THE
WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

THE WALLS OF
CONSTANTINOPLE

BY
CAPTAIN B. GRANVILLE BAKER

LONDON: JOHN MILNE
1910

PREFACE

ROMANCE and the history of walled cities are inseparable. Who has not felt this to be so at the sight of hoary ruins lichen-clad and ivy-mantled, that proudly rear their battered crests despite the ravages of time and man’s destructive instincts. It is within walled cities that the life of civilized man began: the walls guarded him against barbarian foes, behind their shelter he found the security necessary to his cultural development, in their defence he showed his finest qualities. And such a city—and such a history is that of Ancient Byzantium, the City of Constantine, the Castle of Cæsar.

What wonder then that man should endeavour to express by pen and pencil his sense of the greatness and beauty, the Romance of a Walled City such as Constantinople. The more so that a movement is on foot to remove these ancient landmarks of the history of Europe and Asia.

True there are other works on this same subject, works by men deeply learned in the history of this fair city, works that bid fair to outlive the city walls if the fell intent of destroying them is carried into execution, and from these men and their works I derived inspiration and information, and so wish to chronicle my gratitude to them—Sir Edwin Pears and Professor van Millingen of Robert College, Constantinople. There are many others too in Constantinople to whom my thanks are due—His Majesty’s Vice-Consul, my host, his colleagues, now my friends, and many others too numerous to mention. They all have helped me in this work, and I am grateful for the opportunity offered me of here recording my thankfulness for their kind offices.

B. Granville Baker.

Note.—As I have taken the historical events recorded in this book not in chronological order, but as they occurred to me on a tour round the walls of Constantinople, I have appended a brief chronological table, for the guidance of my readers and for the elucidation of this work.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE
WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

CHAPTER I
CONSTANTINOPLE

BYZAS the seafarer stood in the sacred copse, the copse of fir-trees dedicated to his father Poseidon. His soul was filled with awe, for he was listening for an answer to his prayer; he had prayed for help and guidance in his next venture out upon the seas, and had brought rich gifts with him.

Hush! the faint murmuring of the evening breeze—a sound—a whisper only—it is the voice of the Oracle: “Build your city opposite the City of the Blind, for there you shall prosper.” The voice died away in the stillness of evening. Gently, with reverence, Byzas placed his offerings upon the ground, turned and went his way without looking behind him.

Before the dawn arose, Byzas had joined his comrades. “To sea,” he cried, “for the Oracle has spoken thus: ‘Go to the Country of the Blind—there build you a city opposite their own—you shall prosper.’” Silently the stout vessel that carried Byzas and his fortunes stood out to sea as the rosy dawn touched the high peaks of the Peloponnese and tinted with pale carmine and gold the unruffled water of the Ægean. And ever bearing to the north, to that unknown region, with Byzas at the helm, the ship held on. They sounded here and there, and asked of those they met, “Is this the Country of the Blind?” Their question met with little sympathy; the answers are nowhere recorded. After many vain inquiries the adventurous crew drew out into the Sea of Marmora. Towards evening they sighted land.

No doubt Byzas was drawn towards the Prince’s Islands ’twixt him and Asia as he sailed northward up the quiet inland sea. But sternly he resisted the temptation of these lovely isles, and held on his way. His long craft pulled nearer in towards the narrow mouth, and through the twilight a great city loomed up before him on his right—the city of Chalcedon, better known by its modern name of Kadekeuy. Now in the days of Byzas suspicious-looking craft of no ostensible occupation were not encouraged, piracy was too common and, indeed, considered one of the few occupations fit for a gentleman—night was falling; so we imagine Byzas putting in to the spit of land that projects boldly into the sea as if to meet the Asiatic shore and offer stepping-stones for any migrant Titan that might pass that way. Rounding the point, he saw before him a broad waterway winding inland till lost to sight behind the tree-clad heights to northward. So Byzas steered towards this fairway, holding to the southern bank, and then, some little distance from the point, his comrades lowered the broad sails, dropped anchor and awaited the light of day. Only when it dawned were they conscious that they had reached their goal, the country mentioned by the whispering Oracle.

A fair sight that, by the first rays of the rising sun: the east aglow with many colours, repeated in the waters of the winding bay, henceforth to be known as the Golden Horn; first touches of pink in the small clouds over the rose-tipped mountain of the East; and, swimming in a silvery haze, the islands they had passed.

Then the keenest and most fleet-footed of the crew betook themselves ashore. They searched diligently everywhere, and brought back word that all day long never a man had they seen of whom they could inquire, “Is this the Country of the Blind?” So Byzas spoke: “This is the Country of the Blind, for those are blind who could pass by this most favoured spot, and build their city on the other side.”

So Byzas settled here and built a city and prospered—the Oracle had spoken truly.

All this happened many centuries ago, when the world, at least the Western World was young, and Rome—Imperial Rome, the eternal city, was still wrapped in the legendary mysteries of her birth.

And so arose Constantinople,—a city known by many names, the one familiar to the majority of those of Western race is that of the City of Constantine, Constantinople, familiar but with subconscious charm of strange remoteness: the Slavs still talk of Tsarigrad, the Castle of Cæsar; to the Turk this is Stamboul, a corruption of εἱς τἡν πὁλιν—the phrase they must have so often heard on the lips of the vanquished Greeks, but through all ages this is Byzantium in romance. The first thing a man does when he comes into any kind of property, is to safeguard it somehow. If this property be land, however acquired, the natural thing is to build a wall around it, and this no doubt Byzas did too. But of his walls nothing is left—the city grew and prospered, the Oracle said it would, so the matter was in a sense already settled, and new walls were thrown out further until Imperial Byzantium, like Imperial Rome, stood on seven hills.

Behind these walls a busy populace increased the wealth and importance of the place, and others who wanted wealth and importance flocked in here for it. Byzant became a thoroughfare to all those of the West who did business with the East, but was chary of being too much of a thoroughfare for those who came from the East. For these latter had the habit of coming in swarms and armed, otherwise empty-handed, but with a sincere wish not to return in that condition. Against such as these the walls were built, strong and cunningly planned. And so ancient Byzant grew into the mart for those who traded from the West along the coasts of the Mediterranean, away through Dardanelles and Bosphorus to the Black Sea, to Trebizond, where the old Greek tongue yet lingers in its purest form, the Crimea—even distant Persia. So also Byzant became the bulwark that met, and broke, successive storm-waves of Asiatic attack, until in due season a strong Asiatic race forced its way in, and has stayed there, and still holds its hard-won stronghold.

It was this position that made Constantine, the man of genius, transfer the capital of his empire from Rome to Byzant, after defeating his rival Licinius at Chrysopolis (Scutari) opposite the mouth of the Golden Horn, and henceforth to make the city known as his—Constantinople, the Castle of Cæsar. This alone would justify his claim to be called Great, and, as Dean Stanley remarked, of all the events of Constantine’s life, this choice is the most convincing and enduring proof of his real genius.

It is to be doubted whether any city walls have such a stirring history to relate as those of Constantinople, except perhaps the walls of Rome. Of former, older fortifications traces have been found, and they reach back to very ancient history.

Echoes come to us from those dim ages of history, shadowy forms of warriors, seafarers, priests and sages pass by in pageant, with here and there the bearer of some great name in bolder outline. Somebody has said that the East is noteworthy as the grave of monarchs and reputations. Of no spot is this truer than it is of Stamboul.

Chroseos, king of Persia, emerges from the gloom, and with him hordes of warriors trained to ride, to shoot, to speak the truth. He is seen for a brief space encamped before the walls to bring its citizens to submission: he fades away with his phantom host. Then comes one better known, and he stands out in bold relief, the light of history gives him more definite outline,—Pausanias. He drove the Persians from the city after defeating them in the field. His handiwork, ’tis said, can still be traced in some gigantic blocks that went to fortify yet more the walls that Byzas built. He was recalled in disgrace: well for him had he never come. It needed but a little of the splendour and luxury of an oriental court to corrode the old iron of the Spartan character. For him the watery soup and black bread of the Eurotos valley could never have quite the same flavour afterwards. He left the city a discredited politician of more than doubtful loyalty to the land that reared him and the great confederacy which had set him at its head.

Then follows an everchanging array of warriors of many nations, many races. Seven times did the fierce sons of Arabia, fired by their new-found faith, lay siege to old Byzantium, and seven times their impetuous valour broke against these walls in vain. Albari, Bulgarians, Sclavi, Russians, vainly spent their strength in trying to force an entrance into the Castle of the Cæsars. Great bloodshed or great treachery could alone serve as the key to what latter-day poets call “the Gate of Happiness.” Crusaders too, men of the same faith, besieged the city, and after one short period of success, they too vanished, to leave the imperial city standing as before; to leave her, perhaps, a little wickeder, perhaps a little more luxurious, but still as perennial and unchanging as she is to-day.

Then came another, stronger race out of the East. They laid their plans cunningly and boldly executed them, they hovered for years over the city and around it, and for years their efforts proved abortive, until the time had come when this bulwark of Europe, that had for centuries hurled back the waves of warriors that dashed themselves against its ramparts, had fulfilled its mission. Vain it was to cry for help to the Christ whom they had persistently dishonoured, and to whom their very existence, corrupt and luxurious, was a standing insult. No, they in their turn were compelled to make way for the stern realities and honest animalism over which the Crescent cast its protecting shadow. Then did the conqueror Mohammed enter into possession, he and his people; here they settled after centuries of storm and stress, and here they are still, and they too are prospering—as said the Oracle in those dim distant ages before the Greek seafarers landed here.

Meantime, behind those sheltering walls, Europe was working out its destiny.

The Western Empire centred in Imperial Rome succumbed before the on-rush of barbarians from the north, those warriors from primæval forests, blue-eyed and strong, whose very aspect reduced the stout Roman legionaries to tears of terror and despair, with fair hair floating in the breeze as their long boats (sea-serpents they called them) bore them from shore to shore, or as astride of their shaggy horses they crossed the frontiers guarded by Roman legions, and conquered as they went. Then these took root, the Langobards in northern Italy, Goths in the Iberian Peninsula, Saxons and Angles in Britain, and, by degrees, became conscious of political existence.

Some vanished before the fury of the Arab as did the Goths in Spain, while others grew and prospered like the Franks. Races emerged from darkness to add to the confusion of Europe’s seething mass of humanity. Christianity shed its light upon them, and by degrees order appeared, to make way again from time to time to wild disorder.

And all the time the walls of Constantine’s proud city prevented the irruption of any Eastern foes whose advent would have made confusion worse confounded.

So on the eastern frontier of the eastern empire a wonderful revival of the power of Persia was held in check by those who held the fort of Constantine, and a vigorous attempt to regain the possessions of Hellas-hated Xerxes was frustrated.

Transient states arose and vanished—the republic of Rome, the exarchate of Ravenna, mythical Celtic kingdoms like Armorica and Cornwall, and the Vandal kingdom of Africa. Thereupon appeared the more lasting dominions of the Moors at Cordova and Granada, and of the Normans in France and Sicily, and the enduring Power of the Papal See.

Slowly, uncertainly, under the shelter of the walls of Constantinople, Europe drew the first rough outline of her present political aspect, and began to emerge from barbarism.

Ambitions and strange freaks of fanaticism flared up among young nations and died away. Among the former the revival of the Roman Empire by Germanic monarchs lingered longest. Conceived by Charlemagne with the aid of the Roman pontiff and his own paladins, this dream lived on for many centuries, caused endless bloodshed and such cruel deeds as the murder of that hapless Conradin, the last of the Hohenstauffens, a race of rulers that had given rise to many legends and heroic lays. Then the Crusaders with all their fruitless sufferings, their lavish shedding of blood and treasure, and the masses of private iniquity which they died trusting to expiate by public sacrifice.

And yet Constantinople held the eastern foe at bay. The tradition of Rome’s all-conquering legions lingered yet, and old Byzantium boasted of a standing army, highly trained and disciplined through all these centuries—those stormy times for Europe, when every man’s hand was against his neighbours. Then bands of armed men roamed over Europe, following this leader or the other, each bent only on his own advancement.

