e--its commerce, industries, and
customs. Come to revel in color; to sit for hours, following with
reverent pencil the details of an architecture unrivalled on the
globe; to watch the sun scale the hills of Scutari and shatter its
lances against the fairy minarets of Stamboul; to catch the swing and
plash of the rowers rounding their _caiques_ by the bridge of Galata;
to wander through bazaar and market, dotting down splashes of robe,
turban, and sash; to rest for hours in cool tiled mosques, which in
their very decay are sublime; to study a people whose rags are
symphonies of color, and whose traditions and records breathe the
sweetest poems of modern times.

And then, when we have caught our breath, let us wander into any one
of the patios along the Golden Horn, and feast our eyes on columns of
verd-antique, supporting arches light as rainbows, framing the patio
of the Pigeon Mosque, the loveliest of all the patios I know, and let
us run our eyes around that Moorish square. The sun blazes down on
glistening marbles; gnarled old cedars twist themselves upward against
the sky; flocks of pigeons whirl and swoop and fall in showers on
cornice, roof, and dome; tall minarets like shafts of light shoot up
into the blue. Scattered over the uneven pavement, patched with strips
and squares of shadows, lounge groups of priests in bewildering robes
of mauve, corn-yellow, white, and sea-green; while back beneath the
cool arches bunches of natives listlessly pursue their several
avocations.

It is a sight that brings the blood with a rush to one's cheek. That
swarthy Mussulman at his little square table mending seals; that
fellow next him selling herbs, sprawled out on the marble floor, too
lazy to crawl away from the slant of sunshine slipping through the
ragged awning; that young Turk in frayed and soiled embroidered
jacket, holding up strings of beads to the priests passing in and
out--is not this the East, the land of our dreams? And the old public
scribe with the gray beard and white turban, writing letters, the
motionless veiled figures squatting around him--is he not Baba
Mustapha? and the soft-eyed girl whispering into his ear none other
than Morgiana, fair as the meridian sun?

So, too, in my beloved Venice, where many years ago I camped out by
the side of a canal--the Rio Giuseppe--all of it, from the red wall,
where the sailors land, to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is
ready to topple into the sea.

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