before its withering effects are effaced.

It is in the long corridors of the bazars that the commercial business
of the country is carried on. An immense multitude, more curious to view
than even the exposition of the different wares, congregates thither
daily. Constantinople, notwithstanding its state of decline, is always
the point of intersection between the eastern and western world. At this
general rendezvous, whither Europe and Asia send their representatives,
one may study the human species in almost every possible variety of
type. English, Americans, Russians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Persians,
Circassians, Arabs, Koords, Austrians, Hungarians, Abyssinians, Tartars,
French, &c. &c., hurry to and fro around the Turk, who smokes and
dreams, calm and immovable amidst the active throng, which presents an
inconceivable medley of silk pelisses, white bornous and black robes,
surmounted by green turbans, red fezs, and beaver hats. Numbers of
women, covered with white dominos, advance slowly and spectre-like
through the crowd, which every now and then opens its ranks to give
passage to some mounted Pasha, followed by his attendants on foot. Here
and there may be seen asses loaded with bales, and at the further end of
the galleries are caravans of camels. One's ears are deafened with the
piercing cries of the sherbet-sellers, and the howling of the dogs;
while quantities of pigeons coo over the heads of the motley crowd.
Although, on taking a general view of this spectacle, there is little to
admire, still one may select from it an infinite number of original
scenes and pictures full of character. Here, for instance, an ambulating
musician sings, or rather chants to an attentive audience one of those
interminable ballads of which the Turks never tire; there, are half a
dozen Greeks quarrelling and vociferating so energetically, that one
would expect nothing less than that from words they would come to
bloodshed; while, further on, a circle of friends are regaling
themselves over a basket of green cucumbers. Talking of cucumbers, they
almost entirely compose, in summer, the nourishment of the Turks. The
Sultan Mahmood II. was excessively fond of this fruit, or rather
vegetable, and cultivated it with his own hands in the Seraglio gardens.
Having one day perceived that some of his cucumbers were missing, he
sent for his head gardener, and informed him that, should such a
circumstance occur again, he would order his head