'They say that's land,' said he, 'but you d think it was a sweetmeat. Looks good to eat, doesn't it? It's like them biled violet things in sugar that they sell in Paris.' I was all on fire to see the interior of my first Eastern city, and when I saw the domes and minarets of Constantinople actually before me, the traveller's instinct was quickened to a passion. We got in at sundown, and behind the picturesque roofs of the town lay an amber and crimson mystery of light, which was half-obscured by the smoke and steam of a score or two of vessels. The whole scene looked like a smeared landscape from the hand of Turner. He, at least, would have seen to it that the colour was clear; but Nature is very often behind the artist, and the effect was grossly muddy and untransparent. In common with the rest of the world I had heard of baksheesh, but until then I never understood its magic power. A huge functionary took charge of my trunk and portmanteau, and impounded them so decisively in the name of the law that I had made up my mind to see neither of them any more. The captain of the boat whispered in my ear that a mejidieh would do it, I tried a French five-franc piece! which proved instantly efficacious; and a minute or two later I was on shore at Galata, astride a donkey whose tail was industriously twisted round by his driver, and who was followed by an unequally laden brother ass, who bore my portmanteau on one flank and my trunk upon another. We scrambled up the stony road towards the main street of Pera. The city had looked like a Turneresque dream from the outside, but known from within it was the home of ugliness, and of stinks innumerable. The yellow dogs tripped the feet as often as the abominable pavement, and seemed as immovable and as much a part of the road itself. Now and again in the side streets a whole horde howled like a phalanx of advancing wolves; but they were outside the parish of the brutes who encumbered the roadway I had to travel, and though the noise of war was near, the canine regiment not actually called to fight rested immobile, its members suffering themselves to be kicked by foot passengers, trodden on by cattle, and rolled over by wheels with an astonishing stolidity.