Little by little degeneration set in within and without the walls of Constantinople. One fair province after another was regained by those barbarians from whom they had been conquered, and the mighty Eastern Empire fell to pieces. The spirit of the people was no longer bent on upholding the traditions of the past, or, mayhap, lived too much in those traditions.

So when the nations had begun to settle, the day of Constantine’s city was over and its task accomplished. The eastern foeman achieved the oft-attempted end, and possessed himself of those ramparts which so long had kept him at bay, and established a new empire in place of the vanished power of Roman tradition. There is yet another aspect to the history of Constantinople. It was here that its second founder embraced Christianity. St. Sophia and St. Irene still stand as monuments to mark that happening, albeit the crescent, not the cross, now glitters from their pinnacles; although portly, bearded Imams now take the place of the long-haired Greek priests, and the high altars have been turned awry, so that the faithful may know that their gaze is fixed direct towards Mecca.

Here much of St. Chrysostom’s life and energy was spent; here, since the schism with the Church of Rome, has been the Seat of the Patriarch, head and high priest of the Greek Church.

Rulers, dynasties, even governing races have replaced each other, yet here the Patriarchate still maintains the dignity of the great Church it represents. For the strong man who vanquished this proud city did not seek to turn his new subjects to his faith, but rather gave them full liberty to follow their own. And this has been the policy of his successors; thus it is that a Greek patriarch, Joachim, third of that name, this day watches over the interests of his flock. Adherents to every creed, save that of the Armenians, have enjoyed complete religious freedom, and Jews who were hounded out of Catholic Spain took refuge under the Chalif of Islam.

The same policy is continued by those clear-headed men who have but recently revived the Empire of the East, and trust in time to give it a government conceived on modern lines. Romance! Are not the pages of history, even the most recent, made glorious by it? So who will deny the attribute of romance to the story of a walled city?

Think of the enterprise, the ingenuity, the steadfast endeavour that led to the encircling of ever-increasing areas within the embrace of those stout walls; of the life of the people who pressed onward out of paganism to Christianity, from despotism to constitutional government.—Romance!

In younger days wars were waged because some fair lady had been carried off, some rich jewel stolen, and in order that black insults might be wiped out. We live nowadays beneath a more sombre sky. From isolated incidents our motives have crystallized into definite principles, and it needs the delicate eye of the artist to see any of the old lustre in our honest if humdrum efforts to defend them.

Constantinople—the name conjures up dreams of Eastern colour, Eastern sights, and Eastern smells: visions of Turks in baggy breeches and jaunty fez; visions of bearded elders in flowing robes and turbans, white, green or multi-coloured according to the wearer’s calling, descent, or personal taste, for only he who is learned in the Koran may wear white. Those who claim descent from the Prophet bind their fez with green, and divers colours are worn more by Ottoman subjects from over the water. Then you dream of stalwart sunburnt Turkish soldiery whose bearing speaks of Koran-bred discipline and stubborn fighting, and a fanaticism which takes the place of imagination. Gorgeous cavasses, frock-coated followers of Islam with unshaven jowls and green umbrellas, smart Bedouins and copper-coloured eunuchs from Abyssinia, immaculately-attired dragomans, veiled ladies, more mysterious even than their Western sisters—in fact, splendour, squalor, light and life, and all as picturesque and romantic as dreams can be. This is the vision, and the reality to whosoever is fortunate enough to see Constantinople is its fulfilment. All but the dragomans, perhaps, for you may pass one by and not know he is that wonderful omniscient being—a dragoman. He will hide his greatness under a straw hat, maybe, he may even affect an air of Western hustle.

But every other effect makes up for any disappointment one may experience over dragomans. In a golden haze kaleidoscopic changes, every type of face a study, every street corner its own distinctive character, even the spick and span liners that lie along the quays, or have their station in the fairway of the Golden Horn, seem to adopt a catchet other than their register provides for them. Over all, the domes of many mosques with their attendant minarets, from which the call to prayer goes forth, they point the way to the goal of all good Moslems, and few there are who allow this world’s cares to interfere with their devotions. Later in the day these mosques, silhouetted in the gold of a Stamboul sunset along with the other tall columns “qui s’accusent” against the sky, go to form, as Browning (who had never seen them) suggests, a sort of giant scrip of ornamental Turkish handwriting.

So, having followed this sketch of Constantinople’s history from Byzas to these days, in which an almost bloodless revolution has been accomplished, let us approach the city, and mark the bulwarks that are left, and hear what those massive towers and battlements have to tell us.

CHAPTER II
THE APPROACH TO THE CITY BY THE BOSPHORUS

AUTHOR and Artist have, for the sake of compactness, been rolled into one. This method leaves to both a free hand and ensures absolute unanimity: their harmonious whole now proposes to the reader a personally conducted tour around the walls of Constantinople, within and without, stopping at frequent intervals to allow the Artist to ply his pencil while the Author holds forth to an eager circle of intelligent listeners.

Constantinople should not be approached by those who hail from the West with any Western hustle—no charging to the agents or the booking-office at the last moment to demand a return ticket by the quickest possible route, to traverse all Europe, passing through many strange and interesting countries with the determined tourist’s reckless haste, to tumble out on to the platform of the German-looking Stamboul railway station, worn out and wretched and wishing to be back at home again. Rather should the traveller wean his mind from many Western notions. Let him disabuse himself of the hackneyed superstition that time is of any moment. In the East it is not. Men have all the time there is, and plenty of that. In this respect it corresponds to the biblical description of Heaven: “There is no time there.” Conscious of their easily won eternity, trains, and more particularly boats, make no attempt to start at the hour mentioned in the schedule, aware that by doing so they would only cause inconvenience to the large majority of their passengers. Any one who has had official relations with the Turk knows that his most frequent exclamation is “Yarsah—yarsah” (“Slowly—slowly”), but to most foreigners the system is, at first, a little disconcerting. Again, the traveller should prepare his mind for what he hopes to see—a walled city,—so should, ere starting, let his mind’s eye travel beyond his garden wall, against which perchance he may safely lean as aid to meditation, to what he has heard of walls, walls that were built by many devoted generations and in return protected their descendants from those hungry powers that seek to destroy whatever prospers.

And travelling toward his Eastern goal the reader passes through many an ancient city whose walls chronicle the history of its inhabitants. He should take his journey easily, should move eastward with no undue haste. Let him go down the Danube, that mighty river which arises from a small opening in the courtyard of a German castle, flows majestically through the lands of many nations, where before the days of history Saga held her sway and gave birth to the Nibelungs. In its waters many ruined castles are reflected, amongst others Dürnstein, where Blondel’s voice at length brought hope of deliverance to his imprisoned liege, Richard Cœur-de-Lion. He will pass many fair historic cities, Vienna, Budapesth, Belgrade, the White Fortress, and so on through the Iron Gates, whence the great stream swells with increasing volume through the plains of Eastern Europe to throw out many arms to the Black Sea. It is here that Author and Artist await you; for to worthily approach Constantinople you should do so from the north, and by sea. And you are in good company, for by this seaway came the Russians in their several attempts on the Eastern capital. The Turks, too, the present masters of the situation, found this way and followed it to victory. These, too, overcame great difficulties—they sailed in small vessels and were much at the mercy of wind and weather; in fact, the Russians found their plans frustrated by the elements. They met with anything but a pleasant reception, whereas the traveller nowadays steams in great comfort in a racy-looking Roumanian

liner, and is sure of a courteous welcome from his hospitable host, the Turk.

Along the coast of Bulgaria—that kingdom of strong men under a strong ruler, whose history, with a long and melancholy hiatus, is taken up again, is in the making, and bids fair to rival that of older nations as a record of devotion and steadfastness of purpose. And so to the mouth of the Bosphorus, a narrow entrance through which the strong current of the Black Sea forces its way to join the warm waters of the Mediterranean.

The Argonauts found their way through here, braved the crash of the Symplegades, and sailed out into the unknown in search of the golden apples of the Hesperides. Let no man say that these were simply oranges, for these a man may cull in many a Greek garden to-day. No—it was an ideal they sought, and, like true men, they found and followed it.

A narrow entrance this, and strongly held, as it deserves to be if Nature be man’s handmaid. Strongly fortified it was, too, in olden times, for on that height to the left stands a frowning ruin, a Genoese castle, commanding the entrance for many miles round the open sea and the rolling, wooded heights of Asia inland.

Intensely interesting are the naval exploits of the city republics of Italy during the Middle Ages. It is not easy to realize the power developed by such towns as Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, and the enormous importance of the part they took in the development of Europe. Other cities are so much overshadowed by Rome, that those who are not historians hear only echoes of their greatness.

Primarily there seems to be a divergence in the origin of empire between those gained by a northern or southerly race. Latin empires grew out of cities—Rome and Constantinople, and Athens with her Delian Confederacy; the States of Pisa which owned large oversea possessions, Genoa which to a long strip of coast counted Corsica among her spoils, Venice which with varying fortunes controlled Dalmatia and Istria and built the stout fortress of Nauplia commanding the Gulf of Argolis. Whereas England, France, Germany, in fact those empires founded by the men of a Northern race, began, it appears, by the conquest of other people’s cities, and, making themselves masters of a number of such towns, started states of their own, drawing liberal and very elastic boundaries round them which they could enlarge when strong enough by the simple expedient of picking a quarrel with their neighbours. These depended for their defence more on those who lived in fortified seclusion on the marches of their domain than on the town-dwellers.

The Genoese navy, composed of ships fitted out alike for battle as well as for commerce, was free to look further afield as soon as Pisa, their whilom ally against the Saracens of Africa, Spain and the Mediterranean islands (but a formidable rival at all other times), had been finally crushed at Meloria. Opportunity soon offered, for trouble arose as usual in the Eastern Empire. The Latin dynasty put into power by the crusaders was sinking lower, and a feeling for the restitution of the Greek Empire was growing. Also, the Venetians, new rivals, had assisted the Latins, so there was every reason to interfere. The interference proved successful, Michael Palæologus conceded the suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Genoese. These places were fortified, and served as a base from whence to push Genoese enterprise further into the Black Sea, and in the Crimea a factory was established. From time to time the Genoese turned against the Greeks, no doubt in order that their swords might not rust for want of exercise during the piping times of that peace which in the East was a seldom acquired taste. They stood by the Greeks, however, when trouble came from elsewhere, and to the last upheld their high reputation for bravery and devotion.

The Genoese tower of Galata still stands overlooking the Golden Horn. A yet more notable monument to those gallant seafarers are the so-called “Capitulations.” The Genoese colony was ruled by a magistrate sent from home, and to this day that right is still granted to the Powers of Europe, and can only be fully appreciated by those familiar with the ordinary standards of Eastern justice.

On the next height the Giant’s Mountain, also on the left bank, is another monument of yet greater antiquity, though perhaps its historical value is less easily assessed—depending more than ever on personal opinion and a romantic nature completely undisturbed by the galling limitations of probability—the Tomb of Joshua. Its origin is shrouded in mystery, as it well may be considering the countless ages that have passed over it—there are so few records of Joshua’s travels that no doubt that eminent warrior may have gone on leave to travel for the improvement of his mind like his colleagues of the present day without our hearing anything of his experiences in foreign parts. It is equally possible that he may not have returned from furlough—owing to decease. This is purely speculation—very real, however, is the tomb itself. A long, narrow, walled-in space in connection with a small mosque and under the care of the Hodja in charge contains this, his resting-place, enclosed by iron rails and about 24 ft. long by 10. It also serves as fruit garden, or orchard—for several fig-trees grow here, so we see that, unless the legend lies, Joshua must have been a tall strapping fellow and the sons of Anak can have caused him no real surprise or alarm.

The correct thing to do is to walk round the tomb a great many times (there is a fixed number, but it does not matter much), tie a bit of rag to the railing and express a wish, keeping it strictly to yourself. The next best thing to do is to forget the wish, pay two-pence in baksheesh and ride away to get the most of a glorious view. Artist and Author alike do so.

