Along the edge of this piece of land, a wide road conducts you to a steep descent leading to the Sultan’s Palace of Dolma Batché; the crest of the hill commanding a noble view of the channel; while, on the verge of the descent, and almost touching the graves, stands a kiosk of wood, rudely put together, and serving as a coffee room; and immediately in front of it, a group of cypresses form a pleasant shade, beneath which parties of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, seated on low stools, smoke their eternal chibouks, sip their sugarless coffee, and contemplate one of the loveliest views over which the eye of a painter ever lingered. From this height, the hill slopes rapidly downward, clothed with fruit trees, and bright with vegetation. At its foot flows the blue Bosphorus, clear and sparkling as the sky, whose tint it rivals. Immediately across the channel stretches Scutari, the gem of the Asian shore, with its forest of cypresses, its belt of palaces, its hill-seated kiosks, and its sky-kissing minarets. Further in the distance are two pigmy islands, heaving up their dark sides from the bright wave, like aquatic monsters revelling in the sunshine; beyond is a stretch of sea—the Sea of Marmora—laughing in the light, as though no storms had ever rent its bosom—while, above all, on the extreme verge of the horizon, almost blending with the dark purple clouds that rest upon it, towers Mount Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, crowned with snows, and flinging its long shadows over the pleasant town and mulberry groves of Broussa. And here, a little to the right, (where Scutari, after advancing with a graceful curve, as though to do homage to her European sister, again recedes), upon a rock so small that its foundations cover the whole surface, stands the “Maiden’s Tower;” an object in itself so picturesque that it would arrest the eye though it possessed no legend to attract the sympathy—but such is far from being the case. This Tower, so runs the tale, was erected by a former Sultan, as a residence for his only daughter, of whom it was foretold by the astrologers that she would, before the completion of her eighteenth year, be destroyed by a serpent. Every precaution was taken to overcome destiny; but it was not to be—an adder, accidentally concealed in a box of figs, fastened upon the hand of the princess, and she was found dead on her sofa.