I perceive that I am now embarked on a chapter more boundless than any. Yet how can one speak of the Golden Horn and be silent with regard to its shores? I have already written three chapters about one of them, to be sure, and I propose to write a fourth about the other. But the quiet inner reaches of the Golden Horn contain much less in the way of water life, and depend much more upon the colour of their banks. This colour must have been vivider before steam lengthened the radius of the dweller in Stamboul and when the Golden Horn was still a favourite resort of the court. Nevertheless there is a great deal of character in the quiet, in the not too prosperous and evidently superseded settlements that follow the outer bustle of the harbour. One of the most characteristic of them is the Greek quarter of Phanar—or Fener, as the Turks call it. In both languages the name means lantern or lighthouse. It originally pertained to a gate of the city wall, being derived from a beacon anciently marking a spit of land in front of the gate. There stood more anciently an inner fortified enclosure in this vicinity called the Petrion. A convent of that name once existed, I know not whether founded by a certain Petrus, a noble of the time of Justinian, who lived or owned property in this neighbourhood. It was here that the Venetians were able to effect their entrance into the city in 1203 and 1204, by throwing bridges from their galleys to the battlements of the wall. No galley would be able to come so close to the wall to-day. But the wall is still there, or large parts of it. And behind it, occupying perhaps the site of the old Petrion, the Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople have had their headquarters for the past three hundred years. [Illustration: Old houses of Phanar]