And a pleasant thing it is to ride on into Asia Minor on an alert, sure-footed Arab; he need be sure-footed, for at one time your road leads along the very edge of a steep decline, at another over the bed of what is a rushing torrent in the rainy season. Everywhere a changing vista, bold, rolling hills, now covered with short scrub and heather, with black rocks peering through it—now under oak and beech, everywhere the glorious bracing air of the uplands mingled with breezes from the Northern Sea. Here and there you find patches of cultivation, the patient team of oxen drawing the primitive plough, merely an iron-shod staff at an angle to the shaft to which the team is yoked. Near by, a village, small wooden houses sheltered by fig-trees, a little shady café where of an evening the men smoke a solemn hubble-bubble and discuss events in the measured sentences of a conversation which begins about nothing in particular and ends in the same district.

What changes those fields have known! armies pouring into Asia full of enterprise and the lust of conquest, returning to escort a victorious emperor in triumph through the Golden Gate, or beaten remnants of a host to seek refuge behind the city walls. And a plough of the same construction, drawn by the same faithful servants, stopped its course a while to watch, and then went on its way unchanging.

But the fairest road is still that glittering waterway with its ever-increasing number of craft, so we pass on to Constantinople. With a fair breeze from the Black Sea dead astern small sailing vessels hurry on towards their goal—the Golden Horn. They are high in the bows, higher still in the poop, with an elegant waist but withal a reasonable breadth of beam, brightly painted too, with cunning devices on the prow and sails that glisten white under the Ottoman ensign; they carry for a flag a crescent argent in a field gules (the Artist insists on heraldic terms, as they are so picturesque). These little ships have been busy collecting many things for the Stamboul market along the Black Sea Coast. Heavy-laden tramps thump onward to Odessa to return with corn or wool. We overhaul a yacht-bowed Russian mail-boat and get a shrill whinny of greeting from the stout little passenger steamers, Tyne-built, that ply between the many landing-stages along the Bosphorus bringing officials, business men and even artists back from the city to those quiet, cosy little bungalows that hide among the trees on either side. White-painted caiques flit across from side to side, one-oared and even two-, some more pretentious ones with more oars still, the boatmen dressed in becoming uniform, veiled ladies in the stern sheets. A hustling steam-pinnace shoots by from one or the other “stationaires,” for every larger Power keeps one here; and there on the right, that row of gleaming palaces by the waterside is Therapia, those palaces the different embassies in their summer quarters. Here homesick travellers of many nations may feast their eyes on the war-flag of their country and get up a thrill, if the scenery should have failed to cause one. It certainly is a pleasant sight to see a sturdy British bluejacket again or his smart colleague of the U.S. Navy in his jaunty white hat. Therapia will tell you that this is the only place to live in during the summer; other places along the road on either hand claim the same advantage, and the claims must be allowed where the choice is so difficult. For there is Candilli, and who that has spent some sunny weeks under the trees of that favoured spot, has dived from the garden wall (displacing volumes of water) into the evening phosphorescence of the Bosphorus, but wishes to return and to repeat the performance? And Arnoutkeni, where, on a hill-top, lives the most hospitable of consuls-general.

The silvery way narrows and widens, and winds, though slightly, past ever-increasing signs of human habitation. Wooden Turkish houses with the jealously latticed windows of the harems dipping their stone foundations in the sea, some with a little scala leading to a stoep, where the veiled ladies of the house may take the air while children play around them. Stately palaces walled off towards the land, the sea-front open and mayhap the lordly owner’s steam-yacht moored just opposite, barracks and cafés with vine-clad trellis-work, and behind the narrow stone streets and little shops. Every now and then a mosque, its dazzling minarets pointing to the sky, and also, too frequently, a very modern residence in the very latest bad taste, which is saying a good deal.

To all this a background of trees, the warm depth of pines, the pleasant green of oaks and beeches, the bright shining green of fig-tree, and everywhere larger or smaller groups of slim cypresses, close-serried beneath whose shade rest faithful sons of Islam—and

surely none of them might wish for a more lovely and decorous burial-ground than here, looking out upon the narrow strait their fathers won so dearly.

There are open spaces too, where groups of people, gay patches of bright colours, disport themselves: a game of football is no unusual sight here. Even a factory chimney stands out here and there, not emphatically belching out defiant volumes of black smoke to insist on the power of the main-d’œuvre, but in a gentler manner, as if rather apologizing for this outrage upon nature and trying its best to adapt itself to its surroundings by the kindly aid of quaint-looking craft, blackavised, but free from any suggestion of machine-made regularity; these craft carry the coal necessary to enterprise, just to oblige, they seem to say.

The Channel widens, then narrows again, and here stand two ancient fortresses, one on either hand. Ancient, compared to Western notions, though too recent to be mentioned by chroniclers of Old Byzant, for they are of Turkish origin, and date back but a few odd centuries. On the Asiatic side stands Anatoli Hissar, or the Castle of Asia. Wooden houses of all ages cluster about it, the wood of some painted in bright colours, pink or ochre, or others left to be coloured by time and climate, ranging from warm purple greys to the strongest burnt Sienna. Within the precincts of this castle, entered by narrow gates, are other small houses, still smaller shops and cafés. To southward broad green streams join the Bosphorus, the sweet waters of Asia, along the banks of which are pleasant open spaces, a mass of colour on Friday afternoons; for here the Moslem ladies take their leisurely walks abroad on that day, and spend many pleasant hours chatting under the shady trees, though what they find to talk about except their children, Allah alone knows. The bridge leading over the northern arm of these waters in an attractive spot: here the Artist put up his easel to sketch the continuous stream of passers-by—grave merchants, portly of person on small donkeys, small horses laden with baskets, pedestrians many and of all manner of races, mostly Eastern, now and again a squad of cavalry on active little Arabs, or a body of infantry with the fine decisive tramp of a conquering race. At the foot of the rather high-arched wooden bridge a number of caiques, white-painted with crimson cushions, their oarsmen dozing in the sun, while heavier boats laden with fruit and vegetables go out to market at Stamboul. Across the bridge quaint wooden houses with the usual latticed windows, and, connecting them across the narrow street, vine-covered trellis-work beneath the shade of which some business is transacted, buying and selling conducted with all the leisure and decorum of men for whom a year more or less means little. Behind and crowning all, the frowning though dismantled fortress. Here the Artist had an experience that struck him enormously. His morning sketch was of the scene described above, his afternoon work was from inside a boat-builder’s yard, looking over the sweet waters to some Turkish houses, glorious in colour with quaint wood carving, each with its tiny well-kept garden by the sea.

The second day while at work on the morning sketch, the genial boat-builder approached and confided the key of his establishment to the Artist, at the same time intimating that the yard would otherwise have been found closed and thus the afternoon’s sketch delayed. Would this have happened on Clyde or Tyne?

Over against Anatoli Hissar stands Roumeli Hissar, the Castle of Europe, a yet more imposing mass of ruins. Its plan is said to be the cypher of Mohammed. The whole fortress is said to have been built in two months by the forced labour of Greeks, to each of whom was delegated a measured area. The towers that command the upper part are of the construction peculiar to the Turkish architecture of that period, a tower of smaller dimension superimposed on the lower one is what it looks like, and we shall see it again at Yedi Koulé. This castle encircling a picturesque village is peculiarly beautiful in the spring, for then the flaming colour of the Judas tree, swamping with its vivid tone the delicate pink of almond sprays, lights up the deeper ochres and purples of the surrounding masonry, and makes the dark cypresses that stand all about strike even a yet deeper note than when the glamour of high summer bathes all things in a golden haze and draws light even from these sombre trees. And they are so beautiful, though perhaps a bit wistful also—their slender shape, the warm grey and purple of their stems and branches and the cool depth of their foliage.

Close by this castle stands Robert College.

Further south, obliquely opposite is Candilli, a place where it is good to be. At first glance, but for its prominent situation, it may appear to be much like other places along the banks of the Bosphorus. A short bit of narrow street, stone-paved and very bad to walk on, leads to a cross-road, the cord that connects all these little villages. It is equally badly paved, but as many of the blocks of stone that once served as pavement have vanished, there are quite a number of softer spots wherein a man may set his feet when walking. There is a café by the waterside, where Turks, Armenians, Greeks and others take their

leisure, drink endless cups of coffee and gaze into the water.

The gentleman who sells tickets to those who leave by boat, and collects them from those who land here, may generally be seen fishing from the landing-stage. He is a philosopher; it is but little that he wants, and he takes a long time getting it. There is a mosque close by whose Hodja is counted among the Artist’s personal friends. He is a busy man, as Turks go: he sweeps out his mosque, trims and lights the candles that adorn it by night, and fulfils all the Koran’s requirements in daily prayer, encouraging others in the same commendable practice. He also possesses a magnificent tenor voice which is heard to best advantage rising up from his minaret to the hill overlooking Candilli, when exactly one hour and a half after sunset he announces to the world that “Allah is Great. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.” He has a son who is learning to chant the same refrain and to quote the Koran. Like most of the early apostles, he is a fisherman.

All around by the seaport, on the hillside, in garden and under trees, stand the houses of those who live in Candilli, either permanently or as summer tenants only. Should the reader ever visit here, let him turn sharp to his right and keep along the sea-front, a stone-paved terrace about 8 feet broad occasionally broken to admit boats into the boathouses, caverns in the stone foundations of the houses that stand here. These breaks are planked over for the convenience of foot-passengers; and so we keep on till a sharp turn to the left takes us to a flight of steep steps. We ascend and join the high-road, the cord referred to above. You are welcomed there by a sportive litter of pariah pups who have an al fresco lodging here on a luxurious bed of melon-skins, which provide food and bedding at the same time, and quite a plentiful supply of each during the season. The neighbourhood for miles round, city and suburbs, is full of little corners convenient for receiving things that you no longer want. A few hundred yards along the high-road another sharp turn to the left, another litter of pariah pups and their white mother, generally called the “old lady,” all most pleased to see you; another ascent, short but sharp with holes torn out of the pavement as if the shell of a cow-gun had struck it, and you arrive at a doorway in the wall. It is quite unpretentious, in fact its modesty is carried so far that a piece of string that dangles out of a hole will, when you pull it, lift the latch and so give you admittance.

You enter an unpaved yard, in fact after a few days’ rain you may call it a garden, for grass grows up without any other encouragement, just as it does in all Eastern gardens. Before you stands a wooden house, shrouded with vine and overshadowed by a fig-tree; there is yet another fig-tree in the garden, and a walnut-tree and another sitting-out-under tree, which finds that sufficient avocation, and therefore yields no fruit of any kind.

Entering the house, the first thing that meets your eye and holds it is a row of boots on the left-hand side of a stone-flagged apartment called the hall. Your eyes rest on the boots, for you know at a glance that they are British made—they are, for Englishmen live here. A doorway opposite the entrance leads to the kitchen; here the Greek cook, Aleko, reigns supreme, and with him the butler, Kotcho, which being interpreted means Alexander and Constantine. A wooden staircase leads to upper regions, to a spacious sitting-room, where no one ever sits save in wet weather. But why this lengthy description of an ordinary English bachelor abode? the reader asks of the Author. He gets behind his collaborator—the Artist lived here, and thus history is made.

The Artist lived here as the guest of those whose work lies in Constantinople. There were several, their numbers had frequent additions towards the weekend, and the assembly went by different names, the most common being the “Y.M.C.A.,” because one of the number nearly lunched in the company of a bishop one day, and a bishop in the Levant is rare enough for comment.

They lived in great contentment, did these Britons abroad; at work during the day, they foregathered at dinner in the variegated garb that betokens ease and talked of many things between the peals of the pianola wafted from a villa higher up on the hillside. They listened to the Eastern sounds that came to them from afar, to the warning hum of the mosquito, the distant barking of a dog, the tapping of the watchman’s iron-shod staff on the pavement outside. One night they heard his cry of “Yungdin Var” (“There is a fire”), as in accordance with time-honoured custom he proclaimed some distant conflagration, while his colleagues all along the coast on either side gave the same warning. This call sounded in the lane below the bungalow, and was vigorously repeated from within. The watchman answered, “Pecci, pecci, effendi” (“All very fine, gentle sirs”—or words to that effect), but tell me where it is? and then himself announced the place and went on his way rejoicing in a “score.”

