In an araba your case is still more hopeless; for a horse _must_ get on at last, by dint of intruding upon the pavement, and impudently poking his nose into every window; applying his shoulder to the back of one individual, and whisking his long tail into the face of another—but a carriage following a carriage must be satisfied to travel at the pace which may chance to be agreeable to its leader—while a carriage meeting a carriage is pushed one way, lifted another, driven against the walls of the houses, and shoved into the kennel, until you begin to consider it very doubtful whether you possess sufficient strength of wrist and tenacity of finger, to enable you to remain within, while such violent proceedings are taking place without. And when to these difficulties are superadded the inconvenience of a dense, reckless, pleasure-seeking mob, it must be conceded on all hands that the progress along the High Street of Pera on a festival day is by no means “easy travelling.” On the occasion of which I am about to speak we encountered three detachments of donkeys, four arabas, six horses laden with timber, and a flock of sheep—fortunately, we were by no means pressed for time; though how we escaped victimizing a few of the supine subjects of his Sublime Highness, I cannot take upon me to explain. I have already spoken elsewhere of the indifference, if not absolute enjoyment, with which the inhabitants of the East frequent their burying-grounds; but on the occasion of this festival I was more impressed than ever by the extent to which it is carried. The whole of the Christian Cemetery had assumed the appearance of a fair—nor was this all, for the very tombs of the dead were taxed to enhance the comforts of the living; and many was the tent whose centre table, covered with a fringed cloth, and temptingly spread with biscuits, sweetmeats, and sherbet, was the stately monument of some departed Armenian! Grave-stones steadied the poles which supported the swings—divans, comfortably overlaid with cushions, were but chintz-covered sepulchres—the step that enabled the boy to reach his seat in the merry-go-round was the earth which had been heaped upon the breast of the man whose course was run—the same trees flung their long shadows over the sports of the living and the slumbers of the dead—the kibaub merchants had dug hollows to cook their dainties under the shelter of the tombs—and the smoking booths were amply supplied with seats and counters from the same wide waste of death. On one side, a slender train of priests were committing a body to the earth, and mingling their lugubrious chant with the shrill instruments of a party of dancers; on the other, a patrol of dismounted lancers were threading among the many-coloured tents, in order to maintain an order which the heavy-witted Armenians lacked all inclination to break.