Thus warned, I desisted reluctantly from my purpose; and, sooth to say, we were sufficiently surrounded by horrors, to be enabled to dispense with one more or less. Our next point was the guard-room; an extensive apartment, with a floor boarded transversely with narrow planks, forming a lattice-work, through which the guard could both see and hear the prisoner beneath; and roofed in the same manner. Having traced the tower nearly to its summit, we descended, and passing onward a few paces at its base, we found ourselves in a compartment of the covered way that connects the towers throughout the fortress; and which was furnished with large arched doorways on either side. Here, within a recess, hung an old Roman bow of such strength that no modern arm can bend it; and to this, as we were informed, the cord was attached used in strangling the condemned Janissaries. I confess that I thrilled less at the sight of this instrument of torture, than at the idea of the refinement of cruelty, which, in a locality replete with gloom, had selected such a spot for the work of death. Hither was the victim dragged from his twilight cell. Here, where the fresh breeze of Heaven came lovingly to his forehead, quivering among the broad leaves of the wild fig-trees; and dancing on the sunlighted waters. Hither, where the bright day-beam shed over the world a light which to him was mockery! What had he to do with the fresh breeze and the genial beam? His knee was upon the earth, and the cord was about his neck. One gaze, one long, wild, withering gaze, while his executioners were busied with the fatal noose; one sigh, the deep concentrated inspiration of despair; a shriek, a struggle; the last grappling of the strong man with his murderers, and all was over; the cord was transferred from the throat to the feet of the victim; and they who were lately his comrades and his friends, seized the extremity of the fatal rope, and, dragging after them the yet quivering body, it was thus hurried ignominiously down the rough and steep stone stair which traverses the fortress, ere it arrived at the Traitor’s Gate. But I will pursue the revolting image no further. As the mangled body was hurled into the sea, the long gun which occupies an embrasure near the entrance of the fortress was fired, to announce to the authorities at Constantinople that justice had been done upon the guilty. Early morning and noon were the periods usually selected for these executions; and few are the individuals who have been long resident in Turkey, who can fail to remember the dismal report of the solitary gun as it came booming over the Bosphorus!