A small erection just within one of the gates of the court attracted my attention, from the circumstance of its roof being occupied by three eagles; two of them about half fledged, and the other evidently sick. I inquired the meaning of this location, and learnt that the little edifice was appropriated to the use of such wild birds as the hunters and peasants chanced to meet during their rambles among the mountains, and which were suffering either from disease, desertion, or injury. Being carefully transported hither, they are fed, and attended to until they voluntarily take wing, and return to their rocky haunts. The present patients were two eaglets, which had been abandoned in the nest, and a wounded bird, which, without assistance, must have died from starvation. Such a trait of national character is well worthy of mention. Upon the roof of a mosque about a hundred yards from the house which we occupied, a couple of storks had made their nest, and, at the time of our visit, were carefully tending their young, apparently quite indifferent to all the noise and clamour going on immediately beneath. The Turks repay the confidence thus reposed in them with an almost superstitious reverence for these feathered children of the wilderness; and the destruction of a bird of this species would be sure to draw down upon the aggressor the displeasure, if not the vengeance, of every neighbouring Musselmaun. I must not omit to mention the covered bridge; a curious Roman remain in the Armenian quarter of the city, forming a street across a rapid torrent, which, falling from the mountain, pours itself into the plain. It is entirely tenanted by silk weavers, and its numerous windows are so patched and built up as to render it extremely picturesque. Its single arch is finely formed, and from a distance it is a very attractive object; but it is rapidly falling to decay. [Illustration: ROMAN BRIDGE AT BROUSSA.] I sketched it from the window of an Armenian house; overlooked in my employment by a sweet young woman, who held upon her knees her dying infant—her first-born son. As the Orientals believe every Frank, whether male or female, to be skilled in the healing art, she never ceased her prayer, during the whole of my stay under her roof, that I would restore her child to health. I shall never think of the Roman bridge at Broussa but the weeping image of the young Armenian mother will be associated with it in my memory. CHAPTER III.