rved him to such good purpose, he followed in the same path,
which would lead him to Constantinople, ere the sun should set in
the west.
As he drew nearer to the city he too paused to drink in of the
beauties of that twilight hour. The scene was new to him, and his
eye was filled with delight and surprise as it roamed over that
oriental sunset view. As he came down the side of the gently sloping
hill beyond Pera, he paused for a moment in the cemetery there, and
among the deep shadows of the heavy funereal cypresses and the tall,
white gravestones that thickly overspread the ground, he felt a
chill of loneliness that made him to hasten on to a spot where he
could catch the last lingering rays of the setting sun kissing the
waves of the Bosphorus.
He hurried on now into the city proper, though seemingly without any
fixed purpose, and strolled carelessly along, gazing with interest
upon all that met his curious eye; now pausing before some rich
Persian fountain half as large as a church, covered with curious
inscriptions and ornaments of gold; now regarding some sequestered
mosque almost hidden in cypresses; and now watching a cluster of
indolent-looking, large-trowsered, and moustached, but often
handsome men.
Here he was jostled by a bevy of females, shuffling along in their
yellow slippers, their faces shrouded to the eyes in that
never-forgotten covering with the Turkish wives, the yashmach; now
crowded one side by an armed kervos who is clearing the way for some
dignitary to follow; and now forced here and there by, Jew, Turk or
Armenian. But still, while he regarded intently this busy scene, he
yielded the way to all, for he was wearied and his spirits were
evidently depressed both by physical and mental suffering.
The traveller was started from his reverie by the attack upon him of
some hundred dogs, who saluted his ears with such a volley of howls
as nearly to stun him. These natural scavengers are protected by the
laws here, and whenever a stranger is seen, one whose dress or
manner betrays him as such, they set upon him like mad, but the
staff that had stood him in such good service not long before, soon
dispersed his canine tormentors, though he showed that even this
little circumstance annoyed him seriously; it was a sad welcome to a
stranger.
Perhaps there is no feeling more desolate and forsaken in its
promptings than that realized by one who finds himself alone in a
crowd. His inward solitude i
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