drivers, bread sellers, carriages with Turkish
ladies, pashas and their mounted retinue,
packhorses, children, and Circassian loungers. Then,
on every vacant spot strew praying dervishes,
sleeping, couchant, or rampant wild dogs,
melon-stalls and beggars, throw up above a ball
of solid fire and call it the sun, and you have
some small idea of the delight of walking in the
Dying Man's city.

But let us stroll down this street, where the
planes toss their green jagged leaves over those
gratings, and through which I see the stone
turbans of tombstones, with, below, blue-and-gilt
verses from the Koran; and let us get to this
slovenly, downhill lane, leading towards the
bazaars. In it we shall find nearly every class
of Turkish trade. Those Armenian porters, with
their knots and ropes on their backs, seem
smilingly to promise as much, when they offer to
carry home the English sultan's purchases for
him; and as for that, I believe they would carry
home a house on their backs, if it only had
handles.

"Way there!"—what a howl of "Guardia!
Guard-diah"! Just as I am stopping for a
cup of water at a gilded fountain, I am driven
into a mastic shop by eight Armenian porters,
four behind and four in front, who are staggering
uphill with a gigantic steel-bound bale,
considerably larger than a chest of drawers, out of
which ooze some yellow webs of silk; the load
vibrates on two enormous lance-wood poles, thin
at the ends and thick in the middle. Now, for
a moment, these brawny men stop to rest the
burden, and wipe their brown, rugged, beaded
foreheads. Honour the sturdy industry of the
honest Armenian hammals, who stop for no one,
not even the Sultan himself, who pass, howling
out a rapid caution, through weeping funeral or
laughing wedding procession, marching soldiers,
anything, any one; and who, for a few pence,
unapplauded, perform the labours of Hercules
in the Sick Man's city.

Attentive to trade interests, as well as to the
rights of hospitality, the Turk in the shop where
I have taken refuge, points to the heaps of
mastic upon his counter, and I buy a little to
chew, because I have heard that Turkish ladies
spend the greater part of their lives in this
harmless, but unintellectual occupation. Mastic
resembles gum Arabic; it is crystally cracked,
yellow in colour, like a pale flawed topaz, and
has no taste at all to mention. It produces no
effect, opiate or otherwise, and for all I could
see, I might as well have spent my time sucking
a little pebble, as schoolboys do when they are
going to run a race, and want to improve their
"wind." It lasted me about half an hour, till I
got to the square of Bajazet. At the end of that
time, I got alarmed, and taking it out of my mouth
and looking at it, I found it changed to a sodden
opaque lump of a dull white colour, which tasted
like chewed india-rubber; so I flipped it at a
street dog in disgust, and the street dog
swallowed it immediately, as he would have done, no
doubt, had I thrown him a shoeing-horn or a
pair of old braces.

My Turk now wanted me to buy some henna
powder for the ladies of my hareem, but I
declined, upon which he clapped his hands, as if
to call his negro boy, and in bounded a bushy
white cat that he had dyed a rose pink to prove
the excellence of his drugs; but even this did
not induce me to buy anything, for a clog shop
next door then allured me, and I stopped to see the
apprentices with short adzes cleaving the wood,
with which they fashioned the wooden sole, and
the stilted supports of the "chopines," on which
the Turkish ladies clatter across the cold marble
floor of their fountain-sprinkled bath-rooms into
the inner cells, where they disappear in a
cloud of hot steam, from which merry laughing
and the splashing of water is heard at intervals.
This is quite a West-end shop for Turkey, and
they sell all kinds of bath clogs here, from the
plain wooden to the rich polished pairs, that are
lozenged and starred with mother-of-pearl, in a
style fit for Zobeide herself.

How quiet and industrious the workmen are!
twice as vigorous as Spaniards, and patiently
enjoying the labour, with scarcely even an eye for
passing scenes in the street. No plate-glass here,
no varnished brackets, no pattern dwarf boot, or
skeleton bone foot; nothing but chips and
shavings, and split, split, hammer, hammer; a man at
work behind, with some curious glue, is inserting
the patterns of pearl into the wooden slabs
cleverly enough.

A pipe-shop next. One Nubian and three
young Turks, with a patriarch watching them,
while he does the finer work himself. One
turban and three scarlet fezes, all cross-legged,
and the Nubian holding his work between his
bare feet, for his toes are handier than many
men's fingers. Good-natured, like all his race,
a chronic grin of unctuous content is on his
face. A worse specimen of a slave for platform
and inflammatory purposes could not be found.
The shop is not much bigger than six cobblers'
stalls thrown into one, and the wall at the back
is lined with pipe-stems, that rest against it like
so many javelins. They are surely old Arab
spear-shafts, pierced for new and more peaceful
purposes. The dark-red ones are cherry stems
from Asia Minor; the rough light-brown ones,
jasmin saplings from Albania. They are about
five feet long, and form the real chibouk that
the Turk loves when it is finished off with a
small red tea-cup of a bowl, and that bowl is
crammed with the choicest tobacco of Salonica.
But what are those coloured coils, like
variegated eels, that twine and curl on the floor—for
this is not a serpent charmer's? Those, innocent
Frank, making a Guy of thyself with that
bandaging of white muslin around thy wide-awake,
are the tubes of narghilés, that the Turks
love even more than the chibouk to smoke,
because it is handier for small rooms, and does not
require an orbit of five feet to each puffer.
Look opposite at that coffee-shop, which is the
Turkish tavern: see those four men. They are
mere poor men, but they come in to lunch off a
farthing cup of coffee, without milk or sugar,
and a puff of a narghilé. How dignified they