To an European eye, the scene, independently of its surpassing beauty and utter novelty, possessed two features peculiarly striking; the extreme vicinity of the houses to the sea, which in many instances they positively overhang; and the vast number of aquatic fowl that throng the harbour. Seagulls were flying past us in clouds, and sporting like domestic birds about the vessel, while many of the adjoining roofs were clustered with them; the wild-duck and the water-hen were diving under our very stern in search of food; and shoals of porpoises were every moment rolling by, turning up their white bellies to the light, and revelling in safety amid the sounds and sights of a mighty city, as though unconscious of the vicinity of danger. How long, I involuntarily asked myself, would this extraordinary confidence in man be repaid by impunity in an English port? and the answer was by no means pleasing to my national pride. As I looked round upon the shipping, the language of many lands came on the wind. Here the deep “Brig a-hoy!” of the British seaman boomed along the ripple; there, the shrill cry of the Greek mariner rang through the air: at intervals, the full rich strain of the dark-eyed Italian relieved the wild monotonous chant of the Turk; while the cry of the sea-boy from the rigging was answered by the stern brief tones of the weather-beaten sailor on the deck. Every instant a graceful caïque, with its long sharp prow and gilded ornaments, shot past the ship: now freighted with a bearded and turbaned Turk, squatted upon his carpet at the bottom of the boat, pipe in hand, and muffled closely in his furred pelisse, the very personification of luxurious idleness; and attended by his red-capped and blue-coated domestic, who was sometimes a thick-lipped negro, but more frequently a keen-eyed and mustachioed musselmaun—now tenanted by a group of women, huddled closely together, and wearing the _yashmac_, or veil of white muslin, which covers all the face except the eyes and nose, and gives to the wearer the appearance of an animated corpse; some of them, as they passed, languidly breathing out their harmonious Turkish, which in a female mouth is almost music.