es in among them to see that newly arriving passengers have provided
themselves with the necessary passports, and that their baggage has been
duly examined at the custom-house. All is bustle and confusion aboard the
Behera, and in two hours after the advertised time (pretty prompt for an
Egyptian-owned boat) a tug-boat assists her from her moorings, paddles
glibly to one side, and in ten minutes Seraglio Point is rounded, and we
are steaming down the Marmora with the domes and minarets of the Ottoman
capital gradually vanishing to the rear.

People whose experience of steamship travel is confined to voyages in
western waters, and the orderliness and neatness aboard an Atlantic
steamer, can form little idea of the appearance aboard an Oriental
passenger boat. The small foredeck is reserved for the use of first and
second-class passengers; the remainder of the deck-room is pretty well
crowded with the most motley and picturesque gathering imaginable. Arabs
and Egyptians returning from a visit to Stamboul, pilgrims going to Mecca
via Egypt, Greeks, Levantines, and Armenians, all more or less
fantastically attired and occupying themselves in their own peculiar way.
The nomadic instinct of the Arabs asserts itself even on the deck of the
steamer; ere she is an hour from Stamboul they may be seen squatting in
little circles around small pans of charcoal, cooking their evening meal
in precisely the same manner in which they are wont to cook it in the
desert, leaving out, of course, the difference between camel chips and
charcoal.

The soothing "bubble bubble" of the narghileh is heard issuing from all
sorts of quiet corners, where dreamy-looking Turks are perched
cross-legged, happy and contented in the enjoyment of their beloved
water-pipe and in the silent contemplation of the moving scenes about
them. As we ply our way at a ten-knot speed through the blue waves of the
Marmora, and the sun sinks with a golden glow below the horizon, the
spirit moves one of the Mecca pilgrims to climb on top of a chicken coop
and shout "Allah-il!" for several minutes; the dangling ends of his
turban flutter in the fresh evening breeze, streaming out behind him as
he faces the east, and flapping in his swarthy face as he turns round
facing to the opposite point of the compass. His supplications seem to be
addressed to the dancing, white-capped waves, but the old Osmanlis mutter
"Allah, Allah," in response between meditative whiffs of the nargh