windows, which is furnished with air pumped
from the boat above down an elastic tube. So
hideous does this dress appear to animals as
well as to human beings, that every kind of fish
flies from it in dismay. In going down in the
West Indian waters, where sharks are painfully
plentiful, the Whitstable diver found his
unsightly armour a sufficient protection, and his
large-toothed enemies darting away from him,
without offering the slightest attack.

The depths that the Whitstable diver has
most frequently to go to, are ten to fifteen
fathoms, or sixty to ninety feet. He sometimes
ventures to eighteen fathoms (one hundred
and eight feet), but seldom goes beyond, as the
weight of water above his head impedes his
movements, and the longer his air-tube is paid
out, the more difficult it becomes to supply him
with sufficient air. The sharp pain in the ears,
as if a couple of quills had been thrust into
them,* is nearly always felt by the diver during
the first three or four fathoms of his descent,
though it goes off some little time before he
reaches the deck of the sunken ship. This pain
is caused by the condensed air in the helmet,
and the sensation is precisely similar when the
diving is performed in a bell.

* See No.11, page 249.

When the vessel has settled down in a sandy
bottom, it is preserved, for many months, from
breaking up; and its position may be much the
same as it would be when floating in calm water,
if it be not tilted over by any under-current
drifts. The light, of course, depends a good
deal upon the depth, and upon the nature ot the
bottom; but, where there is no chalk to give a
milky thickness to the water, the diver pursues
his work in a kind of gloomy twilight. By the
aid of this, he can see and feel his way round the
ship; but when he ascends to the deck, and
winds down into the principal cabins, he finds
everything pitch dark, and has nothing to guide
him but his hands. This is the most difficult,
and yet the most frequent, labour he has to
encounter; the danger being that, in a large
vessel, where the cabin stairs are deep, and the
cabins are long and broad, he may get his air
tube twisted round some unfamiliar projection,
and so squeeze off his supply of life from above.
In positions such as this, he requires all his nerve
and self-possession, all his power of feeling his
way back in the exact road that he came. He
may have got the precious casket, to which he
has been directed, in his arms; but what of
that, if he die before he can find the stairs?
The cold, helpless masses that bump against his
helmet, as they float along the low roof over his
head, are the decomposed corpses of those who
were huddled together in the cabin when the
ship went down. A few of these may be on the
floor under his feet, but only when pinned down
by an overturned table or a fallen chest. Their
tendency is upward—ever upward—and the
remorseless sea washes away the dead infant
from its dead mother's arms, the dead wife from
her dead husband's embrace. If the wreck be
in the Channel, the small crabs are already
beginning to fatten on their prey.

The diver disentangles himself from this silent
crowd, and ascends the welcome stairs to the
deck. The treasure he has rescued, is hauled
up into the attendant diving boat; and he turns
again to renew his work. He seldom meets
with an accident, under water; never,
perhaps, with death, and the chief risk he runs is
from getting some heavy piece of ship lumber
overturned on his long train of air-pipe. Even
in this case he feels the sudden check and the
want of air, gropes his way back to the obstruction,
removes it, signals to his companions to be
raised, and reaches the boat exhausted and
alarmed, but not so much so as to give up his
place in the trade. His earnings mostly take
the form of shares in what he recovers. If
fortunate, his gains may be large; if unfortunate,
they may be small; but no man can grudge
him the highest prizes it is possible for him to
win. May Whitstable always have the honour
of producing such bold and dexterous men as
plentifully as she has hitherto done, and may
they have the wisdom to keep what they get!

STREET SIGHTS IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

You, London reader, have seen wonderful
things in your time; the sham sailor in the New-
road, with a painting of a storm in the Bay of
Biscay rolled out between his wooden legs, which
rest as sentinels on either side of it; the man in
Gower-street, about dusk o' summer evenings,
who comes round to the area railings with illuminated
cathedrals, and other precious transparent
trifles; the little lump of a man on a trencher,
selling nutmeg-graters, who propels himself
along Regent-street with a wooden flat-iron in
either hand; the Bearded Woman (penny
admittance) in Holborn, close to Tottenham-court-
road; the blind man with the tremendous eyebrows,
dragged along Oxford-street at an irreverent
and disrespectful pace, by the unbroken-in,
rampant, smooth terrier; but let me tell you
what I saw near the Horse Bazaar at
Constantinople, on a certain October morning.

I had crossed the famous wooden bridge that
brackets Stamboul and its hills, to the opposite
hills of Pera, and, turning to the left, had
mounted the steps, thronged by itinerant
Greek and Turkish dealers, which lead towards
the Bazaars. I had passed the strings of
white candied figs, the goloshes, the grapes
(white, yet blued here and there by weaker
brothers, that had turned into bloom-covered
raisins); and shunning the incessant water-sellers,
I had had a glass of port-wine-looking sherbet
from a man with a large tin vessel on his back,
the mouth of which was closed with a huge
cudgel of ice, which had turned crimson from
the juice it had imbibed. One or two streets
further on, I had again drowned my thirst, which
seemed to turn my throat into a kiln, and the very
breath of my lungs into flame. I had tampered