been thrown in here and there as the artist had need of them; that vegetation belonging to every climate; that architecture representing every land; those terraced gardens and cascades of water; the dark shadows, shining mosques, deep blue sea dotted with white sails, and over all that sky flushed by the setting sun. At this point, however, I was seized with that sensation of weariness and satiety which at some part or other of the Bosphorus is pretty sure to attack the traveller. The endless succession of soft lines and brilliant colors becomes tiresome, the very monotony of its beauty dulling one’s sense of enjoyment. You feel at last that it would be a relief to come upon some huge, rugged, misshapen mass of rock sticking out from the land, or even a long desert strip of coast, wild, desolate, strewn with the fragments of a wreck. There is nothing to do, then, but turn your attention to the water. The Bosphorus is like an enormous port: we pass close beneath the shining guns of the Ottoman men-of-war, through fleets of merchantmen from every country in the world, with sails of all colors, queerly-shaped bows, and crowds of foreign-looking men upon their decks; we meet and pass outlandish craft from the Asiatic ports of the Black Sea; beautiful little sloops belonging to the various embassies; gentlemen’s yachts shoot by like arrows from the bow, taking part in races which are witnessed from the shore by crowds of spectators; rowboats of every pattern, filled with persons of all colors, push off from the shore or draw up at the thousand landing-stairs of the two continents; käiks dart in and out among long lines of barges, heavily laden with merchandise, towing slowly up the stream; navy-launches flying flags from their sterns; fishermen’s rafts; gilded käiks belonging to wealthy pashas; and steamboats from Constantinople filled with turbans, fezzes, and veils, which zigzag back and forth from one continent to the other in order to touch at every landing. All these sights seem to revolve around us as the steamer pursues its winding course; the promontories shift their positions; the hills unexpectedly change their outlines; villages glide out of sight, to suddenly reappear with an entirely new aspect; and both in front and back of us the Bosphorus keeps altering its character: now it is shut in like a big lake; now it opens out into a long chain of smaller lakes, with hills in the distance; then suddenly the hills close in again before and behind, and we are encircled by a green basin from which there is no apparent outlet, but before there is time to exchange more than half a dozen words with a neighbor the basin has disappeared in its turn, and once again we find ourselves surrounded by new heights, new towns, new harbors.