On the European side, extending around a deep bay where the swift current dies away in gentle little waves, and below a large hill whose sides are dotted with innumerable villas, lies the town of Buyukdereh, large, colored like a huge bed of flowers, and entirely composed of small palaces, kiosks, and villas planted in the midst of a mass of vegetation of the most vivid green imaginable, which seems to pour out over the roofs and walls and overflow into the streets and squares. To the right the town extends as far as an inlet like a smaller bay in the large one, surrounded by the village of Kefeli; behind this a wide valley opens, green with meadows and sprinkled with white houses, following which one can reach the aqueduct of Mahmûd and the forest of Belgrâd. Tradition says that the armies of the first Crusaders encamped in this valley in 1096, and one of the seven gigantic plane trees for which the spot is famous is called the plane tree of Godfrey de Bouillon. Beyond Kefeli Keni is still another small bay, colored with white and green reflections from the neighboring houses and trees, and beyond this, again, Therapia is visible scattered along the base of her dark-green hills. Having allowed our gaze to wander thus far, we turn once more toward Asia, and find with astonishment that we are opposite the loftiest hill on the Bosphorus, the Giant’s Mountain, shaped like a huge green pyramid, on whose summit is the celebrated grave to which three separate legends have given the names, respectively, of “The Couch of Hercules,” “The Grave of Amycus,” and “The Tomb of Joshua.” It is now guarded by a couple of dervishes and visited by sick Mussulmans, who carry thither the rags of their clothing according to a practice in vogue among them. The forest-clad and vine-decked sides of the mountain extend to the very water’s edge, where, between two bright green promontories, lies the pretty bay of Umur Yeri, all streaked with the hundred different colored reflections of a Mussulman village on its shore, from which strings of villas and houses extend like wings across the adjoining fields or like masses of flowers thrown about at random. But the entire view is not confined to this body of water: directly ahead of us glimmers the Black Sea, and looking back toward Constantinople, we behold on the other side of Therapia, in the dim purple distance, the bay of Kalender, Yeni Keui, Injir Keui, and Sultanieh, looking far more like imaginary scenes from some dream-world than actual towns and villages.