planted with sycamore, oak, and plane trees, above which stands the magnificent kiosk erected by the mother of Abdul-Mejid in the style of the Dolmabâghcheh palace, surrounded by its gardens all red with roses. Beyond the “Large Blue River” may be seen the brilliant colors of Anadoli Hissar, built upon the side of a hill upon whose summit rise the graceful towers of the Bayezid Ilderim, which exactly faces the castle of Muhammad II. on the opposite shore. At that hour this enchanting part of the Bosphorus is full of life and movement; hundreds of little boats cover the bays and inlets of the European shore; steamers and sailing vessels pass, bound for the harbor of Bebek; Turkish fishermen busy themselves with their nets suspended over the water from lofty poles and cross-beams; a throng of passengers disembark from the Constantinople boat upon the stairs of the European town--Greek gentlemen, Lazarists, students from the American Protestant college, and family parties laden with shawls and wraps. On the other side we can see with the aid of the glass parties of Mussulman ladies walking about beneath the trees of the Sweet Waters or seated in little groups on the banks of the “Blue Water,” while numberless käiks and small boats with awnings, filled with Turkish men or women, come and go along the shore. It is all so festive, so Arcadian, so irresistibly charming, that I feel as though I must fling myself overboard, and, swimming to one or the other of the two banks, plant myself there with the fixed determination, come what may, to live and die in the midst of that Mussulman paradise. All at once, with a new change of scene, such ideas take flight: the Bosphorus now stretches away directly ahead of us, with something of the look of the Rhine, only it is a modified, softened Rhine, decked with the gorgeous and varied coloring of the Orient. On the left a cemetery shaded by groves of cypresses and pines forms the first break in the hitherto uninterrupted chain of villages, and immediately after it, on the rocky sides of Mount Hermæon, rise the three large towers of Rumili Hissar, the Castle of Europe, surrounded by battlemented walls and lesser towers, covering the incline to the water’s edge with picturesque ruins. This is the renowned fortress erected by Muhammad II. a year before the conquest of Constantinople in defiance of the indignant remonstrances of Constantine, whose envoys, as every one knows, were sent back threatened with death by way of reply. This is the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, it being here only eight hundred and ten yards wide, and the current is consequently so swift that it has obtained the name of the “Great Current” from the Greeks and the “Devil’s Current” from the Turks. It was here that Mandrokles of Samos constructed the bridge of boats across which Darius conducted his seven hundred thousand soldiers, and, as it is supposed, that the “Ten Thousand”