When we had made the tour of the manufactory, we returned to the apartment of Mustapha Effendi, where we partook of coffee and sherbet; and after expressing the sincere gratification we had experienced in our survey, we took our leave; and once more nestling ourselves into the bottom of our caïque, we darted off to the Seraï Bournou, where an officer of the Sultan’s household was waiting to admit us, _en cachette_; the prevalence of plague having added to the jealousy with which His Highness ever forbids the ingress of strangers within its walls.
The first court of this celebrated seraglio does not convey any idea of regality to the visitor. It is rather an excrescence than an appendage to the Palace: containing on the right hand the infirmaries, the bakehouses, and the wood-stores; and on the left, the Greek church of St. Irene, now converted into an arsenal. On a line with this desecrated temple is the Mint, in which are lodged the _Taraf-hanè_, or Inspector, and the _Chehir Encine_, or Superintendent, of the Public Buildings.
Passing along beside a high wall, we arrived at the _Orta Kapoussi_, or Middle Gate, which is flanked by two towers forming a _saillie_; and close beside it the _Dgillat Odossi_, or Executioner’s Room, was pointed out to us, where the Viziers who are condemned to death or exile are generally arrested: hence the expression, “arrested between the two doors.”
Above the gateway is a line of spikes, on which the forfeited heads were exposed, to blacken in the sunshine. And here used formerly to be exhibited the pestle and mortar with which the Muftis and Ulemas were destroyed. Having themselves framed the laws by which the country was to be governed, and fearing to suffer sooner or later by their own agency, these “second Daniels” decided that their own body could not legally suffer death either by the bowstring, the sword, the bullet, water, or famine: thus destroying, as they believed, all power over their lives. But there were other spirits awake as wily as their own; and the pestle and mortar of the _Orta Kapoussi_ were adopted, in which the unhappy wretches, taken in their own toils, were literally pounded to death! Whether these extraordinary and revolting instruments of torture are still in existence, I know not; but it is certain that they are no longer exhibited as objects of curiosity.