That was what a visitor remembered most about Constantinople: One was never far from the water. It was shaped like a hitchhiker’s thumb pointed toward the shore of Asia Minor, and it was bounded by sea on every side except where the thumb joined the hand. On the north was the famous Golden Horn—an arm of the Bosporus—which is still a wonderful harbor. It is so deep that ships can moor with their prows against the warehouses ashore and still be comfortably afloat. On the north and northeast was the narrow Bosporus with its twisting channel and its dangerous currents. Jason and his Argonauts had supposedly sailed through the Bosporus. On the southeast and south was the Sea of Marmara. On the Marmara shore there were many small man-made harbors, at least one of which was reserved for the emperor. Through the Sea of Marmara, one could reach to the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, and finally the Mediterranean; and then on to Egypt, the Red Sea, and India in one direction, and to Spain and even England in the other. Guarded by these seas and by the great walls which protected it from the west, some of which still stand, was an _Arabian Nights’_ fantasy of lovely vales and gardens, glittering roofs and towers, and, of course, resplendent buildings that were beyond anything that the adventurers from the cold and foggy north could even imagine. Among the crusaders was another knight who could write as well as fight. His name was Robert of Clari. “I do not think,” said Robert, “that in the forty richest cities of the world there is as much treasure. In fact, the Greeks said that two-thirds of all the wealth there is, is in Constantinople. The rest is scattered elsewhere.” Then he went into details. Most glittering of all, he noted, was the Palace of Bukoleon. “Within it,” he said, “there were fully five hundred halls, all connected with one another and all made with gold mosaic. In it, there were fully thirty chapels. One of them was called the Holy Chapel, which was so rich and noble that there was not a hinge or band or any part such as is usually made of iron that was not all of silver. And there was no column that was not of jasper or of porphyry or some other precious stone.” The Palace of Bukoleon had got its name from a statue showing a fight between a bull and a lion. It had been the Great, or Sacred, Palace of the earlier emperors. It covered 25 or 30 acres and was really a collection of buildings, for a Byzantine palace was never a single edifice.