Let no one venture either on foot, on horseback, or in a carriage, along the all-but-interminable High Street of Pera, on a fête-day, if he be in a hurry! In the first place, two moderately-sized individuals who chance to be opposite neighbours may shake hands from their own doors without moving an inch forward—and in the next, there is no other road from Topphannè or Galata (the principal landing-places) to the Great Cemetery. And then the natives of the East have a very sociable, but extremely inconvenient habit of walking with their arms about each other’s necks, or holding hands like children in parties of five or six, although they are obliged, from the narrowness of the thoroughfare, to move along sideways; but, nevertheless, they will not slacken their hold until the necessity for so doing becomes sufficiently imperative to admit no alternative. [Illustration: A STREET IN PERA] Another peculiarity attending an Eastern mob is its utter disregard of being run over, or knocked down: an Oriental will see your horse’s nose resting on his shoulder, and even then he will not move out of the way until you compel him; and when your arabajhe warns him that he is almost under the wheel of the carriage, he looks at him as though he wondered at the wanton waste of words bestowed upon so insignificant a piece of information. But, if the bipeds are difficult of management, the quadrupeds are altogether unmanageable! Let those whose nerves are shattered by the rattle of the London carts come here, and have their temper tried by the donkeys of Constantinople. You have scarcely turned the corner of the street, and forced your way among the clinging, chattering, lounging mob, ere you come upon a gang of donkeys—your horse is restless, he champs the bit, paws with his foreleg, and backs among the crowd, in his impatience to get on; you must be contented to allow him the privilege of champing, pawing, and backing, for there is no contending against a string of a dozen donkeys, laden with tiles. While you are trying to look amused at your dilemma, and endeavouring with “favour and fair words” to induce their owner to arrange them in regular line in order to enable you to pass, you hear a portentous clatter a hundred yards a-head:—you look forward with foreboding, and your fears have not misled you: it is, indeed, “the meeting of the donkeys;” and another gang, heavily charged with earth, or bricks, or unhewn stone, are gravely approaching to entangle themselves among your first favourites, and to be dislodged only with blows and kicks very ill-calculated to pacify either you or your horse.