Mixing with them, and penetrating through the crowd, are daily seen the larger caïques, destined to convey the sultan, or some high dignitary, from the seraglio or the porte, to some palace or kiosk on the Bosphorus. These long galleys are propelled by sixteen or twenty pair of oars. They are ornamented by a long projecting prow, with various sculpture, curling over or about, and covered with the richest gilding. At the stem is a silken canopy, and within it the stately and solitary personage to whom it belongs. Below the canopy sits the Reis, the important person who guides it, with its valuable freight. This man is often chosen for his humour, with which the sultan is fond of amusing himself on his passage, like an European monarch, of old, with his fool; and he sometimes prefers him, for his talent in this way, to the first post in the empire. The Reis who most distinguished himself was the Delhi Abdallah. He had a loud voice, shouting out his words−-a rude humour, very coarse−-and a faculty of inventing new and extraordinary oaths and curses. After it was supposed that he had exhausted all the forms of imprecation, the sultan laid a wager one day that he could not invent a new one. To the great gratification of his master, he did so; and he was so pleased with his ingenuity, that he raised him at once from the state of a boatman on the Bosphorus to that of Capitan Pasha; and he who had never been on board a larger vessel than a caïque, now commanded the vast Turkish fleet. His first occupation was that of bostandgee, or gardener, at the seraglio. Such are the incongruous pursuits and rapid elevations of public men in Turkey. Mixed with these light and elegant forms, are large, deep, and clumsy barges, rowed with long heavy sweeps, and filled with people of all nations crowded together. These are used for conveying persons to their residences in the villages along the shores of the Bosphorus. In a country where there are neither roads nor carriages, these boats are the only conveyance for the lower order of people. They are seen every evening slowly emerging from the harbour, filled with Turks, Jews, Armenians, Arabs, Greeks, and Franks, in all their variety of costumes, covered over with a cloud of tobacco-smoke from their several chibouques, and making the harbour resound with the loud and discordant jargon of the several tongues.