Now and then these men would sally forth of an evening to one or the other hospitable house, to dance or dine, a solid phalanx of dazzling shirt-fronts.

The nights on the shores of the Bosphorus are very fair. Quite still, the lights of Stamboul and Pera gleaming in the distance, the swish of passing steamers whose searchlights flash unbidden through your windows, and the moonlight reflected in their wash in myriads of sparkling facets. And then the rosy dawn dispelling the faint haze upon the waters, when the tall trees that are silhouetted black against the clear nocturnal sky, lose their sharply-defined shape as they resume their colours and merge with the glorious scheme of awakening chiaroscuro.

And for many ages night on the Bosphorus has enjoyed this deep repose, making an occasional disturbance such as happens where men inhabit seem incongruous. Imagine the deep stillness when Byzas first settled in his City, set out in early morning to search out the land on his own side of this broad waterway, that led to lands remotely known to him through legend only. His constant pleased surprise at finding more and more treasure beautiful and material in the wooded bays where safe anchorage offered. And his return at nightfall in the stillness till he saw the ramparts of his City purple against the evening sky, faint lights twinkling and fainter sounds reaching him across the water betokening the activity of his settlers.

These peaceful waters have known much strife and turmoil, the valleys on either hand, the hills of Europe and Asia have echoed back the sounds of battle. Fast sailing ships brought swarms of adventurers down time after time to try their fortunes before the walls of Cæsar’s Castle. From Roumeli Hissar, the fortress built by Mahomed the Conqueror, right down beyond Seraglio Point and into the Sea of Marmora stretched that monarch’s fleet. But it was of no avail against the seaward walls. Entrance to the harbour was impossible, as a chain had been stretched across the mouth of the Golden Horn, and behind it the larger vessels of the Genoese and Venetians rode at anchor. So Mahomed conceived a plan bold and in keeping with his character and ability. He decided to convey a portion of his fleet across country to the upper reaches of the Golden Horn and to attack the walls that guarded the upper harbour.

There appears to be some doubt still as to the exact spot where these galleys were beached and as to the route they took. Galata, the Genoese fortress, must be avoided, and at the same time the shortest route must be taken. Galata stands in a position somewhat similar to Constantinople, on a promontory formed by the Hellespont on one side and on the other by the Golden Horn, which bends slightly to the north after passing west of where the land-wall of Theodosius joined the sea-wall of the Bosphorus, towards the sweet waters of Europe. At any rate we pass the place where this great feat was accomplished, and this is how it was done. Mahomed made a road of smooth planks covered with grease, and along this road a host of men pulled eighty galleys in the night. The next morning these ships were riding at anchor in the upper, shallower part of the harbour beyond reach of the larger vessels of the Genoese and Venetians. According to the Byzantine chronicler Ducas, every galley had a pilot at her prow and another at her poop, with the rudder in his hand, one moved the sails while a fourth beat the drum and sang a sailor’s song. And thus the whole fleet passed along as though it had been carried by a stream of water, sailing, as it were, over the land.

Certainly a most remarkable feat carried out to the sound of the drum. The drum an instrument, some say of torture during the month of Ramazan, for it serves to arouse the faithful Moslem an hour before sunrise that he may eat—for he may touch neither meat nor drink between sunrise and sunset during this fast, and it cannot fail to wake others in the neighbourhood. Entirely oriental in its origin—no doubt an ancient, its enthusiasts think venerable means of producing sound—its appearance in Europe is of comparatively recent date; in fact, not till after West and East met in the Crusades did the drum become part of a European army’s outfit, and to this we may directly trace the creation of military bands, for where would any band, save a German one performing in England, be without a drum? We may conclude that in all probability it served a double purpose, the uncanny noise both struck terror into the heart of the enemy and cheered on “the Faithful” to battle. The Roman armies sounded the tuba, Frank or Teuton put his soul into a bullock’s horn, which a later period imitated in brass, and that so successfully that not even the best of modern composers can altogether do without it. The Crusaders rallied their bands by means of horns, each in a different key, no doubt; the Saracens beat drums to draw their followers to the Crescent standard, and a happy blending of these two, with the addition of some attempts at harmony, now brighten the soldier’s life when marching to church in sections, or returning heavy footed from a field day.

The traveller is at liberty to choose any spot he likes, given that it be on our right, to settle where Mahomed’s galleys left the waters; that safely accomplished, he should look before him. We have passed many charming little villages quaintly named—Beylerbey,

the Bay of the Beys; Tshengelkeui; Beshiktache; Kabatache. On the heights above palaces, palaces on the sea-front, as we sail on towards Constantinople, and there it is before us.

We see Seraglio Point, and then the view increases, showing a glorious vista of mosques, gleaming domes and tapering minarets. We pass on our right a couple of steam-yachts, bright and trim, moored opposite a splendid palace. H.M. the Sultan’s yachts lie here, and his residence is the Palace of Dolma Bagche. On the heights above Pera, the city of Italian origin, now inhabited by those Western by birth or inclination, and standing some distance away from it, is Yildiz Kiosk, the deserted haunt of baleful associations.

Galata’s proud tower comes into view, and right at its feet the Golden Horn, all life and bustle and glittering harmonies of colour. The very smoke rising from the tall funnels of tramps and ocean liners catches the light, reflects it, and add another beauty to the aspect.

Over our port bow we look down the smooth, shining expanse of the Sea of Marmora, in which the Prince’s Islands seem to float as in a sunny haze. These have their history, and sad it is for the greater part, and reference will be made to that later, when the Artist has finished talking about the scenery, and has returned to his legitimate occupation. Behind these islands are faintly seen the mountains of the Asiatic mainland, then the coast draws in towards the Golden Horn, and here are Modar and Kadikeui, villages so called, though perhaps more truly suburbs, wherein you may find many hospitable houses. One of them gave shelter to a Turkish gentleman, a high-placed personage whom an angry soldiery were in search of during the last counter-revolution, the last dying effort of reaction. And here below Modar lie many yachts, for it is a fair sea for yachting is the Sea of Marmora, and the coast and the islands offer ever-varying change of scene. Then close to Kadikeui and north of it is Haidar Pasha, with its blot upon the landscape, the terminus of the Bagdad railway, an edifice German in construction and of consummate ugliness. Close under this eyesore is a peaceful spot where many tombstones and a monument bear record of the deeds of the English soldiers, victims of the Crimean War. A peaceful spot, and oh! so beautiful. Above it stands a large yellow building many storied, with a background of tall cypresses in thousands that shade the Turkish cemeteries, where many lie who fought side by side with Britons and our gallant friends the French against their old northern enemy, Russia. This building may fall to ruin and perish, the dead that lie about here and their deeds may be forgotten by all but the straight-stemmed cypress-trees, but the memory that lives about this place will never die, for it tells the glorious story of a noble woman’s work—this building was Florence Nightingale’s hospital.

And near here another work by women is in progress, work devoted to rising generations at the American Girls’ College.

The traveller may cast a glance backward to the way he came and see a small tower standing in the sea—this is a trim-looking tower and shows a light o’ nights—this is called the tower of Leander.

But no more looking back. We have arrived opposite Seraglio Point, and our goal is before us; for here is the starting-point of the strange and glorious history of the City of Constantine, here the foundations of the city of Byzas were laid—here is Constantinople.

CHAPTER III
SERAGLIO POINT

PERSONS of importance like our travellers land at Seraglio Point instead of travelling round to the bridge of Galata. Byzas did so, we have it in black and white a few pages back, so it must be true. We can without much fear of contradiction suppose that Constantine the Great landed here also, though perhaps he went to one of the harbours on the Sea of Marmora. Indeed, he is more likely to have done so, for the current runs pretty strongly and the sea is more than a little choppy at this point. Byzas had no harbour to turn into except the Golden Horn, and he must have been too eager to land and survey his new property to have followed that waterway any considerable distance. Just a little west of the point is perhaps the best place to land, somewhere near the Turkish Custom House.

It is, of course, very interesting to land at the bridge of Galata, passing through crowded shipping on the way up the Golden Horn. On one hand, to the south, one sees the irregular mass of buildings, mosques, and public offices which go to form Stamboul. You may descry that vast square of solid ugliness owned by the international creditors of the Ottoman Empire and known as the Public Debt. Close by you catch sight of the head-quarters of Government—the Sublime Porte. Drowsy fox-hunting squires, to whom their wives read the paper of an evening, must often have started at the reiteration of this familiar phrase, and wondered to what year the marvellous Eastern vintage belonged.

Opposite the business quarter of Galata, crowned by its tower. The life, the colour ever changing, on the highway across the Golden Horn is extraordinarily fascinating. Sons of every race and nation upon earth are freely mingled here. The Western official or the business man, whose garb is allowed to betray no ease or originality, here brave the fierce suns of summer clad in the drab discomfort of business attire, with the Perote or native of Pera and Levantines of European origin who have imbibed some longing for oriental display without the requisite taste. Western ladies unveiled, Eastern ladies veiled, the latter in many cases beautifully shod and gloved. Also the Artist raves about a little hand he has seen ungloved, such a dainty, beautiful hand, and according to his own estimate he is an expert in such matters. Then there are Turks, Western Turks, whose costume is also Western, the fez and seldom-shaven cheeks being the only things in which they differ from others, for many are fair and most are fine, handsome men with every sign of the self-control good breeding gives. Hamals, the porters, push their way with backs bent double and their packs joined upon the leather rests provided for that purpose. Great men in carriages drawn by dashing, spirited Arab steeds roll by you, a servant in gorgeous livery beside the driver on the box. Asiatics of all kinds and colours, fantastically yet harmoniously clad, move past with silent, unhurried footsteps. And then a batch of soldiers, fine, upstanding fellows in business-like khaki, march past on their way to embark for the Yemen, the Sierra Leone of the Turkish Empire, for which men even volunteer nowadays, since the bad old order changed.

But we have landed our travellers on the northern extremity of the promontory on which stands Constantine’s ancient city. This part serves as a public promenade, and here people take the air, admire the glorious view, and generally behave like people do everywhere else, when they find time for a leisurely stroll, the only difference being that here men find time for one more often. The point is open to the sea, for there is no further occasion for the walls and towers that encircled this the starting-point of Byzantine history. Here was the first settlement of Byzas that grew into an Acropolis, walled, and strongly held, the heart of a growing empire. So we go inland, crossing by a bridge the railway that discreetly hides its unloveliness in a cutting before running into a terminus that might have been picked up from one of the Hanseatic towns and planted here by some malignant fairy.

The road leads upwards to the Seraglio buildings, and here is much of interest. There is the Museum containing many treasures, among them two of wondrous beauty—two sarcophagi, one of which claims to have held the remains of Alexander the Great, the other is presumed to be the last resting-place of one of Alexander’s higher officers, and is known as “Les Pleureuses,” from the beautifully-sculptured female figures in mourning garb that adorn it. Within these precincts is the School of Art, where much good, earnest work is being done under the guidance of Humdi Bey, to whose efforts the recovery of the sarcophagi and other monuments is due as the result of excavations in Asia Minor.

A broad road leads us with park-like plantations on either hand up from the sea towards the Seraglio buildings. These buildings stand on a height, the first of the seven hills that form the immovable foundations of the city.

The Seraglio no longer serves its original purpose, the Imperial Museums and School of Art have taken up a considerable portion of them, and others find accommodation for troops. Here you may see the stalwart Anatolian peasant being made into a soldier after the German pattern, and a very good pattern too. Bugle-calls, reminiscent of those heard in Germany, tells the Turkish soldier the time for all the many duties he should attend to. Sergeants in manner emphatic and teutonesque impart the mysteries of that solemn, high-stepping march which takes the place of route marching in an army that has to train its men to reach perfection in two years’ time. Slim-waisted subalterns, whose moustaches follow Imperial precept, superintend these operations, and an anxious company commander may be seen in conference with his colour-sergeant.

