rein to the light courser of the beverage of the sunrise”—as a discreet historian put that violent young man’s propensity to strong waters. It was after a debauch here that he died, at the age of twenty-eight, having beheaded a hundred thousand of his people and having entertained a strange ambition to be the last of his line. He gave orders on his death-bed that the head of his brother Ibrahim, the last surviving male of his blood, be brought to him. But his courtiers took advantage of his condition to dissemble their disobedience, and the imperial family to-day springs from that brother. As for the luckless Emirgyan, he saved his head from the elder brother, only to be deprived of it by the younger. At Roumeli Hissar, still farther to the south, is a neglected garden which belonged to Halim Pasha, brother of the prodigal Ismaïl. In it are two unpretentious houses which look as if they were built of brown stucco. There is sentiment in that stucco, however, for it is really mud brought from the banks of the Nile. According to the law of Islam Halim would have been Khedive in turn if Ismaïl had not bound the Turkish government, by a substantial _quid pro quo_, to make the viceroyalty hereditary to the eldest son in his own family. And Halim Pasha’s family later suffered the misfortune to be nearly ruined by an English speculator. But there is one spot in their park which must have gone far to make up for their disinheritance. It is the brow of a bluff which seems to drop sheer into the Bosphorus. There an artful group of cypresses and one gnarled olive frame the blue below; and there on sunny afternoons, there most notably on starry evenings, when shore lights curve fantastically through the underlying darkness and all land and water sounds have some summer magic in them, an Antony might dream away content the loss of Egypt. Halim Pasha owned another splendid garden on Bebek Bay. Next to his faded pink wooden _yalî_ in the dignified old Turkish style, and likewise linked by bridges across the public road to a park that climbs the hill behind, is the trim _art-nouveau_ villa of the actual Khedive’s mother. This majestic old lady is one of the most familiar figures on the Bosphorus. Her annual approach and departure on her son’s big turbine yacht _Mahroussah_ are the signals for spring and autumn to open their campaigns, while her skimming mahogany steam-launch is an integral part of summer. She is, moreover, a person whom the poor of her neighbourhood have cause to bless. During the lenten month of Ramazan she provides _iftar_, the sunset breakfast of the day, for any who choose to come to her door. So many choose to come that during that month her grocery bills must be quite appalling. And on occasions of public rejoicing she literally keeps open house—or open garden. She admits any and all within her gates, offers them coffee, ices, and cigarettes, and entertains them with music.