essel there kept
gliding two or three hundred black caicks, rowed by half-naked boatmen;
and notwithstanding the orders to the contrary, a quantity of Maltese
sailors, Turkish porters, and Levantine ciceroni came on board, and
literally took us by storm, bawling out their offers of service, in
almost every known language. Clouds of blue pigeons, and whitewinged
albatros, flew about over our heads, uttering plaintive cries; add to
these the stentorian voice of our French commander, the curiosity and
impatience of the travellers demonstrated by their noisy exclamations,
and one will have an idea of the spectacle offered by the deck of a
steamer on its arrival at a Turkish port.

During the hauling of the vessel to the quay, I scarcely knew upon what
to fix my eyes, attracted as they simultaneously were by a thousand
different objects. Here was the Golden Horn with its numberless ships,
the cypress-trees of Galata, and the seven hills of ancient Byzantium
covered with mosques; there, the blue waves of the Propontis, and the
glittering banks of Scutari. Giddy with enthusiasm, and intoxicated with
admiration, I attempted, as our caick approached the landing-place, to
be the first to leap upon the quay, when, just as I was in the act of
springing, my foot slipped, and I fell headlong into a miry stream. Such
was my entrance into Constantinople.

As soon as I gained footing, splashed with mud from head to foot, I
remained a moment motionless, and almost petrified with astonishment.
All was changed around me: the enchanted panorama had disappeared, and I
found myself in a small filthy crossway, at the entrance of a labyrinth
of narrow, damp, dark, muddy streets. The houses which surrounded me,
built as they were of disjointed planks, had a miserable aspect; time
and rain had diluted their primitive red colour into numberless nameless
tints. One of those minarets which from afar appeared so slender and so
beautiful, now that it was close to me proved to be merely a small
column devoid of symmetry, while its covering of cracked plaster seemed
on the point of falling to pieces. The Turkish promenaders whom from a
distance I had taken for richly attired merchants, proved to be a set of
miserable tatterdemalions with ragged turbans. Behind the porters who
crowded to the landing-place, were butchers embowelling sheep in the
open street; while the pavement was covered with bloody mire and smoking
entrails, around which several score