soundly that I had been perfectly unconscious of the duration
of the voyage; and I landed on the quay congratulating myself on having
accomplished the most dangerous and most rapid expedition that it ever
was my fortune to undertake.

MONASTERIES OF THE LEVANT.

PART IV.

THE MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS.

[Illustration: THE NORTH WEST SIDE OF THE PROMONTORY OF MOUNT ATHOS,
WITH A VIEW OF THE THE MONASTERY OF PANTOCRATORAS]

CHAPTER XXII.

Constantinople--The Patriarch's Palace--The Plague, Anecdotes,
Superstitions--The Two Jews--Interview with the
Patriarch--Ceremonies of Reception--The Patriarch's Misconception
as to the Archbishop of Canterbury--He addresses a Firman to the
Monks of Mount Athos--Preparations for Departure--The Ugly Greek
Interpreter--Mode of securing his Fidelity.

I had been for some time enjoying the hospitality of Lord and Lady
Ponsonby at the British palace at Therapia, when I determined to put
into execution a project I had long entertained of examining the
libraries in the monasteries of Mount Athos. As no traveller had been
there since the days of Dr. Clarke, I could obtain but little
information about the place before I left England. But the Archbishop of
Canterbury was kind enough to give me a letter to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, in which he requested him to furnish me with any
facilities in his power in my researches among the Greek monasteries
which owned his sway.

Armed with this valuable document, one day in the spring of the year
1837 I started in a caique with some gentlemen of the embassy, and
proceeded to the palace of the Patriarch in the Fanar--a part of
Constantinople situated between the ancient city wall and the port so
well known by its name of the Golden Horn. The Fanar does not derive its
appellation from the word fanar, a lantern or lighthouse, but from the
two words _fena yer_, a bad place; for it is in a low, dirty situation,
where only the conquered Greeks were permitted to reside immediately
after the conquest of their metropolis by the Sultan Mahommed II. The
palace is a large, dilapidated, shabby-looking building, chiefly of wood
painted black; it stands in an open court or yard on a steep slope, and
looks out over some lower houses to the Golden Horn and the hills of
Pera and Galata beyond.[12]

After waiting a little while in a large, dirty ante-room, during which
time there was a scuffling and running u