Horn—save casual watermen and sea-captains who have much better things to do than to write books, or read them. [Illustration: The Golden Horn From the _Specchio Marittimo_ of Bartolommeo Prato] All harbours bring the ends of the earth together, and the part of the Golden Horn outside the bridges looks a little like them all. Flags of every country fly there, beside stone quays or moored to red buoys in the open. Trim liners and workaday tramps bring in a little atmosphere from the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the far-off Atlantic. Tugs puff busily about. Cranes take up the white man’s burden as naturally as in any other port. Every harbour brings the ends of the earth together in its own way, however, and so does this. If you happen to tie up at a buoy instead of alongside, you will soon make the acquaintance of a gentleman in a row-boat very much like other row-boats, fringed with bumpers. This gentleman will probably be a Greek, though he may be anything, and he will demand all the gold of Ophir to set you ashore, getting not a little of it in the end. If you prefer to stay on board you will very likely make the acquaintance of another gentleman in a trimmer boat, painted blue and green, pointed at both ends and provided at each with an upstanding post which is convenient for tow-lines. This is a bumboat, and the Maltese in command will furnish you almost anything in the way of supplies—for a consideration. Should you have a cargo to land, you must deal with a yet more redoubtable race of beings. These men are Laz, a race of dare-devils from the region of Trebizond, which was the ancient Colchis. You may know them by their tight black clothes, by the sharpness of their shoes, ending in a leather thong, and by the pointed hood of two long flaps which they wear knotted about their heads like a turban. Some of them are Mohammedans and some of them are Christians, but all of them speak a mysterious language of their own. Two sorts of boats are peculiar to these brothers of Medea: the _mahona_, a single-masted scow with a raking stem, and a smaller snub-nosed _salapouri_. I do not include the mad little open _taka_, broad of beam, high of board, and gay with painted stars, in which they are not afraid to run down the coast from their own country. Woe be you if you happen to displease a _mahonaji_, for he belongs to a guild that holds the commerce of the port in no gentle hand. He will neither discharge your goods nor let any one else, if so it seem good to him, and not even the government can make him change his mind. [Illustration: Lighters]