A PEEP AT THE SULTAN'S CAPITAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1970, 22 August 1889, Page 32

A PEEP AT THE SULTAN'S CAPITAL.

Constantinople is the brightest city byday and the darkest by night. Soon after nightfall the streets are deserted, and except an occasional rattling of a carriage over the stony streets not a sound is heard but the stick of the watchman striking the hour, and the dismal howling of innumerable dogs as they engage in their nightly battles. The people keep early hours at night and late hours in the morning. At 9 o'clock the city is just beginning to wake from its slumber. Constantinople is not a great city like Paris and New York, but a collection of 100 villages, each with its distinct name, and some of them with entirely different manners, customs, and language. Pera, for instance, is inhabited almost exclusively by Europeans — French, English, Italians, and Germans. Here the language of society is French. Stamboul, on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, is the Turkish quarters. In five minutes, by crossing the bridge of the Sulta Vorede (queen mother), you pass from the civilisation of the West to the semi-bar-barism of the East. One hundred thousand people pass that bridge every day ; and the toll which is paid by them — forming a large item in the course of a year — goes to the Admiralty, towards the support of the mivy. The Turks are great caters ; a dinner of 20 courses is common. When they are nob eating they are smoking ; when they are neither eating nor smoking they are sleeping. Coffee is the universal drink of the East among all people. It is ground fresh every time, and the milk and sugar are boiled with the coffee. It is served in tiny china cups of quaint shape and workmanship. The people are miserably poor. Beggars infest the streets by day and thieves by night ; and as the city is only lighted in the European quarter— and very poorly there — every opportunity is afforded the robbers to ply their vocation with success and impunity. The salary of the police is nominally fairly good, but, as they are seldom paid, they eke out a precarious living by taking bribes frooi criminals and letting them go. The pay of the soldier is about lOd a day, but their pay is always in arrears. A portion of their duty is to arrest tobacco smugglers. They seize the contraband goods, release the offenders, sell the tobacco, and pocket the proceeds. The bazaars of Constantinople are full of interest, and give the visitor a better idea of Oriental life than anything else in the city. As you approach the region of Eastern traffic you are assailed in many different languages — such as Greek, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabian, and Nubian. Let us enter the bazaar of stuffs. What a rich and dazzling display of goods ! Carpets from Persia, shawls from India, silks from Broussa, brocades from Bagdad, scarfs of blue and gold so transparent and light that they have been compared to sunset clouds, table covers embroidered with arabesque, golden veils woven with silver thread, robes of crimson velvet broidered with and sprinkled all over with golden stars ; mantles of green, ermine, orange, and purple ; bridal veils sparkling with silver spangles; and the satin girdle worn by a Turkish lady, on which the eyes of no man except the husband ever fall. The bazaar of perfumery next invites your attention. Here are to be found those famous perfumes with which the poetry of the East has made us familiar — the most precious attar of roses shut up in velvet cases, and so costly that none but the rich can buy it. Here are also the seraglio pastiles for perfuming kisses, and kohl for colouring the eyebrows, henna for the finger tips, soaps that make the skin as soft as silk, essence from sandal wood and myrrh, pomades for the hair, aloes to sweeten pipes, bags of musk, and a thousand other powders and fragrant waters that call up visions of fair women breathing an atmosphere of love and sighs. But it is in the jeweller's bazaar that one's ideas of Oriental magnificence are realised, and Aladdin's wonderful lamp has conjured up a vision of unparalleled beauty, so dazzling that we rub our eyes and wonder whether they can be real. There is a Brazilian topaz that would have delighted Madame Bonaparte ; a diamond from Golconda, worthy to adorn the neck of an empress ; a turquoise from Macedonia, that might have fallen from the scimitar of a Sultan ; here are piles of necklaces of opal and pearl, rubies of priceless value, and gems of every kind known to the lapidary. To refresh the eyes let us enter the pipe bazaar. Dear to the soul of the Turk is tobacco, " the fourth column of the canopy of voluptuousness," and every sort of smoking article is provided for the indulgence of this favourite luxury; chibouks, with stems of cherry and rosewood, amber mouthpieces, polished as crystal, and set with diamonds; narghiles of silver of quaint and curious shapes, sprinkled with gems, and their tubes glittering with golden rings. When Byron, who vented his poetical disgust at Malta, with its " streets of stairs," visited Constantinope, he uttered no curses " loud and deep" at the streets of stairs that abound in the city of the Sultan, which are descended at the risk of one's neck, and I ascended in danger of bringing on heart I disease. Not only are the streets deep and stony, but slippery with mud, and some ofthem reeking with filth. The Turks are the most stupid and conservative people in the

world ; they make no changes ; as their fathers lived, so live they; and thus what was good enough for their ancestors is good enough still, and is ever likelj to be.