Hawkers, guides, beggars, porters weave in and out and mingle vociferously. To leave the ship is to be assailed on every side. Across the street is a row of coffee-houses where unholy music and singing keep up most of the time. Also, there are dogs, scores of them--a wolfish breed--and they are seldom silent. This is the reverse of the picture. As the outside is fairyland, so this is inferno. We battled our way to our carriages and drove across the bridge to Stamboul. Perhaps it would be better there. But that was a mistake--it was worse. We entered some narrow, thronging streets--a sort of general market, I should say--that fairly reeked with offal. We saw presently that nearly everybody wore rubbers, or stilted shoes--wooden sandal things, with two or three inches of heel and sole--and we understood why; it was to lift them out of the filth. I have had dreams where, whichever way I turned, lay ordure and corruption, with no way out on any side. Such dreams were hardly worse than this. A passenger of our party--a lady--said afterwards: "When we drove through those streets I felt as if I had died and gone to hell." Yet on the whole, I think hell would be cleaner. I am sure it would not smell so. I have no special preference for brimstone, but I would have welcomed it as we drove through those Constantinople streets. I know what they smell like; I can describe it exactly: they smell like a garbage-can. Not the average garbage-can--fairly fresh and leading the busy life--but an old, opulent, tired garbage-can--one that has been filled up and overlooked, in August. Now and then at home a can like that gets into the garbage-wagon, and when that wagon comes along the street on a still summer morning it arrests attention. I have seen strong men turn pale and lovely women totter when that can went by. It would have no distinction in Constantinople. The whole city is just one vast garbage-can, and old--so old--why, for a thousand years or more they have been throwing stuff into the streets for the dogs to eat up, and the dogs can't eat some things, and so-- Never mind; enough is enough; but if ever I get home, and if ever I want to recall vividly this vision of the East, I shall close my eyes when that garbage-wagon drives by, and once more the panaroma--panorama, I mean--of these thronging streets will unfold; I shall be transported once more to the heart of this busy city; I shall see again all the outlandish dress, all the strange faces, all the mosques and minarets, all the magic of the Orient, and I shall say, "This is it--this is the spicy East--this is Constantinople--Allah is indeed good!"