the waterside; when S

WHICH CONNECTS

he Galata tower, set up by the Genoese, I think of it as the most wonderfu

and of the European Powers: Yildiz, and Dolma bagtché, Beylerbey, and Cheragan, the great palace of the Khedive of Egypt's mother, with its quay upon the water, facing the villa of her son, which stands on the Asian shore, lifted high amid its woods, the palace of the "sweet waters of Asia," the gigantic red-roofed palace where Ismail died in exile. Farther on toward Therapia, where stand the summer embassies of the Powers, Robert College, dignified, looking from afar almost like a great gray castle, rises on its height above its sloping gardens. Gaze from any summit upon Constantinople, and you are amazed by the wonder of it, by the wonder of its setting. There is a vastness, a glory of men, of ships, of seas, of mountains, in th

to fretful wavelets, on which the delicate pointed caiques swayed like leaves on a tide. Opposite to me, at the edge of Stamboul, the huge Mosque of Yeni-Validé-Jamissi rose, with its crowd of cupolas large and small and its prodigious minarets. Although built by two women, it

rose to my sight and hurried away; to them crowds of people descended, sinking out of my sight. Soldiers and hamals passed, upright and armed, bending beneath the weight of incredible loads. Calls of Albanian boatmen came up from the sea. From the city of closely packed fishermen's vessels rose here and there little trails of smoke. On their decks dim figures crouched about wavering fires. A gnarled beggar pushed me, muttering, then whining uncouth words. Along the curving shore, toward the cypress-crowned height of Eyub, lights were strung out, marking the waterside. Behind me tall Pera began to glitter meretriciously. The Greek barbers, I knew, were standing impudently before the doors of their litt

F STAMBOUL WITH P

your constant consciousness of the traffic of the sea, embraced by it, almost mingling with it. Water and wind, mud and dust, cries of coachmen and seamen, of motor-cars and steamers, and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers passing, always passing. Through a window-pane you catch a glitter of jewels and a glitter of Armenian eyes gazing stealthily out. You pass by some marble tombs sheltered by weary trees, under the giant shadow of a mosque, and a few steps farther on you look through an arched doorway and see on the marble floor of a dimly lighted hall half-naked men, with tufts of bl

or three silent men may be sitting under a vine by a shed, which is a Turkish café. There is no sound of steps or of voices. One has no feeling of being in a great city, of being in a city at all. Little there is of romance, little of that mysterious and exquisite melancholy which imag

STEP STREET,

I have seen on certain booths in the East End of London, but they were surrounded with a certain pomp and dignity, with a curious atmosphere of age. Some parts of the bazaars are narrow. Others are broad and huge, with great cupolas above them, and, far up, wooden galleries running round them. Now and then you come upon an old fountain of stained marble and dim faience about which men are squatting on their haunches to wash their faces and hands and their carefully bared arms. The lanes are

e surrounded this "old master" of the East. We bargained. The merchant's languages were broken, but at length I understood him to say that the cap was a perfect likeness. I retorted that all the dervishes' caps I had seen upon living heads were the color of earth. The merchant, I be

old, and you can eat the breasts of chickens cooked deliciously in cream and served with milk and starch, I have watched these subtle truants passing in their pretty disguises suggestive of a masked ball. They lo

ITERS IN A CONST

it, perhaps rather steadily, when, evidently aware of my glance, she turned slowly and deliberately round. For two or three minutes she faced me, looking to right and left of me, above me, even on the floor near my feet, with her large and beautiful blue-gray eye

cs!" And the little hanum surely moved her thin shoulders contemptuously. But her elderly companion pulled at her robe, and slowly she moved away. As the two women lef

sure of its influence. All those wooden houses, silent, apparently abandoned, shuttered-streets and streets of them, myriads of them! Now and then above the carved wood of a lattice I had seen a striped curtain, cheap, dusty, hanging, I guessed, above a cheap and dusty divan. The doors of the

Stamboul. If you stay here, you will be quite alone." But the old Turk knew very well that al

a lover was dictating a letter to a scribe, who squatted before his table, on which were arranged a bright-blue inkstand and cup, a pile of white paper, and a stand with red pens and blue pencils. Farther on, men were being shaved, and were drinking coffee as they lounged upon bright-yellow sofas. Near me a very old Turk, with fanatical, half-shut eyes, was sitting on the ground and gazing at the pink feet of the pigeons as they tripped over the pavement, upon which a pilgrim to the mosque had just flung some grain. As he gazed, he mechanically fingered his rosary, swiftly shifting the beads on and on, beads after beads, always two at a time. Some incense smoldered in a three-legged brazier, giving out its peculiar and drowsy smell. On the other side of the court a fruit-seller slept by a pil

lmost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque

D OF THE "PI

ives access to the courtyard behind the mosque. The sultan has therefore a choice of two routes, and nobody seems to know beforehand which way he will come. There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgri

nto the inclosure. They stood still, then dropped their instruments on the ground, moved away, and sat down on the bank, lolling in easy attitudes. Time slipped by, and important people strolled in, officers, court officials, attendants. Eunuchs shambled loosely past in wonderfully fitting, long frock-coats, weari

light of steps on the left of the porch, more eunuchs went by, more Gladstone bags were carried past me. Then came soldiers in yellowish brown, and palace officials in white and blue, with red collars. Two riding-horses were led by two grooms toward the back of the mosque. The musicians rose languidly from the bank, took up their instruments, turned round, and faced toward Yildiz. Through the crowd, like a wind, went that curious stir which alwa

w within a few paces of me, sitting alone in the victoria in a curious, spread-out attitude, a bulky and weary old man in a blue uniform, wearing white kid gloves and the fez. He was staring straight before him, and on his unusually large fair face there was no more expression than there is on a white envelop. Women twittered. Men saluted. The victoria stopped beside the bright-yellow carpet. After a moment's pause, as if emerging from a sort of trance, the Calif of Islam got up and

with green-and-red saddle-cloths; their blood-red flag was borne before them, and their own music accompanied them. The soldiers in yellowish brown had piled arms and were standing at ease, smoking and talking. Twenty minutes perhaps went by, then a Gladstone bag was carried out of the mosque. We all gazed at it with reverence. What was in it? Or, if there was nothing, what had been recently taken out of it? I never shall know. As the bag vanished, a loud sound of singing came from within, and a troop of palace guards in vivid-red uniforms, with white-

ing swiftly the salutes of the people. The brougham was drawn up before the bright-yellow carpet. Nazim Pasha once more s

was a ver

n is takin

ive minut

tan is s

eriously of departing in peace; but a Greek friend

wake and is chan

omising, and I

NE IN CONS

ing almost to ripple beneath the weight of his body, and stepped heavily into the brougham, which swung upon its springs. The horses moved, the carriage passed close to me, and again I gazed at this mighty sovereign, while the Eastern pilgrims salaamed to the ground. Mechanically he saluted. His large face was still unnaturally blank, and yet somehow it looked kind. And I felt that this old man was weary and sad, th

s going out into the country t

aps; but to d

e white envelop, and the most expressive pe

THE CITY

YENI-VALIDé-JAMI