It would sound invidious, it would savour of interference, to wonder which is the better use for the Seraglio buildings, that of the present or the past. The Artist doth profess loudly on this point, that no building can serve a higher purpose than that of housing in comfort those who are taken from their homes to learn how to defend the honour of their

country, and that again the honour and glory of a community is well served by making ample provisions for the encouragement of art. Both Author and Artist wish these Seraglio buildings a glorious future in their present warlike and peaceful missions.

But romance and mystery cling to the place and live in the name Seraglio. It is jealously walled in, the wall being of Turkish construction and comparatively recent, and to it may be seen clinging quaint wooden houses.

No doubt Byzas dwelt somewhere about here, though the exact spot is possibly beyond the ken of the keenest archæologist. Remains of solid masonry, huge blocks of stone, have been discovered near the Seraglio kitchens, of which a fine view is offered from the railway, peeps of the massive, high-standing building through the ranks of its solemn escort of cypress-trees.

When Byzantium became the City of Constantine it was found necessary to extend the enceinte of the older fortifications, as the number of inhabitants had grown prodigiously, and this first rampart was of greater extent than the present Seraglio walls. The many improvements made by Constantine, the palace he built unto himself, the Forum and Hippodrome he laid out, and the churches he erected, are nearly all within the immediate neighbourhood of the Seraglio, if not inside its precincts. So here again was the centre of the civic and religious life of the city, rising rapidly to the zenith of its power, and here it has remained until most recent times.

There were walls and towers round the point to guard the city both against her enemies and the violence of the elements, and, sooth to say, it was the latter caused more damage than the former. These had need to be constantly repaired. Of the very earliest walls no trace remains, yet they too had their page in history. Not far from where our distinguished travellers landed, just round the eastern point and looking east, is Top Kapoussi, which means cannon-gate, for here stood a gate dedicated to St. Barbara, who is the patron saint of gunners. But a more likely reason for the Turks to retain the memory of the original name is that close by stood a magazine or military arsenal when they conquered the city, and may have stood for years after. It seems that there was a yet older gate at this spot, a gate through which the Spartan admiral Anaxibius entered the Acropolis when he escaped from the city by boat along the Golden Horn, what time Xenophon and his truculent Greeks were in possession.

After Constantine had led his people, or at least those under his immediate influence, into the fold of the Christian community, many churches sprang up about this northern extremity of the promontory. (There are, no doubt, those who will differ from the Author on the subject of Constantine’s conversion, who may say that his people led Constantine to adopt Christianity, and that reasons of policy rather than the conviction born of a sudden inspiration guided him, but the Artist will on no account allow such a prosaic version.) Five churches stood about here, one dedicated to St. Barbara, as we have seen, another to St. Demetrius, a third to St. Saviour, yet another to St. Lazarus, and a fifth one built to St. George on the highest ground available just there, according to custom, for in former times all churches dedicated to the warrior’s patron saint were built on higher ground, as if to give the saint an opportunity of keeping a good look-out from his sanctuary. This church gave to the Sea of Marmora its mediæval name of Braz St. George.

There were evidently other buildings in connection with St. George’s Church, a monastic institution most probably, for here under the name of Joasaph the Emperor John Cantacuzene dwelt in seclusion after his abdication until he withdrew altogether from among his former subjects to a monastery on Mount Athos. Another great feature of this neighbourhood was its holy well, which may be springing still, though for this the Author cannot vouch, as he has not seen it. The Church of St. Saviour guarded this holy spring—its water had healing qualities, and pilgrimages were made to it on the Festival of the Transfiguration.

The life of the capital of an empire stirred the precinct of what is now the Seraglio enclosure and the vicinity outside it for close on twenty centuries. We have seen the city rise under the fostering care of Byzas its founder, and followed those dim paths of remotest history when the world was young, though no doubt the sad young cynics of the period thought it as old and foredone as they do to-day. Then came the glorious epoch of Constantine and his successors—glorious indeed in the new light of Christianity, but in that name much evil was done, and by it murder and violence and civil war were held to be excused. But through it all the city, this seat of empire, exhibited a most astounding elasticity and power of recovery. True the Palace of Cæsar built by Constantine was not within the precincts enclosed by the Seraglio walls of to-day, but the brain of the empire held its sway hard by here, and its tumultuous heart beat everywhere among the ruins and decay that now mark the site of palaces.

Constantine in his glory and genius passes, and others follow him in an unbroken sequence, some good, many bad, all human, and thus surrounded by the romance that envelops those that played their part in history and did their share in making it. A noble sequence taking them all in all from Constantine, who reigned from 306 to 337, then his successors down to the last emperor, another Constantine of the house of Palæologus, twelfth of the name who fell before his city walls to be succeeded by a conqueror of the house of Ottoman, the house that has filled the throne of the Eastern Empire until to-day.

If we take but a few of this unbroken line of sovereigns, more than one hundred altogether, such names stand out in the world’s history as Valens, whose aqueduct still stands as a monument to perpetuate his name. Then Theodosius II, whose master mind gave to the city its furthest limit in those proud walls that have encircled it since the beginning of his reign, and still stand as testimony to the genius of man. Justinian the Great, too, first of that name of whom we must say more when we come to the ruins of the lordly palace he inhabited. Leo V the Armenian who entered the city as a poor groom, they say, but served his Imperial master, Michael I the Drunkard, so well that he then ascended his throne and restored the expelled Government of the Empire. And there are many others of whom mention will be made elsewhere in connection with fortifications and palaces that were erected far beyond the first narrow limits of the city that Byzas had founded and the great Constantine made his own.

About this neighbourhood centred the life of the city; there was a broad esplanade near where the Church of St. Lazarus stood, down by the Sea of Marmora, its site probably not far from the foot of the Seraglio kitchens. This esplanade was called the Atrium of Justinian the Great, for it was his creation. And a fair place it was, all built of white marble. Here the good citizens might walk and breathe the soft air, looking out towards the Prince’s Islands and the coast of Asia, across the Sea of Marmora, reflecting in its translucent depths the glorious colours of an Eastern sunset. And here they walked and talked, and no doubt discussed all subjects upon earth, religion, politics, those chief incentives to resultless argument, and the news, with all its variations, which were nothing uncommon even in the days before a daily paper first appeared. How portly burghers must have smiled with satisfaction at the sight of bellying sails that drove their galleys back from the shores of many countries to the great market.

Or a racing craft under full sail with all its rows of glittering oars rising and dipping in strict accord would round the point into the Golden Horn, leaving the gazers in the Atrium the prey to many conjectures, until a gentle sound coming from the north, round by the Senate, growing to a roar conveyed the news of some great victory.

Perhaps an anxious heart of mother, wife or sister would beat against the coping of the Atrium, as tearful eyes followed the swift sails of departing war fleets that pressed onward into the morning. And the sun would rise to arouse the golden glories of the city, and yet leave that heart unlightened.

Here, too, good folk would meet to discuss the pomp and splendour of the escort that had brought the Emperor’s bride-elect to the sea-gate of Eugenius down by the Golden Horn. How Cæsar there had met her with great pomp and ceremony, and had himself invested her with the insignia of her exalted rank. The talk would then go on to the high doings at the palace, and all those good things that had been brought together from every quarter of the earth for the delectation of the wedding guests. When lowering clouds obscured the brightness of the sun of Cæsar what whisperings, what anxious glances out to sea! Yes, and perhaps what black looks when an alliance was proposed, and indeed consummated, between a princess of their royal house and the polygamist ruler of their enemies the Turks, Amurath I.

What troublous times and discontents when every messenger brought news of fresh disaster, of yet another portion of the Empire torn from its enfeebled grasp. What grumbling at the supineness of the Christian world that looked on with apathy when it could find the time to spare from its own internal quarrels, while the most Eastern bulwark of the faith was being hard pressed by those who carried Islam with fire and sword wherever they went. And then a ray of hope when as a last resource John VI Palæologus betook himself to Rome to implore the Pope to exert his influence on behalf of his expiring fortunes, and to stir up another crusade among the nations of the West. Though at the same time the Emperor sent one of his sons to serve in the Turkish army and learn those secrets of success which that host alone seemed to know.

Intrigue flourished at Constantinople more perhaps than anywhere, unless it be in Rome, and we well imagine how rumours of such matters filtered down among the populace, giving rise to conjecture and wild, inaccurate statements, the food that intrigue fattens on, rumour also of private feuds and family dissensions not only among nobles and leaders of the State, but among its lowliest citizens. So when John Palæologus betrayed his weakness and the weakness of his Empire, many among those who walked the Atrium of an evening might search their minds for some one who could save them from the threatening devastation, and would gladly turn to any who promised to strengthen the shaky edifice and re-establish that sense of security without which all private enterprise was crippled. For here, as in the time before Saxon England fell to the Duke of Normandy, the conqueror’s influence permeated, and attachments were formed between the highest of both nations.

So Andronicus, another son of John Palæologus, entered into friendship with Saoudji, one of the sons of Amurath. Saoudji was jealous of the favour shown to Bajazet, his brother, and resented the latter’s popularity—well deserved too, for he was valiant and successful in the field, and through the rapidity and vigour of his charges acquired the epithet of Yilderim, or Lightning.

So while Amurath was away in Asia, Saoudji and Andronicus, with the assistance of a band of Greek nobles and retainers, organized a combined revolt against the Byzantine and Turkish Governments. Amurath got tidings of this, and forthwith recrossed the Hellespont.

Suspecting Palæologus of complicity, Amurath compelled him to join in his proceedings to quell the revolt. The rebel forces were encamped near the town of Apicidion, and Amurath marched against them.

Unattended and under cover of night he rode to the entrenchments of their camp and called aloud to the Turkish insurgents, commanding them to return to their allegiance, promising a general amnesty. All these on hearing the familiar voice deserted their new leader and their Byzantine allies, and rejoined the forces of Amurath. Saoudji and Andronicus with his Greek followers were speedily taken. Saoudji was brought before his father, who commanded first that his eyes should be put out as unworthy to look his last upon the day, and then that he should be slain. The Greek insurgents were tied together and flung two or three at a time into the Maritza, while Amurath sat by until the last was drowned. The fathers of some of the rebels were ordered to slay their children before him; those who refused were themselves destroyed. Amurath ended by sending Andronicus in fetters to his father, commanding him to deal with him even as he had dealt with his own.

And after all the suppliant Emperor’s journey to Rome failed to arouse the Western nations to undertake a new crusade. All that was achieved was a confederacy to resist the future progress of the Ottoman power, and if possible to dispossess it of its European territories. The Sclavonic nations, at the confines of whose territories the Turks had arrived, joined together at the instigation of Servia. Servians, then the best troops and the most formidable the Turks had met in Europe, Bosnians, Albanians and Bulgarians, and with them Magyars and men from Wallachia took the field. Though at times successful, the alliance failed eventually in its purpose, and not until most recent times have those nations emerged from Turkish suzerainty to national independence.

The Battle of Kossova broke the power of the Sclavonic race in the Balkans and led to their disappearance from the arena of the polity of nations for many centuries. A fierce fight it was that raged all day with varying fortunes and glorious display of chivalry and knightly daring, where Bajazet the Lightning struck swift and sure, though a Christian noble ended the conqueror’s career when the fortunes of the day had just turned in his favour.

It happened thus, one Milosh Kabilovitch galloped forth as if a deserter from the Servian ranks and sought the royal presence of Amurath. He alleged important intelligence concerning the plans of the allies. Kneeling before Amurath, he suddenly leapt up and by one stroke buried his dagger in the monarch’s heart. By a miraculous exercise of strength he beat off all the attendants who surrounded him again and again, but finally fell under the sabres of the Janissaries just as he had reached the spot where he had left his horse. Amurath survived but to the close of the battle. His last act was to order the death of the captured Lazarus, king of Servia, who had commanded the centre of the Christian force, and who, standing in chains, regaled the dying eyes of his conqueror.

