Our next expedition was to Balouclè, where the Greeks have recently built a small, but elegant church, upon the spot once occupied by a very spacious edifice, which had gone to ruin. The ride, though long and somewhat fatiguing, was most delightful; the road leading us across the hills, to the fair Valley of the Sweet Waters, along the banks of the sparkling Barbyses, past the Imperial kiosks; and onward to the beautiful village of Eyoub, the stronghold of the Constantinopolitan Turks, wherein they allow no Giaour to reside; and the marble floor of whose thrice-holy mosque no infidel foot has ever trodden. The situation of Eyoub is eminently picturesque. It is backed by gently-swelling hills, clothed with trees, where the delicate acacia and the majestic maple are mingled with the scented lime and the dark and rigid cypress, whose blended shadows fall over a thousand graves, and turn away the sunlight from the lettered tombs of many a lordly Musselmaun. Eyoub possesses also a melancholy interest from the fact, that in its beautiful cemetery stands the rude mausoleum of the rebel Ali of Tepeleni who revolted in Albania, wherein are deposited the heads of himself, his three sons, and his grandson. Nor is this all; for a small mosque, almost buried amid tall trees, may be distinguished at the point where the main street sweeps downward to the water’s edge, whose modest minaret is painted a dull red from its base to its spire, and which bears the thrilling designation of the “Mosque of Blood.” I have elsewhere mentioned that the Osmanlis do not permit their temples to be desecrated by the admission of the dead beneath their roofs; and this humble pile earned its awful appellation at the siege of Constantinople, when its doors were forced by the combatants, and its narrow floor cumbered with slain. Since that period, its single minaret has been painted as I have described; and it possesses an additional interest from its vicinity to the bleak, naked, treeless hill, whereon were interred all the True Believers who perished at that memorable period, and whose ashes still remain undisturbed. Nothing can be more romantic than the appearance of the Seven Towers, the remains of the Palace of Belisarius, and the crumbling walls of the city, extending along the whole line of road to Balouclè, like a succession of ruined castles; and overtopped by forest trees, whose bright foliage forms a striking contrast from the grey and mouldering rampart. At intervals, towers thickly overgrown with ivy, and tottering to their fall, raise their fantastic outline against the sky; while the moat is in many places entirely concealed by the wild fig trees, and the dense underwood, that have sprung in wild luxuriance from the rich soil.