As my people had returned, and were waiting for me, I bade my fair _compagnon de voyage_ adieu, expressing a hope to have the pleasure of meeting her in Balaklava. Our two caidjees rapidly flew away with us from the side of the _Simois_, and soon landed us at the Tophané tumble-down stairs. We are now on shore; but what a contrast!--the fairy scene has disappeared, and we appear to be in the midst of a penny show. The Tophané landing place is nothing but a heap of rotten planks, parts of which have given way, and the holes are rather dangerous, as one might easily slip and break a leg. The very clean and picturesque caidjees are waiting amidst heaps of manure and the carcase of a dead horse, which had been thrown into the Bosphorus and had drifted on shore. A number of ill-looking, half-famished dogs were feeding upon that heap of corruption. On inquiring of the son of the proprietor of the hotel, who accompanied me, he coolly told me that it had only been there a day or two, and would probably remain for months--particularly the skeleton--when the dogs had devoured all the flesh. The odour arising from the carcass, and the filth daily cast into the water, was very unwholesome, and quite unbearable; and very glad was I to quit the great landing-place of Tophané--so called, no doubt, from the extraordinary amount of daily traffic between the shipping above and the Asiatic shore. About seventy or eighty caiques are always waiting there, as it is the principal landing point at Constantinople. Following my guide, we passed through a number of dirty narrow streets, full of a black liquid mud, very ill paved--if they could be called paved at all, amidst which numerous leperous and villanous-looking dogs were snarling and fighting. Donkeys loaded with tiles, stones, and long logs of wood filled up the filthy road; besides gangs of powerful and noisy Turkish hamals or porters, carrying enormous loads upon long poles. The enchanting mirage of the panoramic Constantinople vanished rapidly from before my disenchanted eyes; this ephemeral Paradise of Mahomet changing at once into an almost insupportable purgatory. I could not imagine how such a mass of ruins and of miserable wooden houses could, from so short a distance, take such a brilliant aspect or create such ravishing sensations, as the first view of Constantinople had raised in my mind from the deck of the _Simois_. I now envied the fate of our fair fellow-traveller who so much regretted that she could not disembark--were it only for a few hours. Those few hours, nay, the first, would have sufficed to break the spell. Reader, though this is an exact description of our entrance into Constantinople, I reasoned thus--It is an immense metropolis, and no doubt something great exists within its walls. I must wait patiently and try to find it out.