The Turkish cemetery stretches along the slope of the hill behind the barrack, and descends far into the valley. Its thickly-planted cypresses form a dense shade, beneath which the tall head-stones gleam out white and ghastly. The grove is intersected by footpaths, and here and there a green glade lets in the sunshine, to glitter upon many a gilded tomb. Plunge into the thick darkness of the more covered spots, and for a moment you will almost think that you stand amid the ruins of some devastated city. You are surrounded by what appear for an instant to be the myriad fragments of some mighty whole—but the gloom has deceived you—you are in the midst of a Nekropolis—a City of the Dead. Those chisselled blocks of stone that lie prostrate at your feet, or lean heavily on one side as if about to fall, and which at the first glance have seemed to you to be the shivered portions of some mighty column—those turban-crowned shafts which rise on all sides—those gilt and lettered slabs erected beside them—are memorials of the departed—the first are of ancient date; the earth has become loosened at their base, and they have lost their hold—the others tell their own tale; the bearded Moslem sleeps beside his wife—the turban surmounting his head-stone, and the rose-branch carved on her’s, define their sex, while the record of their years and virtues is engraven beneath. Would you know more? Note the form and folds of the turban, and you will learn the rank and profession of the deceased—here lies the man of law—and there rests the Pasha—the soldier slumbers yonder, and close beside you repose the ashes of the priest—here and there, scattered over the burial-ground, you may distinguish several head-stones from which the turbans have been recently struck off—so recently that the severed stone is not yet weather-stained; they mark the graves of the Janissaries, desecrated by order of the Sultan after the distinction of their body; who himself stood by while a portion of the work was going forward; and the mutilated turbans that are half buried in the long grass beside these graves are imperishable witnesses to their disgrace—a disgrace which was extended even beyond the grave, and whose depth of ignominy can only be understood in a country where the dead are objects of peculiar veneration. Those raised terraces enclosed within a railing are family burial-places; and the miniature column crowned with a _fèz_, painted in bright scarlet, records the rest of some infant Effendi. At the base of many of the shafts are stones hollowed out to contain water, which are carefully filled, during the warm season, by pious individuals, for the supply of the birds, or any wandering animals. The Turks have a strange superstition attached to this cemetery. They believe that on particular anniversaries sparks of fire exude from many of the graves, and lose themselves among the boughs of the cypresses. The idea is at least highly poetical.