News of this momentous happening reached Constantinople, and we can guess that the faces of those who frequented the Atrium grew gloomier. Was there no one who could help? The horns of the Crescent were closing in on the City of Constantine, the Empire was shorn of most of its former glory and its vast possessions. Little but the city and its immediate surroundings were left unsubdued, all escape from the conquering Turk seemed hopeless. And then what were their prospects? to be conquered, and by such ruthless hands! The death of Saoudji may have been reckoned an act of justice, but rumours came to them, and proved true, of other deeds more cruel, of how Bajazet ascended the throne, like Richmond on Bosworth field, of how his brother Yakoub, who had fought valiantly in the Battle of Kossova, and had contributed largely to its success, was summoned to the regal tent and there saw his father’s body, the first intimation of his death. How then and there in the presence of that body Bajazet had immediately ordered his sorrowing brother to be strangled. This act was done, says Seaddedin, the Turkish historian, in conformity with the precept of the Koran, “Disturbance is worse than murder.” Surely a gloomy outlook for the watchers on the wall.

But how awful would be the fate of their city which had so long resisted the sacred Scimitar of Ottoman! What mercy could they expect? Help there was none, and Bajazet was making preparations to submit Constantinople to yet another siege. But he was diverted by hostilities on his western frontier, and hope revived again in the hearts of those that looked over the city walls across the Sea of Marmora. For the Christian natives of the West had at last begun to realize the danger threatening them from the East. They were moved not by the recommendation of a heretic Greek emperor, but urged by the supplications of the King of Hungary, a spiritual vassal of the Roman See. Pope Boniface IX proclaimed a crusade against the Turks, and promised plenary indulgence to those who should engage in an expedition for the defence of Hungary, and the neighbouring Catholic States.

There were fewer sinners in need of indulgence in those days than there are now; but the population of Europe was proportionately smaller. Yet many rallied to the banners of Philip of Artois; Comte d’Eu, Constable of France; Vienne, Admiral; and Bourcicault, Marshal of France. The Count of Hohenzollern, Grand Prince of the Teutonic order, led a force of Germans; the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, led by their Grand Master Naillac, joined the force of some 120,000 allies, all, as Froissart says, “of tried courage and enterprise.” Their aim was to break the power of Bajazet in Hungary, and when this was done to advance on Constantinople, cross the Hellespont, enter Syria, gain the Holy Land, and deliver Jerusalem with its Holy Sepulchre from the hands of infidels.

How anxiously those citizens of Constantinople must have longed for news of the enterprise, how hope revived as the fall of Widdin, Orsova, and Raco were reported. What a heavy time of waiting it must have been while the Christian host lay before Nicopolis. Still hope held on, for Bajazet was in Asia, and was never expected back. But suddenly he appeared within six leagues of the Crusaders’ camp. The news was brought in by foragers, and the impetuous French knights, sitting at their evening meal, at once buckled on their arms, and demanded to be led against the foes. Against the advice of Sigismund of Hungary the French charged impetuously. They charged and broke the ranks of the Akindgi, the advanced guard of the Janissaries and of the heavy regular cavalry, and pressed on till they encountered the main body of the Turks under the command of the Sultan himself. Meanwhile the disordered ranks of the Akindgi and Janissaries left behind, reformed and attacked the French in their rear. All gallantry was unavailing—they were almost all killed or taken. The German knights fell around their sacred banners. The day was lost; of the ten thousand prisoners taken, nearly all were massacred on the following day by Bajazet, who sat out from dawn till evening watching, according to the custom of his race, the gratifying spectacle of slaughter.

This dashed the hopes of the Greek Christians, and they began to prepare for the last hours of their Imperial City. But Bajazet was called away to his Eastern Asiatic frontier, where the Mongols were making fierce inroads on his territory, under their famous leader Tamerlane. A respite was thus granted while thus occupied, for the army of Bajazet was annihilated at Angora, and he himself was slain. No doubt the news of Bajazet’s defeat and death was welcome to those who took their walks on the Atrium, no doubt many a good bargain was concluded then and there in a friendly way, when the news from Asia promised better security, and at least a postponement of the Eastern terror. And indeed the Ottoman power was prostrate for awhile after the Battle of Angora, and to make matters worse the sons of Bajazet quarrelled about the succession. In the chaos that ensued even the Greek Empire profited directly, for several portions of lost property were recovered, and no doubt hopes ran high that a turning-point in its fortunes had arrived, that the dark clouds of Eastern predominance so long threatening were to be finally dispelled, and that the sun of Rome would shine again over Byzantium.

But the old terror revived again, though not perhaps to the same extent. Certainly, ere long the Turks were knocking at the city gates again. This time under Musa, a son of Bajazet, who on being released from captivity in Tamerlane’s tents, joined in the fray of brothers, and laid siege to Constantinople, because the emperor supported the claims of the eldest brother Solyman, who had taken unto himself the Sultanate of his father’s European possession, but had been overcome and slain by Mahomed the younger son.

Manuel II Palæologus, Greek emperor, besought the protection of Mahomed, and for a time a Turkish army actually garrisoned the Castle of Cæsar. But Mahomed had to take his troops back to Asia. There he overcame and slew his brother Musa, and then, all rival claimants having been removed, became Sultan of his father’s dominions.

But a few years longer was the respite granted to the failing power of Byzantium. John VII Palæologus retained some semblance of Imperial dignity; but under his successor, a bearer of Constantine’s illustrious name, the death-knell sounded alike to the house of Palæologus and to the Roman Empire of the East. The curtain rang down on what may be called the second act of the drama of Byzantium—the reign of the Christian emperors. The curtain rose again on a scene strewn with ruins of Imperial splendour, on heaps of slain, the victims of the conqueror’s lust of blood, and the succession of emperors in the Imperial City of the East was restored by one of the greatest and perhaps the most cruel of the able sons of Othman.

Mahomed II the Conqueror broke the proud record of those stout walls of Constantinople, and made the place his own. The ancient capital of the Ottomans, Broussa, and the more recent one, Adrianople, receded into the background; the former to become a relic of satisfied ambitions, treated with the respect usually meted out to a stepping-stone, the latter a mere base for frontier defence. Mahomed transformed all the life of his nation, and centred it in the City of Constantine, choosing that part of it where Byzas first landed, the point of the promontory. For here he separated a space of eight furlongs from the point to the triangle and built his Seraglio.

And here the history of Constantinople continued its course with just that break of a few days when ownership was forcibly transferred. Nor did the religious life of the city suffer any lengthy interruption. True, the monasteries disappeared, the Cross fell from the Christian churches, the Crescent added minarets, and due ceremony made them into mosques. But who can say that the religious life had ceased with the alteration in creed and dogma. And the Turks with some exceptions, usually political, have always respected the faith of others.

It must have been one of the most marvellous and astounding scenes ever witnessed by mortal eyes that took place not long after the city fell, and long before the sights and signs of the desolation there wrought had been removed. The Greek remnant had gathered together and returned in crowds as soon as they had sufficiently been assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. To solemnize this fast the Sultan held an investiture on old Byzantium lines, with all the pomp and traditional splendour of the ceremony, an investiture of the Patriarch of Greek Orthodoxy. With his own hand the Conqueror delivered into the hands of Gennodius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office. His Holiness was then conducted to the Gate of the Seraglio, presented with a horse richly caparisoned, and led by viziers and pashas to the palace allotted for his residence.

And this happened within the Seraglio walls! Surely an astounding event. The successor to the throne and empire of the Cæsars, the conqueror whose hands were red with the blood of massacred Christians, the victorious leader of that fanatic race whose life is more influenced by their creed than that of perhaps any other human community, himself approved the chosen Patriarch, the head of his new subjects’ religion, and with his own hands elevated him to that high office. Thus from the centre of Constantine’s city in its new aspect of purely oriental colouring, the Seraglio, the latticed prison of those whose privilege it is to give birth to the sons of Islam, new life was given to Greek Orthodoxy by him whose sword had hitherto been raised against it.

So the life of the old city, the heart of a new empire continued, and one ruler followed another, and like those of the second act, some were good, others bad, but none wholly indifferent. Another Bajazet followed on Mahomed the Conqueror and carried on the victorious traditions of his house. Mahomed died suddenly among his soldiers, leaving two sons, who contested for the sovereignty, as has so often happened in the history of empires raised by the hand of one strong man. Zizimes, the younger son, suggested a division of the empire, Bajazet to rule over Roumelia, Zizimes to govern Anatolia with the Hellespont as boundary between their realms. But Bajazet would none of it. “The Empire is a bride whose favours cannot be shared,” he said, and Zizimes was defeated and had to seek refuge at the Courts of other rulers, some Christian, but none of them favourable to the furtherance of his hopes. His death was caused by poison, administered by a servant of the Pope, Alexander Borgia, who thereby gained a reward of 300,000 ducats from the brother Bajazet, the sum that Borgia had agreed to for the deed, and would probably have earned himself had not Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and carried off Zizimes from the guardianship of the Roman Pontiff.

And the romantic history of this chosen spot of Byzas continues within the walls of the Seraglio, one Sultan following another and making his throne secure by murdering others that stood near it. Thus did Selim I to his brethren. He was the youngest, the ablest and most daring of the sons of Bajazet, and in his father’s lifetime intrigued against him for possession of the throne. His efforts proved successful. A rabble of soldiers and citizens surrounded the Seraglio and demanded audience of the Sultan. “What is your desire?” inquired Bajazet. “Our Padishah is old and sickly, and we will that Selim shall be our Sultan.” So Bajazet abdicated, to die a few days afterwards, and Selim reigned in his stead.

Having secured the throne Selim bent his mind on conquest and the suppression of schism among the followers of the Prophets. The Shiites repudiated the claim to the caliphate of Mahomed’s immediate successors, Abu-Dekr, Omar and Othman. So for reasons probably as much political as religious, Selim proclaimed himself champion of Orthodoxy, and sullied his reign by the St. Bartholomew of Ottoman history. In all there were 70,000 of his subjects who held to the Shii doctrine within the Ottoman dominion in Europe and Asia, 40,000 of these were massacred and 30,000 sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. And Selim became Caliph of the Moslem faith.

Then follows one whose name looms large in history, Solyman I the Great, his title nobly earned not only by valour in the field, but by wisdom in the council—and he was great among a galaxy of great Christian sovereigns, Charles V, Francis I, Henry VIII and Pope Leo X. The world was then entering on modern times, and many changes were in progress. But who will deny to this the first inception of the modern spirit, the glamour of Romance. The art and practice of war was undergoing a change, the arts of peace were reviving. Holbein was making illustrious sovereigns yet more illustrious by his cunning hand, and the bold spirits of a new Europe found yet newer countries across the seas.

The name of Solyman conjures up visions of the glowing glory of the Eastern Empire, of the force and vigour of Islam, for Selim had enjoined upon his son to carry war into the countries that professed the faith of the Cross. Through this monarch’s enterprise was Romance enriched by the story of his wars, as when against Hungary he penetrated even as far as Vienna, which he besieged, what time the Poles came stoutly to the help of Europe, to be rewarded later in history by the partition of Poland and a period of oppression which is not yet ended. With him we connect another glorious name, who brought to his master, victorious on land, new laurels won at sea, Barbarossa, Solyman’s great admiral.

Yet another name that rings out from within the walls of the Seraglio, and is known by all who love Romance, is that of Roxalana. Solyman’s favourite Sultana in the earlier part of his reign had been a beautiful Circassian. Her son Mustapha inherited his mother’s beauty, and was a pattern of manly and chivalrous excellence.

