CONSTANTINOPLE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3148, 30 July 1881, Page 4

CONSTANTINOPLE.

Constantinople is one of the most beautiful cities in the world j it is the ' paradisiacal city' of Eastern nations. As we approach the entrance of the Golden Horn, seated in a caique more graceful than the gondolas of Venice, the vast and varied panorama around us changes with every stroke of the oars. Beyond the white walls of the Seraglio and its masses of verdure rise, ampitheatrically, on the seveu hills of the peninsula, tho houses of Stamboul—its towers, the vast domes of its mosques, with their circles of smaller domes, and its elegant minarets, with their balconies. On the other side of the haven, which is crossed by bridges of boats, there are more mosques and towers, seen through a forest of masts and rigging, and covering the slope of a hill, whose summit is crowned by regularlvbuilt houses and the palatial residences "of Pera. On the north, vast villa cities extend along both shores of the Bosphorus. Towards the east, on a promotory of Asia there is still another city, cradled amidst gardens and trees. I his is Scutari, the .'vsiatio suburb of Constantinople, with its pink houses and vast cemetery, shaded by beautiful cypress grovee. Farther in the distance we perceive Kadi-koei, the ancient ( halcedon, and the small town of Prinkipo, on one of the Prince's Islands, whose yellow rocks and verdant groves are reflected on the blue waters of the sea of Marmora. The sheet of water connecting these various portions of the huge city is alive with vessels and boats,

whose movements impart tnimatioi to the magnificent picture. The prospect from the heights above the town is still more magnificent. The coasts of Europe and Asia ar~ beneath our feet, the eye can trace the sinuosities of the Bosphorus, and far away in the distance looms the snow-capped, pyramidal summit of Mount Olympus, in nia. But this enchantment vanisnes, as soon as we penetrate in tho streets of Constantinople. Ther- are many parts of the town with narrow and filthy streets, which a stranger hesitates to enter. It is perhaps a blessing, from a sanitary point of view, that conflagrations so frequently lay waste, and scour large portions of the city. Scarcely a night passes without the watchman on the tower of tho Seraskioriate giving the alarm of fire, and thousands of houses are devoured by that element every yw The city thus renews itself by degrees. It rises from its ashes purified by the flames. But formerly, before the Turks had built their city of stone on the heights of Pera, the quarters destroyed by fire were rebuilt as wretchedly as they were before. It is different now. The use of stone has become more general ; wooden structures are being replaced by houses built of a fossiliferous, while limestone, which is quarried at the very gates of the city ; and free use is made of the blue-and-grey marbles of Marmara, and of the flesh-colored ones of the Gulf of Cyrica, in Asia Minor, in decorating the palaces of the great.—Universal Geography, by Elisoo Tleclus.