The Sultan and His PeopleOscanyan, C. (Christopher)
History
The Sultan and His People
Oscanyan, C. (Christopher)
Turkey -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Social life and customs
But many of the families are now to be seen in public, in European
carriages, and they delight in excursions on the water in their
beautiful cayiks.
Nature has been so lavish in her gifts to the land of the Osmanlis,
that they have every temptation to linger for hours in some one of
the many lovely spots which are to be found all along the Bosphorus.
Boghas-itchy or the Bosphorus, is the most magnificent stream in
the world. Its winding way, its shores besprinkled with palaces,
mosques and minaré's, in the peculiar picturesque style of the East;
the gradually sloping hills, here and there studded with airy and
pretty dwellings, and decked out in green array--all combine to
enchant the eye and delight the mind.
There is nothing so exquisite as the cayiks of the Bosphorus. Their
forms are as slender as the canoe's, and certainly more graceful than
the gondola's, defying any other aquatic conveyance rowed by men. They
are always propelled by long sculls of one, two, or three pair,
fastened on the gunnels at about midships, to pins, by leather bands.
The hold is allotted to the accommodation of passengers; there you
recline amid downy cushions, and noiselessly glide along, with the
measured oars of the boatmen, who look like very sea-nymphs, in their
snow-white robes.
By moonlight, the shores, with their latticed and irregular buildings,
seem to be some fantastic realms in the distance; and the blue waters
reflecting back the silvery stars, almost tempt one to plunge beneath
their glassy surface. No wonder, then, that the Osmanlis should
spend most of their time, when the summer sun cheers and invigorates,
in loitering among such scenes as these.
The sultan has numerous kiosks of his own; on the most lofty summits
of the hills, in the most sweetly embosomed valleys, by the margin
of the briny sea, where wave after wave has "noiselessly rolled up
the beach" ever since the waters which were above the firmament were
divided from those below--in the midst of plains, by the roadside,
and in the noisy populous streets of the metropolis, are these tasteful
pleasure bowers ever to be met with, but carefully guarded from profane
footsteps. Generally, however, in the spots thus consecrated by royal
pleasure, are to be found coffee shops, and mats or low stools, for
the accommodation of other classes of this nature-loving multitude,
where at all times the most lovely groups of men, women, and children
are collected.
There are some places of resort more frequented than others. The
Kehat-hané, or as it is commonly known to Europeans the "Sweet-waters
of Europe," at the head of the Golden Horn, Fener-Bahchessy, or, the
garden of the Light House, and Moda Bournou, or the Fashionable Point,
on the Marmora, the Geök-Souyou or the Heavenly Waters of Asia, on
the Bosphorus, Hunkear-Iskellesy or the Sultan's Valley--and Kalender
on the opposite shore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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