Military Festival—Turkish Ladies—Female Curiosity—Eastern Coquetry—A Few Words on the Turkish _Fèz_—The Imperial Horse-Guards—Disaffection of the Imperial Guard—False Alarms—The Procession—The Troops at Pera—Imitative Talent of the Turks—Disappointment. Having accidentally rowed down to Pera in order to visit some friends, a week or two after the presentation of the Sultan’s portrait to the Imperial Guard at Scutari, we were startled on arriving at Dolma Batchè to see the shore lined with the caïques and barges of the Pashas, and the principal Officers of the Fleet; and the heights covered with military. Such being the case, we landed at the pier below the palace, and I addressed myself to a group of Turkish ladies who had established themselves very comfortably under the shade of a fine plane tree, to ascertain the cause of so much unusual parade. Women assuredly have some freemasonry by which they contrive to be intelligible to each other, for it is certain that, with barely half a dozen sentences of the language, I have frequently kept up something that bordered upon a conversation; and on the present occasion, by a judicious use of my very limited knowledge, and considerable gesticulation, I made the persons to whom I put the question perfectly comprehend its import. The reply commenced by an invitation to avail myself of part of their carpet, which, as it was easy to see both by their appearance and attendance, that they were highly respectable, I did not hesitate to do; and they then informed me that the Sultan was to pass in an hour, in state, to present his portrait to the Artillery, at their barracks in the Great Cemetery.