If, however, there is to be a transfer of Constantinople to some other power than that of the Ottoman Empire, poetic justice seems to require that the aspirations of Greece should receive first consideration. Greek in language and nationality from the days of Byzas until it was lost by the fortunes of war to the followers of Mohammed, this city is claimed by the people that counts among its own a Belisarius, a Pulcheria, a Tribonian, an Anthemius, a Chrysostom, a Gregory Nazienzus--men and women who in eminence and achievement were surpassed by none of their contemporaries west of the Adriatic and who were the glories of the greatest home of art and literature and culture when Russia was yet a land of wild nomads and ignorant barbarians. And this same people claims Constantinople as theirs “by origin and by long possession, a possession which has in some sort gone on both under Frankish and under Turkish rule.”[50] One of the most interesting and picturesque sights in Constantinople, but of a far different character from those of which I have been speaking, is to be seen on the lower bridge over the Golden Horn. Connecting Galata, the part of the city which is chiefly inhabited by non-Mussulmans, with Stamboul, which is occupied almost entirely by Turks and Moslems of various nationalities, this bridge is frequently crowded with people of every color and from every clime. But what a noisy, jostling, struggling, wrangling, cosmopolitan throng one here encounters! Here one sees representatives from all parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa--bright-turbaned Turks, supple and chattering Greeks, jauntily attired dragomans, gorgeously uniformed kavasses, heavily burdened hamals, round-browed Montenegrins, white-kirtled Albanians, bronzed and sun-dried Bedouins from Arabia, shuffling and high-voiced eunuchs from Nubia and Abyssinia, and high-capped Tartars from the steppes of Russia and Central Asia--all vociferating in a score of languages and dialects, all utterly regardless of those who are round about them. And such a variety of garbs and partial garbs! And yet they attract no attention in this motley crowd who here, as elsewhere in the East, are accustomed to seeing people appareled in garments of every conceivable style and color. “A man,” as has been observed by one who knows the Orient well, “may go about in public veiled up to the eyes, or clad, if he please, only in a girdle; he is merely obeying his own law”[51]--following a custom which has prevailed among his ancestors through countless generations.