I wanted to carry away one of those tombstones--one of the old ones--and I would have done it if I had known enough Moslem to corrupt the driver. A thing like that would be worth it--adding to one's collection, I mean. The palace was full of great cypresses, too--tall, funereal trees--wonderfully impressive and beautiful. We drove back to Skutari and there saw our driver Suleiman for the last time. I had already tipped him at the end of each day, but I suppose he expected something rather unusual as a farewell token. Unfortunately, I was low in fractional currency. I scraped together all I had left--a few piastres--and handed them to him and turned quickly away. There came a sudden explosion as of a bomb. I did not look to see what it was--I knew. It was the bursting of Suleiman's heart. Up the Golden Horn in the afternoon, as far as the Sweet Waters of Europe. It is a beautiful sail, and there is a mosque where the ceremony of conferring the sword on a new Sultan is performed; also, a fine view across the Sweet Waters, with Jewish graveyards whitening the distant hills. But there was nothing of special remark--we being a little tired of the place by this time--except the homecoming. There were _caiques_ lying about the little steamer-landing when we were ready to return, and Laura and I decided to take one of these down the Horn to the ship. The _caique_ is a curiously shaped canoe-sort of a craft, and you have to get in carefully and sit still. But once in and seated, it moves as silently and smoothly as a gliding star. It was sunset, and the Golden Horn was true to its name. Ships at anchor, barges drifting up and down, were aglow with the sheen of evening--the water a tawny, molten flood, the still atmosphere like an impalpable dust of gold. _Caiques_ carrying merchants to their homes somewhere along the upper shores were burnished with the aureate hue. Domes and minarets caught and reflected the wonder of it--the Galata bridge ahead of us had become such a span as might link the shores of the River of Peace. Once more Constantinople was a dream of Paradise--a vision of enchantment--a city of illusion. FOOTNOTES: [4] Ship-joke. XXII EPHESUS: THE CITY THAT WAS Like Oriental harbors generally, Smyrna from the sea has a magic charm. When we slowly sailed down a long reach of water between quiet hills and saw the ancient city rising from the morning mist, we had somehow a feeling that we had reached a hitherto undiscovered port--a mirage, perhaps, of some necromancer's spell.