you ever encountered on your arrival at New York in a European steamer
from rival hack-drivers or hotel "touters." Pulled, pushed and shoved
about in all directions as fiercely as ever was the body of Patroclus
in the _Iliad_, when Greek and Trojan contended for possession of it,
you are at last hustled into a caique, and deposited in the bottom
on soft cushions, your back supported by the end of the boat, your
face to the two boatmen. The caique is gayly ornamented and pretty
to look at, but it is the crankiest and tickliest of all nautical
inventions--more resembling a Canadian birch-bark canoe than any other
craft you are acquainted with. Admiring the view, you partially rise
up and lean your elbow on the side of the boat. A warning cry from
your boatmen and a sudden dip of your frail bark, which almost upsets
you head-foremost to feed the fishes of the Bosphorus, admonish you
to sit quietly, and you can scarcely venture to stir again during
the long row. The caique is long and very narrow, and sharp at both
ends--pointed, in fact. It is boarded over at these ends to prevent
shipping seas. These planks are prettily varnished, with gilded rails,
which give the boat a gay look.

The men row vigorously, and the frail skiff skims along the water at
a rate of speed equal to an express-train. But the rushing of the
rippling waters past the boat is the chief indication of the rapidity
of our progress, so smoothly do we glide along. One peculiarity of the
caique is that there are no rowlocks for the oars, which are held by a
loop of leather fastened on the boat.

All the senses are soothed and steeped in Elysium during this rapid
transit. The eye lazily runs over the squat-looking red houses with
flat roofs which line the shore, to rest on the dark cypress trees
which fill the intervening spaces, with the gilded balconies of