But the Circassian Sultana lost the Imperial favour. A lovely Russian girl, Khourrem (“The joyous one”), enkindled anew the passion of love in the Sultan’s breast. She was a slave, she obtained her freedom from her royal lover and induced him to wed her. Khourrem, or as the Christians called her “Roxalana” became Sultana. Her aims and ambition was to forward the chances of her own children, and to that end Mustapha had to be removed. She ruled Solyman to the day of her death, and had the satisfaction of bringing about the murder of Mustapha before she died. He was appointed Governor of Carmania, and so skilfully did Roxalana work upon Solyman that he was at last induced to believe that Mustapha was plotting to usurp the throne. Mustapha was ordered to enter the Sultan’s presence alone, and Solyman looking on from an inner chamber saw seven mute executioners carry out his command to strangle his son with the bowstring.

And so the Romance that sheds a glamour over the history enacted within the Seraglio walls flows on, while fortune favours those who merit it, and wrong-doing is often punished by those drastic measures to which these grey embattlements had long become accustomed. Roxalana herself was buried in all due state not a stone’s throw from the spot where her sovereign lord afterwards found his rest. But in the two chambers where they lie you will notice a difference. To enter that of Solyman you must take off your shoes, the place is holy ground—the grave of a warrior who is almost a saint. You may, however, pass to the chamber of the “Joyous one” shod as you are. She has no soul, that makes all the difference.

They tell of Selim, Solyman’s successor, Roxalana’s son, who broke the Law of the Prophet and died drunk; Othman II, of the revolt of the Janissaries and their choice of Sultan—until the seat of Government was moved from the place where Byzas first made his choice and Constantine and his successors reigned, until they in due time gave way to those of the house of Ottoman.

But is the present state of this Seraglio less romantic than in those days of fierce passion untrammelled and only expressed in blood? The head priest, the Sheik-ul-Islam, has decreed that there is no infringement of the Laws of Islam in its sons expressing higher thoughts by means artistic. And so the life of the Seraglio goes on, peaceful, more beautiful, and just as much Romance as heretofore.

CHAPTER IV
SERAGLIO POINT (continued)

SERAGLIO POINT itself, or rather the extreme end of it at least, is now open to the sea. It was not always so, and is only safe now that long-range guns have completely revolutionized the methods of defence.

Where our travellers alighted was a wall flanked by strong towers, 188 in all, says Bondelmontius; this extended all along the coast by the Sea of Marmora, until it joined the angle where the land-walls that cut right across the peninsula commence. Remains, and fine remains, of their sea-wall are still here, at one place dipping their stout foundations into the sea, at others further inland on spots which were in former times the harbour.

No doubt the first wall here was built by Byzas, but it has vanished and made room for the ramparts which Constantine the Great erected to defend his new capital. What yet remains is full of interest and has a beauty of its own.

When looking towards the city from Modar or Kadikeui on the Asiatic side, the city seems to arise from out a girdle of embattled walls, to lose itself in a forest of slender minarets. On approaching these walls their interest increases, for here are arches built up and strange inscriptions, gateways that each contribute many pages to history. Theodosius II and his præfect Constantius have here left records of their rule; the Emperor Theophilus is mentioned in the same manner as the restorer of the walls, and so is the share that Emperor Isaac Angelus contributed to their repair.

No doubt there was much need of walls to guard the ever-extending sea-front of the city along the shore of the Sea of Marmora; for though the Greeks, and after them the Turks, were generally able to forestall an attack by striking first, this policy in the degenerate times of the Empire was not always practicable.

Still the sea-walls were not exposed to the assaults of an enemy to such an extent as were the landward ones; their worst enemy was the sea in its destructive phases, and other elements aided in rendering insecure man’s tenure of this precious slip of land.

The traveller must remember the first sight of Constantine’s glorious city; he approached it at high noon and saw it melting in a golden haze rising out of tranquil waters, which mirrored faithfully the colour of the sky, while many other colours flamed and fleeted like sparkling diamonds. Yet as we approached Seraglio Point the strength of the current became evident, the current against which those heavy-built sailing craft, aided by their oars, battled so manfully, while it bore other small craft swiftly out into the Sea of Marmora. This current with its constant wear and tear put a severe strain on the foundations of the seaward walls upon Seraglio Point. The traveller’s first view was in the fairest of fair weather; but in the winter, when the piercing icy gale tears down through the narrow channel of the Bosphorus, ploughing up its waters to dash them against the facings of the promontory, another side of the picture is revealed, and helps to account for the constant repairs that were needed to keep the seaward ramparts in a proper state of defence. Not only those storms that scourge the racing billows to the charge, but other forces have helped to frustrate man’s efforts to shelter himself from fierce foemen and fiercer elements.

For in 447 an earthquake visited this fair spot and wreaked much havoc among the stout walls and stouter towers that Constantine constructed. Again, some three centuries later, a most severe winter held all that Eastern neighbourhood in an iron grip. According to Theophanes, the Black Sea along the northern and western shores was frozen to a distance of one hundred miles from land, and that to a depth of sixty feet. Upon this foundation a huge mass of snow some forty-five feet in height had gathered. With the softer breath of spring the ice broke up, and floating on the swift currents of the Bosphorus came the floes in such numbers that they blocked up the narrower passages and formed a floating barricade across the channel from Scutari to Galata. When this mass in its turn was loosened and drifted south, huge icebergs crashed against the bulwarks, so high that they overtopped the towers and ramparts of the sea-wall, so great that their weight and impetus crushed all that opposed their progress. And thus the walls along the apex of the promontory had to be entirely reconstructed by Michael II, who commenced the work, and his son Theophilus, who completed it.

Author and Artist have discussed most seriously how best to show the traveller these walls along the Sea of Marmora, for there is much to be seen. The Artist loves the view from across the Sea of Marmora seen at sunrise, of the city swimming in a sea of pearly grey; or at sunset, purple against a glowing mass of orange, red and green, colours which are all truthfully reflected in the placid waters. And the centre of the composition is the Seraglio lighthouse. Close behind it rise battlemented walls and towers, and then in tiers of little red roofs above the grey wooden houses, among trees of all kinds, while everywhere the immortal cypress strives after the minarets that stand as sentinels to the many mosques which crown the heights of the city.

Here, too, on that tranquil sheet of water, pages of history have been unrolled, filled up, and set aside for the guidance of future generations. For though the seaward walls were strong and bravely manned, though they were further guarded by a current which could dash an enemy’s fleet to atoms on the strong surface of the defences, or carry it harmless out to sea again, many a shipload of adventurous spirits has tried conclusions with the men who held them and the elements which guarded the approaches with equal jealousy.

Perhaps the first serious attempt upon the seaward walls was made by those scourges of the Mediterranean, the Saracens. It was on this occasion that mention is first made of the use of a chain to close the entrance of a harbour against an enemy. It was stretched across the Golden Horn, from a tower near the apex of the promontory to one upon the northern bank.

Those were stirring times, when the sons of Arabia Felix, the first disciples of the Prophet, spread out over all the Mediterranean and the neighbouring countries. They conquered in breathless advance Egypt and all north of Africa, and held their own still in its most western region. They invaded Persia, they overflowed into Spain, overthrew the Gothic monarchy, and remained, despite the heroic efforts of Charlemagne and his Paladins. Syria and the Holy Places were theirs, and they snatched what was best and most worth having among the islands of the Mediterranean. What wonder, then, that they turned their eager, flashing eyes towards Constantinople? As we stand gazing at the beautiful city that rises proudly out of a tranquil sea, the waters become troubled, and dark-blue and iron-grey storm-clouds gather in the south. They race up from the Dardanelles, and hundreds of rakish-looking craft, rigged as those that the traveller may see any day off the north coast of Africa, fly before the wind. The rain falls in torrents, and then suddenly all is still again, the sea is quiet, and the rearguard of the tempest sweeps away up the Bosphorus, to leave the sun in possession of its former battlefield. Even so came the invincible navies of Egypt and Syria, carrying the swarthy sons of Arabia towards the treasures they descried within the walls of Constantine’s Imperial City. And up it comes, this storm-cloud, over a smooth sea, and borne on a gentle breeze like a moving forest overshadowing the surface of the strait. Others of their fierce race and fiercer faith were arrayed before the land-walls; and no one of the invaders doubted that any bulwarks, however strong, however well defended, could resist the tide of passionate bravery that was about to break over the devoted city.

But the time was not yet come. Leo III the Isaurian, a man risen from the people to the Imperial Purple through his ability and valour, knew how to defend his own. He had the chain that guarded the entrance to the harbour lowered, and, while the enemy hesitated as to which course to adopt, Greek fireships sailed amongst them carrying destruction as to the Armada. This, and the tempests that arose, so seriously damaged the hitherto invincible fleet that only a few galleys were spared to return to Alexandria and to relate the tale of their moving misadventures.

Though peace was never the lot of the Eastern Empire for any protracted period, it was more than a century later that an unfriendly keel furrowed the waters of the Sea of Marmora. And this time the trouble came from within. Michael II the Stammerer had gained the throne when Leo V the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar grasping a weighty cross in his hand. Thomas contested Michael’s claim and sailed towards the city to enforce his own, but a storm arose and compelled him to withdraw. So Thomas and his galleys are wafted from the scene to be followed shortly afterwards by other hardier adventurers. They came down from the Black Sea, a black cloud their canopy, on black waters that turned to silver where the prows of their vessels cleared a path. Fierce, reckless foes these, who in 865 first made acquaintance with the Eastern Gate of Europe, a goal that for ten centuries represented the sum of their ambition. Fair men of big stature with high cheek-bones, speaking a barbarous language, they sped down on the wings of a fierce gale towards the Golden Horn. But here the tempest gained the mastery, and this the first Russian fleet to disturb the peace of Constantinople perished in the storm.

Again a visionary host crowds the further banks with their glittering arms and pennants waving overhead; all the chivalry of the West is here assembled. Their numbers are so great that the Byzantine agents gave up the task of counting them. They came from all the West: from Rome to Britain, from Poland and Bohemia and all Germany under the banner of Conrad the Kaiser. Louis of France too, and his nobles, swelled this throng, who, with the cross emblazoned on their shields and embroidered on their garments, set out upon this conquest of the Holy Land. We see them cross the waters, while hope beats high in their unconquered hearts, and would rather draw a veil over the return of the mere remnant of survivors.

Then later on came others in larger vessels, from the South: Genoese, experienced travellers and determined fighters; also Venetians, the only race of sea-dogs that ever succeeded in an attempt on these sea-walls. A striking scene this. In double line the ships and lighter galleys of the Venetians bore down upon the walls. Soldiers leapt from the swifter sailing craft on to shore and planted scaling-ladders against the walls. In the meantime the heavier ships filled up the gaps with their high poop-decks and turrets, as platforms for those military engines then in use, and from them drawbridges were lowered to the summit of the wall. On the prow of his galley stood Dandolo, the venerable Doge, in full armour. He was the first warrior on the shore. The standard of St. Mark waved from the ramparts and twenty-five of the towers were speedily occupied, the Greeks being driven by fire from the adjacent quarters. But Dandolo decided to forego the advantage thus gained in order to hasten to the aid of his Latin comrades, whose small and exhausted bands were in sore straits among the superior numbers of the Greeks. Nevertheless, their firm aspect awed the coward Emperor Alexius. But he collected a treasure of 10,000 pounds of gold, and basely deserting his wife and people crept into a barque and stole through the Bosphorus and sought safety in an obscure Thracian harbour.

Two mighty heroes of history and Romance, both known as Barbarossa, add yet more colour to the vivid pageant that plays over these placid waters. For further to the south, where the Sea of Marmora narrows into the Channel of the Dardanelles, the Redbeard Frederick, Conrad’s son and successor to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, if not the greatest, at least the best known in the romantic story of the house of Hohenstauffen, crossed into Asia to find, after many deeds of derring do, his watery grave in a small Cilician torrent. There were many who believed he was not dead, but only slumbering deep among the ruins of Kyffhausen—his long red beard grown through the table on which his hand supports his head, the while he dreams even as he has dreamt through all the troublous times that visited Germany. Dreamt while the last scion of his house perished; dreamt while a war of thirty years, provoked like all the cruelest wars by religious differences, devastated the fair fields of Germany and laid waste many a walled city; dreamt while the march of the first Napoleon’s armies made Europe tremble—only to awake when all Germany arose and marched towards the Rhine and into the Empire of the third Napoleon, and returning thence to build up a new and stronger empire.

