We reached the city before night, and François is glad to find his presentiment fulfilled. We have safely passed through the untravelled heart of Asia Minor, and are now almost in sight of Europe. The camp-fire is extinguished; the tent is furled. We are no longer happy nomads, masquerading in Moslem garb. We shall soon become prosaic Christians, and meekly hold out our wrists for the handcuffs of Civilization. Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among our semi-barbaric brethren. Our progress is nervous, when it should be muscular. Chapter XXV. Brousa and the Sea of Marmora. The City of Brousa--Return to Civilization--Storm--The Kalputcha Hammam--A Hot Bath--A Foretaste of Paradise--The Streets and Bazaars of Brousa--The Mosque--The Tombs of the Ottoman Sultans--Disappearance of the Katurgees--We start for Moudania--The Sea of Marmora--Moudania--Passport Difficulties--A Greek Caïque--Breakfast with the Fishermen--A Torrid Voyage--The Princes' Islands--Prinkipo--Distant View of Constantinople--We enter the Golden Horn. "And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain Of waters, azure with the noontide ray. Ethereal mountains shone around--a fane Stood in the midst, beyond green isles which lay On the blue, sunny deep, resplendent far away." Shelley. Constantinople, _Monday, July_ 12, 1852. Before entering Brousa, we passed the whole length of the town, which is built on the side of Olympus, and on three bluffs or spurs which project from it. The situation is more picturesque than that of Damascus, and from the remarkable number of its white domes and minarets, shooting upward from the groves of chestnut, walnut, and cypress-trees, the city is even more beautiful. There are large mosques on all the most prominent points, and, near the centre of the city, the ruins of an ancient castle, built upon a crag. The place, as we rode along, presented a shifting diorama of delightful views. The hotel is at the extreme western end of the city, not far from its celebrated hot baths. It is a new building, in European style, and being built high on the slope, commands one of the most glorious prospects I ever enjoyed from windows made with hands. What a comfort it was to go up stairs into a clean, bright, cheerful room; to drop at full length on a broad divan; to eat a Christian meal; to smoke a narghileh of the softest Persian tobacco; and finally, most exquisite of all luxuries, to creep between cool, clean sheets, on a curtained bed, and find it impossible to sleep on account of the delicious novelty of the sensation!