s, and tried to dissuade us
from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have
accomplished a greater distance and the only thing that surprised me
was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's
story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its
practicability."

While the Salsette lay off the Dardanelles, Lord Byron saw the body
of a man who had been executed by being cast into the sea, floating
on the stream, moving to and fro with the tumbling of the water,
which gave to his arms the effect of scaring away several sea-fowl
that were hovering to devour. This incident he has strikingly
depicted in The Bride of Abydos.

The sea-birds shriek above the prey
O'er which their hungry beaks delay,
As shaken on his restless pillow,
His head heaves with the heaving billow;
That hand whose motion is not life,
Yet feebly seems to menace strife,
Flung by the tossing tide on high,
Then levell'd with the wave--
What reeks it tho' that corse shall lie
Within a living grave.
The bird that tears that prostrate form
Hath only robb'd the meaner worm.
The only heart, the only eye,
That bled or wept to see him die,
Had seen those scatter'd limbs composed,
And mourned above his turban stone;
That heart hath burst--that eye was closed--
Yea--closed before his own.

Between the Dardanelles and Constantinople no other adventure was
undertaken or befel the poet. On the 13th of May, the frigate came
to anchor at sunset, near the headland to the west of the Seraglio
Point; and when the night closed in, the silence and the darkness
were so complete "that we might have believed ourselves," says Mr
Hobhouse, "moored in the lonely cove of some desert island, and not
at the foot of a city which, from its vast extent and countless
population, is fondly imagined by its present masters to be worthy to
be called 'The Refuge of the World.'"

CHAPTER XXIII

Constantinople--Description--The Dogs and the Dead--Landed at
Tophana--The Masterless Dogs--The Slave Market--The Seraglio--The
Defects in the Description

The spot where the frigate came to anchor affords but an imperfect
view of the Ottoman capital. A few tall white minarets, and the
domes of the great mosques only are in sight, interspersed with trees
and mean masses of domestic buildings. In the distance, inland on
the left, the redoubted Castle of the Seven Towers is seen rising
above the gloomy walls; and, un