Towards midday, when we entered the “Golden Horn,” we were plentifully rewarded for our bad passage by the enchanting view of the bay, the harbour of Constantinople being one of the most beautiful in the world. We passed the Citadel and the “Dolman-Baghtcha Palace,” where Mourad, the deposed Sultan, is kept prisoner; all around the castle stood sentinels. We glided now along the verdant shores of “Boyouk-Dere,” the summer residence of the Ambassadors, and dropped anchor at Constantinople. The town scrambles up and spreads itself over three sharp-sided hills. It is divided into three quarters: Scutari, on the Asiatic shore, inhabited mostly by Mahometans; Stamboul; and Pera-Galata, on the European side of the “Golden Horn,” joined by a long bridge to the Asiatic shore, where all the Embassies, banks and hotels are concentrated. As soon as we were moored to the shore, a fleet of caïques surrounded us, and a crowd of sallow-faced guides invaded the deck, offering their services. We stepped into a canoe which took us to the Custom-House. After having got our baggage speedily chalked, we called a carriage and drove to the Hôtel de Londres, by narrow and badly paved streets, where appalling beggars and cripples of every description exposed to the eye their sores and insisted upon thrusting their distorted limbs into our faces. It was sickening to look at them! The streets in Constantinople are awfully dirty, all the refuse is carried out and spilt into the middle of them, and the homeless dogs, who serve here as sweeps, lick them up greedily. Each street has its own band of dogs, who bark and howl throughout the whole night. The carriages and horsemen don’t abstain running over them, and the greater part of these poor mongrels are lacking, here a paw, and there a tail. We saw fat Greeks chatting in groups, coffee drinking and smoking before their open shops. The Imams, in white turbans and flowing robes, sat dreaming on the threshold of their dwellings. They are also free to engage in trade, and it is not uncommon to discover that an Imam owns a melon-shop, or proves to be a milkman. Long white veils conceal the form of the Turkish women from head to foot, whenever she leaves her house. I remarked that the old women, to whom age and ugliness permitted their faces to be revealed without offending the Mussulman’s ideas of propriety, were particularly well wrapped in their _chadras_, leaving only their eyes exposed, but the young and good-looking ones are not averse to show a little more. The Hôtel de Londres being quite full, we were led into a large saloon, which was hastily converted into a bedroom. It was all windows on one side, and seemed horribly uncomfortable. Looking about me with dissatisfied eyes, my face began to lengthen. I suppose it was very silly, but I felt so tired and out of sorts that I could have cried.