some hundred dogs, who saluted his ears with such a volley of howls
as nearly to stun him. These natural scavengers are protected by the
laws here, and whenever a stranger is seen, one whose dress or
manner betrays him as such, they set upon him like mad, but the
staff that had stood him in such good service not long before, soon
dispersed his canine tormentors, though he showed that even this
little circumstance annoyed him seriously; it was a sad welcome to a
stranger.

Perhaps there is no feeling more desolate and forsaken in its
promptings than that realized by one who finds himself alone in a
crowd. His inward solitude is more acutely realized by the contrast
he sees about him, and he feels how much he is alone. Thus it was
with the young traveller who had made his way into the city as we
have described; he was indeed solitary though surrounded by hosts,
for he was a stranger and knew no one in the Sultan's beautiful
capital.

Still he wandered on amid the crowd until at last he found himself
in the drug bazaar, where a scene so peculiarly oriental and rich
met his observation as to make him forget for a while his own sad
and weary mood. Strange and antique jars of every shape crowded the
shelves of the various stalls, their edges turned over with
brilliant colored paper, each drug bearing its own appropriate one.
The shelves were bending under the weight of rich gums, spices,
incense-wood, medicinal roots, and cunning dyes. The sedate Turk
who presides over each stall at this hour, sits with his legs
crossed and his eyes rolling in a sort of dreamy languor from the
powerful narcotic of his opium-drugged pipe. He is happy and
thoughtless in the dissipation that sooner or later hurries him to