Every one knows the old story of the Delphian Oracle, who told the colonists of Byzantium to settle opposite the City of the Blind. The City of the Blind turned out to be the place whose inhabitants had passed by the site of Seraglio Point. The reproach cannot be fastened on the City of Gold, because Chalcedon really incurred it. But I have already associated the two towns, and I am willing to do so again. For to live in Scutari is to prove either that the oracle was blind or that Byzas made a mistake. No other conclusion is possible for him who loiters on the bluffs opposite Seraglio Point. One of the best places to see Stamboul is there, where you look at it against the light. And it is something to see in the early morning, with mists melting out of the Golden Horn and making a fairyland of all those domes and pinnacles. As for the sunsets of Scutari, with Stamboul pricking up black against them, they are so notable among exhibitions of their kind that I cannot imagine why they were not long ago put down among sunsets of San Marco and moonlights of the Parthenon and I know not how many other favourite wonders of the world. [Illustration: The Bosphorus from the heights of Scutari] I never heard, however, of guides recommending so simple an excursion. What they will sometimes grudgingly recommend is to climb the hill of Chamlîja. Chamlîja—the Place of Pines—is a hill of two peaks, one a little higher than the other, on the descending terraces of which amphitheatrically sprawls the City of Gold. Chamlîja is the highest hill on the Bosphorus, and therefore is it dear to the Turks, who are like the Canaanites of old in that they love groves and high places. The groves, it is true, are now rather thinly represented by the stone-pines that give the height its name; but Turkish princes, like their Byzantine predecessors, have villas among them, while the hill is a favourite resort of their subjects. The widest prospect, of course, is to be had from the top of Big Chamlîja. But a more picturesque one is visible from the south side of Little Chamlîja, taking in a vivid geography of cypress forest and broken Marmora coast, and Princes’ Isles seen for once swimming each in its own blue, and far-away Bithynian mountains; while to the explorer of a certain northern spur, running straight to Beïlerbeï Palace, is vouchsafed one of the most romantic of all visions of the Bosphorus. Chamlîja has an especial charm for the people of the country because of its water. No European can quite understand what that means to a Turk. Being forbidden to indulge in fermented liquors, he is a connoisseur of water—not mineral water, but plain H₂O—as other men are of wine. He calls for the product of his favourite spring as might a Westerner for a special vintage, and he can tell when an inferior brand is palmed off on him. A dervish named Hafid Effendi once published a monograph on the waters of Constantinople in which he described the