The mosque and tomb of Eyoub are situated beyond the district called Blachernæ, on the west side of the harbour, near its head. The richness and fertility of the alluvial soil confer on this district a singular exuberance of vegetation. Nothing can exceed the luxuriance with which trees and fruits in their season blossom and mature in this place. Here flowers exhale the most delicious perfume, and the nightingale is heard to warble its sweetest notes, as if Allah had conferred upon the resting-place of a favourite all the richness of nature. In the midst of this rise the mosque and tomb of the Ansar, forming part of a street, composed of charitable or religious edifices, embosomed in the shade of a majestic cypress. Then there are the haunts of the turtle-doves, who flock to this sequestered place, as one suited to their nature; and their gentle cooing fills the air with a pensive and congenial sound, adding considerably to the effect of the solemn objects around them. These sacred edifices are held in such veneration, and so guarded from desecration, that an infidel is repelled from them with even more jealousy than from the precincts of Santa Sophia. The time chosen for the Illustration is the return of the sultan from the mosque, after the ceremony of girding on the sword has been performed. Beside him, as supporters, are two Bin Bashis, or colonels of Ortas, in the old Janissary corps. These men wear, as part of their official dress, helmets of an enormous height, with a profusion of horse-hair plumes. This singular costume, the Turks say, is intended to conceal the person of the new sovereign from the aim of an assassin, should an attempt be made upon his life. [Illustration: T. Allom. F. W. Topham. THE VALLEY OF UNKIAR ISKELESSI, OR--THE SULTAN’S STAIRS. IN WHICH THE CELEBRATED TREATY WITH RUSSIA WAS SIGNED.] The most extraordinary title bestowed upon a sovereign is that which the Turks have conferred upon their own. They do not, when they speak of him, call him padescha or sultan, but _Hunkair_, which signifies “the manslayer,” and conveys, in one word, the sense they entertain of the absolute power he is supposed to possess over the lives and properties of his subjects, and the arbitrary manner in which he sometimes exercises it. The Turks confer it as a title of dignity, which conveys no reflection on the personal character; but during the revolution, the Greeks changed it to _Kassapi_, “the butcher,” conveying the same idea of a homicide, but meant as a term of bitter reproach.