We also love to congregate, or in Empedoclean moods to muse alone, about another old cemetery. There, on top of the steep slope behind the castle, you will often see a row of women, like love-birds contemplating the universe, or a grave family picnic. There too, especially on moonlight nights, you will not seldom hear voices uplifted in the passionate minor which has so compelling a charm for those who know it of old, accompanied perhaps by an oboe and the strangely broken rhythm of two little drums. It is the true music for a hilltop that is called the Place of Martyrs. The victims of the first skirmish that took place during the building of the castle lie there, under a file of oaks and cypresses. At the north end of the ridge a few broken grey stones are scattered among tufts of scrub-oak that soon give way to the rounded bareness of the hillside. At the other end newer and more honourable graves, protected by railings, attend a _tekkeh_ of Bektash dervishes. This establishment was founded by a companion of the Conqueror. Mohammed gave him, as the story goes, all the land he could see from the top of the hill. The present sheikh is a descendant of the founder, but I do not believe he inherited all the land he can see. The view from the Place of Martyrs is one of the finest on the Bosphorus. I am not of the company of certain travellers in the matter of that famous strait. I have seen hills with greater nobility of outline and waters of a more satisfying blue. But when one has made all due reservations in the interest of one’s private allegiances the fact remains that the Bosphorus is a charming piece of water enclosed between charmingly moulded hills. It bends below you like a narrow lake as you see it from the Place of Martyrs. The northern sea is invisible; but southward the tops of islands look over the heights of Scutari, and the Marmora glimmers to the feet of a ghostly range that sometimes pretends not to be there.