figs the grapes, peaches the figs; honey
from Mount Hymettus, golden brown and
aromatic, had sweetened the bread, and
fountain water, clear and silvery, had cooled the
coffee; and being now in good training for our
usual liver complaint, we left the waiters covering
the table with a green gauze tent, to keep off
the analytical flies, and went to prepare for our
long ramble— present writer, with Leghorn hat
and green umbrella, shield against the sunbeams'
golden arrows, which seemed to consider my head
in the light of a bull's-eye; Rocket, in an eccentric
costume of filmy white, white wide-awake, and
with a short crooked bamboo under his arm,
intended to intimidate Jew touters and repulse
street dogs.

We were just emerging from Misseri's door,
where the gilt horseshoe is nailed for luck, and we
were looking at the axes of the firemen hanging
up in the little wooden shed of a guard-house
opposite the hotel, when a sudden roar of voices,
and the trample of feet round the corner of the
street, arrested us. Round the corner came a
tearing, howling mob of some two dozen half-naked
Turks and Greeks, running at a pas de charge, and
carrying on their shoulders a something which I
at first thought was a large musical-box, then a
coal-scuttle, then a banker's brass safe, and lastly,
what it really was— a small fire-engine, almost the
only one, I believe, in this great city, where fires
are perpetual, and more destructive than in any
other part of the world, the houses being all built
of lath wood scarcely thicker than the sides of
a cigar- box, and the unceasing heat of the sun,
leaving an after glow that almost warms the
moonshine, and makes them dry and
combustible. It is not an unusual thing, indeed, for
a thousand persons to be rendered houseless by
one night's fire. Even now, as I look out beyond
the arsenal towards the Sweet Waters of
Europe, on the sloping hills that run down to
the Golden Horn, I see in a churchyard
hillocky with tombstones a whole townful of
burnt-out Jews, squatting, half-starved, tearful,
broken-hearted, and penniless, under their squalid white
tents. King Fire is the only reformer, sanitary
commissioner or improver, that exists in Turkey.
There are no iron plates with "F. P. 25 ft."
visible in Turkish streets, no fire insurance-offices,
"Hand-in-hands" or gilt Suns here, no
men with axes in their belts, looking out into
night skies to see if the black turns red, nothing
but a miserable garden squirt, and a
bawling senseless bare-legged mob, who go and see
that the houses burn down fairly, or occasionally
stop the flames by pulling down one or two of
the mountain cigar-boxes in which the Greeks
and Jews huddle together. The philosophical
comment of Rocket at this sight, is worthy
of the gallant young diplomat. He says, "The
Turks are queer buffers."

A moment at the Bank, where I observe a
sheaf of cricket-bats in the corner; a look in at
the tournebroche of the English post-office,
where a yawning, grumbling English clerk
looks languidly over the letters, and damns the
Turks; and we are at the bridge of boats,
where four or five of the steamers that ply
up and down the Bosphorus are lying, some of
them crowded with ghostly veiled Turkish women.
Before us, on the Stamboul side, are flocks
of vessels, with a netted mass of spars and ropes,
and here and there a flag, flowering the dark
wood with colour, like the pink blossoms on the
still leafless branches of the Judas-trees in the
Seraglio gardens. I see miles of square windows,
which glitter gold in the morning sun, to the
special wonder of many a peasant, to whom the
countless windows of Stamboul are said to be
a special and almost a proverbial object of
wonder; houses, painted red and yellow; red-striped
mosques, grey domes, and everywhere
against the sky-line the sharp sentinel lances of
the minarets, each one, at the prayer hour, gifted
with a voice, as of a warning prophet or watchful
angel; everywhere among the houses, cypresses
and vines, and on the suburban flat-topped
chimneys, bushy stork nests.

We come to our first fountain, but before
we can well walk round it, our attention is
caught by two specially Oriental trades, which,
close by the fountain, are being carried on
with great vigour, and apparent success: the
one, is that of a sherbet-seller; the other, that of
a public letter-writer. The soojee, or sherbet-seller,
is sheltered by a huge green umbrella
which rises like a tent above his earthen bowls
of bruised cherries and purple weltering
currants, above his yellow-rinded lemons, his water
bottles, his porous half thawed ice, his funnels
and tumblers. The coarse vandyked edge of this
rude canopy, springing from its mushroom stem
of a pole, is presided over by a pendulous-nosed
Armenian, with a blue and yellow rag bandaging
round his sallow fez; the man has bare arms,
brown slop breeches, and a tight-fitting white
jacket. The odd man, or porter, of some great
house, is resting his globular water-vessel full of
fountain water, while he drinks some iced lemonade.
The only ornament about the dealer's stall is
a sort of inner tinselled raised roof, still further to
shield the ice and currant-juice from the vertical
sun. A second customer, dressed in yellow and
blue, and with a white turban, stands with his back
to me, sipping something. The servant has tight
gaiters reaching from his knee to his ankle, and
his bare feet are thrust in coarse red slippers with
heavy soles. In both cases the baggy Zouave
breeches swag half down the calf. The sleeves
of the first man are pink, his turban is green, his
breeches are blue, and his sleeveless jacket is
brown. As for the proprietor of the stall, he is
calmly indifferent to trade, and sits on his low
stool gravely, as if entertaining his friends, and
rather conferring an obligation on his customers.

Not far off, under a stuccoed wall pierced by
ponderously barred gratings, sits the sagacious
letter-writer, with a gossip on one side of him,
and a customer on the other; three pair of huge
red slippers, like crab-shells, are lying before
them. The writer sits cross-legged on a thin
plank platform, held up from the ground by three
transverse beams, and spread with a dry hide
of red and brown striped carpet, which gives it