But Constantinople boasts no burial-place of equal beauty with that of Scutari, and probably the world cannot produce such another, either as regards extent or pictorial effect. A forest of the finest cypresses extending over an immense space, clothing hill and valley, and overshadowing, like a huge pall, thousands of dead, is seen far off at sea, and presents an object at once striking and magnificent. Most of the trees are of gigantic height, and their slender and spiral outline cutting sharply against the clear sky is graceful beyond expression. The Turks themselves prefer the great cemetery of Scutari to all others; for, according to an ancient prophecy in which they have the most implicit faith, the followers of Mahomet are, ere the termination of the world, to be expelled from Europe; and, as they are jealous of committing even their ashes to the keeping of the Giaour, they covet, above all things, a grave in this Asiatic wilderness of tombs. Thus, year after year, the cypress forest extends its boundaries, and spreads further and wider its dense shadows; generation after generation sleeps in the same thickly-peopled solitude; and the laughing vineyard and the grassy glade disappear beneath the encroachments of the ever-yawning sepulchre—the living yield up their space to the dead—the blossoming fruit trees are swept away, and the funereal and feathering boughs of the dark grave-tree tower in their stead. It is not without a sensation of the most solemn awe that you turn aside from the open plain, and abandon the cheerful sunshine, to plunge into the deep gloom of the silent forest; scores of narrow pathways intersect it in all directions; and, should you fail to follow them in your wanderings, your every step must be upon a grave. Here a group of lofty and turban-crowned columns, each with a small square slab of stone at its base, arrests you with a thrill of sickening interest, for that silent and pigmy slab tells you a tale of terror—each covers the severed head of a victim to state policy, or state intrigue—Vizirs and Pashas, Beys and Effendis—the eye that blighted, and the brow that burned, are mouldering, or have mouldered there—the fever of ambition, the thirst of power, the wiliness of treason, and the pride of place—all that frets and fevers the mind of man, is there laid to rest for ever—and the stately turban towers, as if in mockery, above the trunkless head which festers in its dishonoured grave!