The Near East / Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

ugliness, grandeur and squalor, purity and filth, silence and uproar, the most delicate fascination and a fierceness

e courts and gardens of historic tombs; the strange and forgotten Byzantine churches, lost in the maze of wooden houses; the cemeteries vast and melancholy, where the dead sleep in t

and of his prophet. I shall not easily forget my disappointment when I stood for the first time in its shadow. I had been on Seraglio Point, and, strolling by the famous Royal Gate to look at the lovely f

a Sop

ecting roof and its fretwork of gold, its lustrous blue and gree

I feared perhaps a deeper disappointment-I went into the mosque by the Porta Basilica, and found myself in the mid

I had this exact feeling, that space had surely taken an inevitable form and was announcing itself to me. I stood benea

LEADING TO TH

in luminous distances, pausing, bending, kneeling; a ray of light falling upon a white turban; an Arab in a long pink robe leaning against a column of dusky red porphyry; a dove

f a child d

definitely religious. It echoed along the walls of marble, which seemed to multiply it mysteriously, adding to it wide murmurs which were carried through all the building, into the dimmest, remotest recesses. It became in my ears as the deep-toned

Porta Basilica you have an impression of pale yellow, gold, and gray; of a pervading silvery glimmer, of a pervading gleam of delicate primrose, brightl

d glass, so the mosque is not dark. It has a sort of lovely and delicate dimness, touching as the dimness of twilight. It is divinely calm, almost as Nature can be when she would bring her healing to the unquiet human spirit. We know that during the recent war Santa So

the domes. Galleries, supported by marble arcades, and leaning on roofs of dim gold, run round a great part of the mosque; which is subtly broken up, and made mysterious, enticing, and various by curved recesses of marble, by innumerable arches, some large and heavy, some fragile and delicate, by screens, and by forests of columns. Two-storied aisles flank the vast nave, through which me

ay pulpit, with its long staircase of marble closed by a gold and green curtain, and its two miraculously beautiful flags of pearly green and faint gold, by age made more wonderful than when they first flew on the battle-field, or were carried in sacred processions; the ancient prayer-rugs fixed to the walls; the Sultan's box, a sort of long gallery, ending in a kiosk with a gilded grille, and raised upon marble pillars; the great doors and the curtains of dull red wool; the piled carpets that are ready against the winter

UE OF SA

ailed-in platforms covered with matting, called mastaba, which are characteristic of mosques, and which are supposed to be for the use of readers of the Koran. Then they are free of the mosque. Some of them wander from place to place silently gazing; others kneel and pray in some quiet corner; others study, or sing, or gossip, or sink into reverie or slumber. Many go up to the mastaba, take off their outer garments and hang them over the rails, hang their handkerchiefs beside them, tuck their legs

ite marble walls, in the mellow dimness, while Stamboul just outside is buying and selling, is giving itself to love and to crime, the murmur of Islam's devotion steals almost perpetually, mysterious as some faint and wide-spread sound of Nature. The great mosque seems to be breathi

Y OF EYUB, ON

not al

eep and monotonous voices were very persistent in prayer. And the echoes, like secret messengers, bore the sound along the arcades, carried it up into the vast space of the dome, under the transverse arches and the vaulted openings of the aisles, past the faint Christ on the wall, and the "Hand of the Conqueror," with horrible outspread fingers, the Sweating Column, and the Cradle of Jesus, to the child in the blood-red rags. He stood there where Theophilus entered, under the hidden words, "I am the Light of the World," gazing, listening, unconscious of the marvelous effect his little figure was making, the one absolutely detached thing in the mosque. The doves flew over his hea

, blood-stained tunics and cloaks, saddles, weapons, and buttons. Among relics from Yildiz Kiosk was a set of furniture which once belonged to Abdul Hamid, and which he is said to have set much store by. It shows a very distinctive, indeed a somewhat original taste, being made of red plush and weapons. The legs of the tables and chairs are guns and revolvers. As I looked at the chairs I could not help wondering whether ambassadors were invited to sit in them, after t

OF SANT

r Christian or Mussulman but fatally Madame Tussaud. Once they tucked up their coats to fight for the "Father" who had ravished them away from their fathers in blood. Now, even the wicked man, who flees when no one pursueth, could scarcely fear them. Near them the chief eunuch, a plump and piteous gentleman, reclines absurdly upon his divan, holding his large black pipe, and obsequiously attended

were giving me information about the Janissaries, and Orchan, who was the founder of that famous corps. I responded as well as I could with gestures, which seemed to satisfy them, for they kept close beside me, and one, a gigantic fellow with pugnacious mustaches, frequently touched my arm, and once even took me by the hand to draw my attenti

the Golden Horn, Galata, and Pera, lie the many buildings and courts of the Old Seraglio, fairy-like in their wood. The snowy cupolas, the minarets, and towers look ideally Eastern. They suggest romantic and careless lives, cradled in luxury and ease. In that white vision one might dream away the days, watching from afar the pageant of the city and the seas, hearing from afar the faint voices of the nations, listening to strange and monotonous music, toying with coffee and rose-leaf jam in the jewel-like Kiosk of Bagdad, and dreaming, always dreaming. There once the Sultan dwelt in the Eski-Serai, which exists no longer,

nderful tiles which cover the wall on either side of the mihrab. Somber and dark, earth-colored and gray, dark-green and gold, it has a poorly painted cupola and much plastered stone which is ugly. But there is fascination in its old dimne

