If the Turk has failed in forcing his religious faith on his Christian
vassals, he has succeeded in fixing the social status of their women
on much the same basis as his own.

The day selected for visiting the European Sweet Waters by the native
or Greek population is either Sunday or on the festival of some one
of the many saints whose names are legion in the Greek calendar. Never
was there a people so fond of holidays, or who take them oftener under
religious pretexts. Yet they celebrate them in anything but a pious
manner. Their fasts are much fewer and not so punctiliously observed.

As the restriction on intoxicating beverages is not such a cardinal
article of faith at the European as at the Asiatic Sweet Waters,
that element enters into the diversions at the former place, to the
frequent scandal of the decorous and abstemious Turks. The fiery
wines of Sicily and the Greek islands are freely indulged in, and
tipsy cavaliers, caracoling on the hacks of Pera and Galata, are not
infrequent accessories, aggravating the danger and discomfort to the
stranger of the return in carriage or on horseback. The roughness of
the road, its heat and dust, are bad enough; but to aggravate these
discomforts you have a crowd of hacks and a swarm of cavaliers
pursuing the same route, with all the collisions inevitable from
unskillful coachmen and tipsy riders. It is a long, dreary drive too,
with no scenery worth looking at on the route, even could you discern
it through the dense clouds of dust which envelop you from its
commencement to its close. When you reach your hotel you take a bath
to refresh yourself, and go down to supper, exclaiming with a sigh of
relief, "Well, thank Heaven! I have seen the Sweet Waters!"

EDWIN DE LEON.