The picturesque bay of Bebek and the opposite headland of Kandilli are so involved with historic memories that I am more and more tempted to stray out of my gardens. Kandilli, in particular, is full of plane-trees and terraces and rows of stone-pines to prove that older generations were not blind to its enchantments. Among other sultans, Mehmed IV spent much of his time there. His favourite wife was the lady of taste and determination who built the mosque of the New Mother in Scutari. Discovering once that her lord spent more of his hours than she found proper in the society of a Circassian dancing-girl, she caused a man slave of her own to be educated in the terpsichorean art and presented him to the Sultan. She then asked one night, as they sat at the edge of the water at Kandilli, that the two dancers perform together for her amusement. The slaves accordingly danced on the terrace before their imperial masters, nearer and nearer the water, till the man, by a seemingly careless thrust of his foot, tripped his companion into the Bosphorus. She was immediately carried away into the dark by the current, here extremely swift; and the Sultana doubtless slept the more sweetly, knowing there was one less dancer in the world. I do not know whether the imperial villa near the boat landing that was torn down in 1913 was the scene of this little drama. _Yalî_ is the true name of such a country house, if it is built, as it should be, on the edge of the water, with gateways letting a little of the Bosphorus into the lower hall and making there a boat-house and _porte cochère_ in one. In every country place of any size there is a _kyöshk_ as well, otherwise a kiosk, built somewhere in the garden and constituting one of its more formal ornaments. I once had the honour of being received in a kiosk belonging to a member of the imperial family, which was larger than the _yalî_ to which it belonged. It was, alas, no such place as I have read of in Lady Mary Montagu, who describes a room built by the sultan of her day for his daughter, “wainscotted with mother of pearl fastened with emeralds like nails.” She also speaks of wainscotting of “cedar set off with silver nails” and “walls all crusted with Japan China,” “the whole adorned with a profusion of marble, gilding, and the most exquisite painting of fruit and flowers.” These splendours were no invention of Lady Mary, for many other visitors testify to them, as well as Melling, Van Mour, and all their school of painters of the Bosphorus. Those villas never were of an enduring architecture, and the spell of Europe—more potent than ever for us was that of the gorgeous East—has been more fatal to them than time and fire. Still, the most modern _yalî_, if designed by an architect of the country, almost always has some saving touch of its own. And in the middle Bosphorus there are quite a number of houses which preserve the graceful old architecture.