is no longer filled with water, but serves as a workshop for silk-
spinners. The place seems almost as if it had been expressly built
for such a purpose, as it receives light from above, and is cool in
summer, and warm during the winter. It is now impossible to
penetrate into the lower stories, as they are either filled with
earth or with water.

The aqueducts of Justinian and Valentinian are stupendous works.
They extend from Belgrade to the "Sweet Waters," a distance of about
fourteen miles, and supply the whole of Constantinople with a
sufficiency of water.

COFFEE-HOUSES--STORY-TELLERS.

Before I bade farewell to Constantinople for the present and betook
me to Pera, I requested my guide to conduct me to a few coffee-
houses, that I might have a new opportunity of observing the
peculiar customs and mode of life of the Turks. I had already
obtained some notion of the appearance of these places in Giurgewo
and Galatz; but in this imperial town I had fancied I should find
them somewhat neater and more ornamental. But this delusion
vanished as soon as I entered the first coffee-house. A wretchedly
dirty room, in which Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and others sat cross-
legged on divans, smoking and drinking coffee, was all I could
discover. In the second house I visited I saw, with great disgust,
that the coffee-room was also used as a barber's shop; on one side
they were serving coffee, and on the other a Turk was having his
head shaved. They say that bleeding is sometimes even carried on in
these booths.