Twenty-six years ago the present Sultan transferred the royal seat to the house at Yildiz, which was then a mere cottage. Many reasons were adduced for his changing his dwelling so soon after his accession. The ostensible reason was that the air on the lofty Yildiz hill was much finer than that round the old palace, which lay on the damp shores of the Bosphorus. But the real reason was that Yildiz was impregnable, and that there his person would be safely protected against any attempt to overthrow him. During the last six-and-twenty years he has never relaxed his efforts to make his home at Yildiz safer and safer. The forest extending from the top of the Yildiz hill down to the shores of the Bosphorus is surrounded with high and massive walls. I have never had any opportunity of penetrating within the forest It is said to be perpetually guarded by numerous sentinels round the walls. Some years ago a whole battalion of sappers worked inside the forest of Yildiz Palace for months. According to what I gathered from the reports of the soldiers, the forest is mined in several directions, and there must be a thorough workable system of subterranean passages, for what purpose it is not difficult to surmise. I visited the outside of these walls at a time when it was occasionally possible for strangers to walk in the vicinity of the Yildiz Palace. There are many blocks of barracks, thirty or forty yards apart from one another, all along the line of the wall In these barracks are quartered troops of various nationalities--Arab, Albanian, and Turkish. There is little friendliness or intercourse between the men of the different battalions; but all these simple-minded privates of the guard have been so carefully and systematically inspired with unhesitating loyalty towards their 'father,' as they call the Sultan, that they would quite willingly sacrifice the last drop of their blood in the defence of his precious life. Beyond these barracks there are hills and valleys, which are also extensively guarded by blockhouses and sentinels. Some years ago, when the Turkish malcontents became restless, a young officer in the Sultan's guard drew a careful plan of the palace and its defences, in which he showed its vulnerable points. This plan was published some years ago by the Turkish agitators in Geneva, with the title "Instructions to be carried out in the assault on Yildiz Palace." It is said that the publication of this plan caused the Sultan to alter all the defences of Yildiz.