The real luxury of architecture on the Bosphorus, as we approach from the Black Sea, begins at Buyuk-Dere. This place has been called the most charming pleasure resort in the world. I am hardly prepared to endorse that opinion, but am willing to say it is one of the prettiest I have ever seen. Several of the foreign embassies have their summer residences here, and their palaces are quite prominent; the rich merchants of Constantinople dwell there in considerable numbers, and have fitted up their houses with very little regard for expense. The houses skirt the shore, and some of them climb the hills in terraces; there are groves of trees and a fine promenade near the water, so that the combined effect is very pretty. From here, as we go on, there is an uninterrupted succession of villages and palaces, whose names would be almost meaningless, but whose beauty as we view them from the water can never be forgotten.
By-and-by the fringe of villages becomes larger and deeper, and we are told that Constantinople is in sight. Its hills rise steeply so that the houses seem tost and in terraces; their varying colors appear as numerous as those of the kaleidoscope, and the domes and minarets that crown many of the elevations give the picture an emphatically oriental tinge. We are in front of the entrance to the Golden Horn with Pera and Golata on our right, and Stamboul, with its Seraglio Point, crowned with the dome of Santa Sophia on our left. Beyond are the waves of the Sea of Marmora, and as we look over them the Isles of the Princes rise between us and the horizon.
The harbor is dotted with shipping, and scores of restless steamers dart to and fro with their cargoes of passengers. Hun{ 121}dreds of caiques and other row boats are visible, and as our steamer drops her anchor, they throng around her in great numbers. The boatmen shout and gesticulate and push and fight, until they give us a fair indication of what the tower of Babel might have been just before the suspension of work on that edifice. Occasionally one of them falls into the water, but he is soon out again and shouting as wildly as ever. Evidently we shall not lack conveyance to the shore. The boatmen are a heterogeneous lot. They are Turks, Arabs, Maltese, Greeks, Italians, French, and Syrians, and there are many who would be unable, and others unwilling, to state their nationality. They are a picturesque crowd of thieves, most of them wearing the oriental dress, speaking a jargon of Italian and Greek and Turkish, with now and then one who has picked up a little English. They are difficult to manage, and not unfrequently, when they are out of sight of the police, indulge in robbing solitary passengers who engage them for journeys up and down the shores of the Bosphorus.