victories of his Grand Vizier, being quite content with the
contemplation of his perpetually blooming tulips and of the damsels of
the Seraglio, who were even fairer to view than the tulips whose blooms
they themselves far outshone.

* * * * *

The last rays of sunset were about to depart from the minarets of
Stambul. The imposing shape of the City of the Seven Hills loomed forth
like a majestic picture in the evening light. Below, all aflame from the
reflection of the burning sky, lies the Bosphorus, wherein the Seraglio
and the suburbs of Pera and Galata, with their tiers upon tiers of
houses and variegated fairy palaces, mirror themselves tranquilly. The
long, winding, narrow streets climb from one hill to another, and every
single hill is as green as if mother Nature had claimed her due portion
of each from the inhabitants, so different from our western cities, all
paved and swept clean, and nothing but hard stone from end to end. Here,
on the contrary, nothing but green meets the eye. The bastions are
planted with vines and olive-trees, pomegranate and cypress trees stand
before the houses of the rich. The poorer folks who have no gardens
plant flowers on their house-tops, or at any rate grow vines round their
windows which in time run up the whole house, and from out of the midst
of this perennial verdure arise the shining cupolas of eighty mosques.
At the end of every thoroughfare, overgrown with luxuriant grass and
thick-foliaged cypresses, only the turbaned tombstones show that here is
the place of sad repose. And the effect of the picture is heightened by
the mighty cupola of the all-dominating Aja Sofia mosque, which looks
right over all these palaces into the golden mirror of the Bosphorus.
Soon this golden mirror changes into a mirror of bronze, the sun
disappears, and the tranquil oval of the sea borrows a metallic shimmer