CHURCH, NOW A MOS

ment his science, and who could not be vulgar even in his most animated moments of invention. Massiveness and grace are blended together in this beautiful exterior. Round the central dome multitudes of small domes-airy bubbles thrown up on the surface of the mosque-are grouped with delightful fantasy. Four minarets, the two farthest from the mosqu

shared the throne of the sultan, who guided his feet in the ways of crime, and who to the day of her death was adored by him. For Roxalana's sake, Suleiman murdered his eldest son by another wife, and crept out from

birds should go thirsty. A vine straggles over a wall near by; weeds and masses of bright yellow flowers combine their humble efforts to be decorative; and the call to prayer drops down from the mighty minarets to this strange garden of stones, yellow flowers, and wee

forever incite to intrigue, to lawlessness, to bloodshed? The muezzin calls to prayer, but from old Stamboul arises another voice sending forth an opposing summons. Suleiman heard it echoed by Roxalana, and slew his son; Roxalana heard and obeyed it; and how many others have listened and bee

of the arcade gleams with lustrous faience, purple and red, azure and milk-white, and with patterns of great flowers with green centers and turquoise leaves. I recall, too, the Mosaic Mosque, once the church of the monastery of the Chora, which stands on a hill from which Stamboul looks like a beautiful village embowered in

almost inordinate sense of humor. As he pointed out the mosaics to me with his wrinkled hand he abounded in comment, and more than once his thin voice was almost overwhelmed by ill-suppressed laughter. He seemed spe

tans are solemnly girded with Osman's sword instead of being crowned. Eyub is a place of tombs. Chief eunuchs and grand vizirs sleep near the sea in great mausoleums inclosed within

ATA FROM END OF BRI

rice and fat mutton, cooked on a spit which revolved in the street. If you stray from the center of the village toward the outskirts you find yourself in a deserted rummage of tombs, of white columns, white cupolas, cloisters, rooms for theological students, mausoleums of white and pink marble. No footsteps resound on the pavement of the road, no voices are heard in the littl

b, but failing in their journey a little below the muezzin's balcony. They were cypresses, and creepers climbed affectionately with them. Just beyond them I came into the court of the mosque, and found myself in the mids

pilgrims, I presently stood in front of this aperture, and was about to peep in discreetly when a curtain was sharply drawn across it by some one inside. I waited for a moment, but in vain; the curtain was not drawn back,

ared at me with open hostility. I thought it wiser, therefore, to make only a cursory examination of the handsome marble interior, with its domes and semi-domes, and afterward, with a sense of relief, took my way up the hillside, to spend an hour among the leaning gra

hearts because of the sleeper beneath it. The old Turk rolled a cigarette in his knotty fingers, looking dreamily down at the child, who sat with his little legs under him silently staring at the water below, upon which no vessels, no caiques were moving. On the bare hill to my left I saw the white gleam of the stones in a Jewish cemetery; and, beneath, the pale curve of the Golden Horn, ending not far off in the peace of the

esignation to the inevitable. Their dilapidation suggests rather than mere indifference a sense of the uselessness of care. Dust unto dust-and there an end! But far off in Stamboul

INOPLE SHOWING THE M

rom the coast to mysterious places in the interior of Asia. In the excellent restaurant beer flows freely. If the mystic word "Verboten" were not absent from the walls, one might fancy himself in Munich on entering the station at Haidar Pasha. On the hill just above the station lies the English cemetery, a delightful garden of rest, full of hope and peace. It is beautifully kept, and contains the home of the guardian, a British soldier, who lives with his wife and daughters in a cozy stone bungalow fronted by flower-beds and trees. Close to his house is a grav

at shed over there and am prepa

and dexterously to scatte

s of soldiers who died of wounds received in the Crimean War, or of maladies caught in camp and in

ed walls, above which the towers rose up grimly toward the windy sky; I penetrated through narrow corridors of stone; I crawled through gaps and clambered over masses of rubble and fallen masonry; I visited tiny and sinister chambers inclosed in the thickness of the walls; peered through small openings; came out unexpectedly on terraces. And the old man muttered and mumbled in my ears, monotonously and without emotion, the history of crime connected with the place. Here some one was starved to death; here another was strangled by night; in this chamber a French ambassador was held captive; the blood of a sultan dyed these stones red; at the foot of this bit of wall there was a massacre; just there some great person was blinded. And, with the voice in my ears, I looked and I saw white bu

h of the voices of the city. Even the ancient man was silent at last. He had recited all the horrors his old memory contained, and at my s

ung girl, very thin, her black hair hanging and bound with bright handkerchiefs, sketching vaguely a danse du ventre. As I looked she became more precise in her movements, and her cries grew more fierce and imperative. From some hovel, hidden among the walls, other children streamed out, with cries and contortions, to join her. For here, among

riber'

ve been repaired. Other unusual period spe

kings were removed in the text version, b

of "mastaba;" origi