The next to bear the epithet of Barbarossa lived his eventful life when Francis I was King of France and Charles V King of Spain, Naples and the Netherlands, and by election German Emperor, ruled over many states and provinces of the old world and the new.

Solyman I the Great was Sultan and Chief, and reigned at Constantinople, extending the empire of the Crescent by land far into Western Europe, while Barbarossa carried the victorious symbol everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. His name was Khairedden Pasha, one of four brothers who were trained to merchandise with its usual concomitant piracy, and amassed great wealth in these pursuits. Barbarossa and his brother Urudsh sailed at first under the flag of the Tunisian Sultan but paid tribute to Solyman, and eventually transferred to him their allegiance. They conquered Temnes, Algiers, and all the Barbary coast, which they held as fief of the Porte. All his ventures seemed to be successful. A strong fleet was sent against him under command of Genoa’s great admiral, Doria, by Charles V, but Barbarossa defied him. A stately pageant passed down the Sea of Marmora in 1534. Barbarossa and his fleet of eighty-four vessels, with which he scoured the Mediterranean Sea, ravaged the coasts of Italy, Minorca and Spain, and beat the combined fleets of the Emperor, the Pope, and Venice off Prevesa. After many years of successful marauding we see the Turkish fleet return, still under command of their veteran admiral, Barbarossa, whose beard was turning white. A peaceful end in Constantinople was his, and now the body that held that turbulent spirit rests worthily enshrined by the shore of the Bosphorus.

With the passing of Barbarossa a new power first makes its appearance under the walls of old Byzantium, its colours the white ensign emblazoned with St. George’s blood-red cross. Tight-built English ships, some of which may possibly have borne their brave part in the defeat of Spain’s great Armada, are next seen sailing smoothly upon the waters of the inland sea. They bring messages from Elizabeth, Queen of England, to Amurath II, Sultan and Chief.

Again, a century later, when Ibrahim, an evil ruler, reigned over the Turkish Empire, and excesses of all kinds went unpunished, some English ships lying in the Bosphorus were plundered. It was the custom then in Turkey, when any one had received an injury from a minister or official, for him to put fire on his head and run to the palace. Stout Sir Thomas Bentinck, the English Ambassador—redress for the outrage to English ships having been refused—brought them up from Galata and anchored them immediately before the windows of the Imperial Palace. Adapting the custom we have mentioned, he lighted fires on every yard-arm. No sooner was this seen on shore than the Vizier hastened to the Ambassador, paid him a large sum of money, and engaging to pay the surplus of the sum demanded, besought him to extinguish the warning blaze.

But now, at the bidding of the Author, we move landwards again. As we approach, bearing somewhat to the south of the Seraglio lighthouse, the buildings above us stand out more clearly. Constantine’s Church, now Mosque of St. Sophia, looms over all the attendant minarets, relieving the imposing mass of masonry of its too heavy aspect. Near by the Mosque of St. Irene, also of Constantine’s building. In this mosque is still kept the chain that barred the Golden Horn to the Turks during the last siege. A long yellow building stands out near St. Sophia, and shows a pillared front to the smooth waters of the Marmora. This is now the Turkish Parliament, though in a short time that young and vigorous assembly is to transfer its deliberations to one of the more gorgeous palaces of the Bosphorus. Fittingly enough it stands almost on the site of the Senate of Roman, Grecian and Byzantine empire. Here centred much of the life of the old City of Constantine, hard by is the Hippodrome which that emperor laid out. It was here that the city’s pleasure-seeking denizens met to enjoy the games, the chariot-races, and other pastimes peculiar to that age. What fortunes must have been wagered or dissipated by a single crashing blow of the cæstus, or by one slip of the runner as he left the starting-line! How many a delicate girl must have held her hands in horror to her eyes, when under the brazen tripod fell the charioteer who had swerved too closely to the corner, and drawn down the other competitors with him in his ruin. Here, also, in later times of trouble or internal strife the citizens would meet and clamour to be taken to the palace, there to acclaim a heroic emperor, or abuse an unpopular leader. How fickle and ill-balanced that turbulent cosmopolitan crowd must have been, we realize from the curious history of Justinian.

Justinian, bearing the name of a triumphant lawgiver, entered into the heritage of the Roman world in 685. He was a lad of strong passions and feeble intellect. He ruled with a cruelty gross even for that age and place, through the hands of his favourite ministers, a eunuch and a monk, by whose aid he succeeded for ten years in braving the growing hatred of his subjects. A sudden freak, rather than any sense of the justice he habitually outraged, induced the emperor to liberate Leontius, a general of high repute, who, with some of the city’s noblest and most deserving men, had suffered imprisonment for above three years. Leontius was promoted to be Governor of Greece. A successful conspiracy was headed by him, the prisons were forced open, and an excited populace swarmed to the Church of St. Sophia, where the Patriarch, taking as text for his sermon, “This is the day of the Lord,” influenced the passions of the multitude. They crowded into the Hippodrome, Justinian was dragged before the insurgent judges, who clamoured for his immediate death. But Leontius, already clothed in the Purple, was merciful, and spared the life of his benefactor’s son, the scion of so many emperors, and, slightly mutilated about the face, the deposed sovereign was banished to the Crimea. Here he abode, and watched events of which the news trickled through but sparingly. News of another revolution arrived, in which Leontius fell from power a mutilated victim, to make room for Apsimar, who henceforth called himself Tiberius. Meanwhile Justinian had contracted an alliance with the Khan of the Chazars by marrying that chief’s sister, Theodora. But the Khan proved venal, and bribed by the gold of Constantinople sought to bring about Justinian’s death. In vain, for Theodora’s conjugal love frustrated this design, and Justinian with his own hands strangled the two emissaries of the Khan. He then sent Theodora back to her brother. Thereupon Justinian sailed away, and with the aid of the Bulgarians laid siege to his own city, which having tired of their present ruler admitted him to the throne again.

So we find Justinian in the Hippodrome surrounded by his people. The two usurpers, Leontius and Apsimar, were dragged one from his prison, the other from his palace, and cast prostrate and in fetters before the throne, where Justinian sat and watched the chariot-race, a foot on the neck of each vanquished rival. The fickle people meanwhile shouted in the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and the dragon shalt thou set thy foot.” Even in those early days the use of a well-known text, taken conveniently apart from its context, was a political weapon not to be despised.

When the games were over Leontius and Apsimar were taken down to the Kynegion, the place of execution near the Church of St. George of Mangana, and there Justinian requited the ill-judged clemency of his former conqueror. But his own capricious cruelty so disgusted the troops he had dispatched to carry out the sentence of those on whom the Emperor had sworn to be avenged, that they revolted, and invested Bardanes with the Imperial Purple. Destitute of friends, and deserted by his Barbarian guard, there was none to ward off the stroke of the assassin, and by it Justinian, along with his innocent son, Tiberius, perished, and thus ended the line of Heraclius.

CHAPTER V
THE WALLS BY THE SEA OF MARMORA

LET us go ashore under the sea-walls of Constantinople. We now approach the white Seraglio lighthouse, keeping a little south of it and yet a little more, rounding a slight bend of the coast to westward. Here, beyond a strong square tower which formerly showed a flare of Grecian fire to guide the mariner, is a stretch of beach, Author and Artist insist on landing. The tower we left on our right joins on to a large front of masonry, built stoutly of rough stones as you may see where the walls are broken, and where a few marble pillars frame hollow openings for the windows. This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.

Old chroniclers called this the Palace of Hormisdas, or Hormouz, Prince of Persia, who sought refuge here with Constantine the Great. Others, again, suggest that this palace was built by Justinian himself before he began his long and useful reign.

At any rate, great and famous names occur to us as we survey these ruins. It is an astounding chapter of history this, which tells how Justinian came to inherit the Imperial Purple. His uncle Justin was the founder of his house, a simple Dacian peasant who left his native village and the flocks he tended to enter the military service of the Eastern Empire. Through his own strength, his own ability and valour in the field, Justin the Dacian peasant rose step by step until he took his place next to Cæsar himself in importance. Then when the Emperor Anastasius died, after carefully excluding his own kinsman from the throne, Justin was acclaimed Emperor by the unanimous consent of those who knew him to be brave and gentle, his soldiers, and by those who held him to be orthodox, the priests. So in his old age, for he was sixty-eight when Anastasius died, Justin climbed the throne and reigned for nine years. Strange, too, it is, that he and yet another ruler of his time, Theodoric, the King of Italy, even in those days when learning was by no means uncommon, should both have been unable to read and write. Justin had brought his nephew Justinian out of Dacia, and had him educated in Constantinople to be trained for the Purple.

His was a curious and eventful reign. Of great strength and comely of face, full of the best intentions and restless in his pursuit of knowledge, Justinian entered into his inheritance; he had been his uncle Justin’s right hand, and so was well acquainted with all the devious ways of statecraft. So everything promised well, and in a measure he succeeded. The wars he undertook were brought to a successful issue, the laws he framed should have earned him the people’s gratitude, yet Justinian was not beloved.

No doubt these walls could tell the reason—you may almost hear them whisper, “Theodora, the actress, the dancer, and Justinian’s empress.” Surely those were stirring times, when Justinian and Theodora sat side by side upon the throne, when circus and streets rang with the cries of factions, Blue and Green. And Theodora favoured Blue—her cause for doing so dates back to the day of her earliest appearance in Constantinople—in the theatre. Here she and her sisters, daughters of Acacius, whose office was to tend the wild beasts that the Green faction kept for the games, were brought by their mother in the garb of suppliants. The Green faction received them with contempt, the Blues with compassion, and hence the reason that Theodora favoured that colour.

Then some time elapsed, during which it were best not to follow Theodora’s fortunes. During this epoch a son was born to her. Years after, the father of the child when dying told him: “Your mother is an empress.” The son of Theodora hastened to Constantinople, hurried to the palace to present himself—and was never seen again. When in seclusion at Alexandria Theodora had a vision which told her that one day she would wear the Purple, so she returned to Constantinople, and ere long won Justinian’s love. So they reigned side by side, and Justinian first of that name is still called “the Great.” Let whatever evil she may have done be forgotten. Are not the scandals of that time softened by the mists of romance which enshroud them, for all but those who like to peer about among the secrets of dead men, and to cavil at their failings, and tear what tatters of reputation they can find into yet smaller shreds.

Nearly four centuries had passed, and yet again the Palace of Justinian was witness of Imperial weakness. The Greek fleet rode at anchor beneath the windows of the palace, and from his ship the Admiral Romanus Lecapenus made his way into the presence of the Emperor. There he demanded of Constantine VII, called Porphyrogenitus, a share in the government of the Empire, and was proclaimed co-Emperor. At one time during this reign five Cæsars wore the Purple; he who was born in it, Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus, ranked least among them, but he survived them all in office to die of poison, it is said administered by Theophane, the wife of his son, Romanus II.

Again a woman plays a strong part in the history of these palace walls. A woman of low origin, this wife of the Eastern Emperor, son of Constantine VII, and under the careless reign of her good-natured husband, she made her vigorous personality a power in the land. Four years did Romanus II reign, and in that time did nothing that could afford the historian excuse for lingering on his name. Strongly built and fair to look upon, his time was spent in the pleasures he best loved. While the two brothers Leo and Nicephones triumphed over the Saracens, the Emperor’s days were spent in strenuous leisure. He visited the circus in the morning, feasted the senators at noon, and then adjourned to the sphæristerium, the tennis-court, where he achieved his only victories. From time to time he would cross over to the Asiatic side, and there hunt the wild boar, returning to the palace well content with what he probably considered a good day’s work.

Theophane tired of her useless spouse, and mingled for him the same deadly draught which killed his father. She then aspired to reign in the name of her two sons, Basil and Constantine, one five, the other only two years old, but found she could not support the weight of such responsibility, and looked about for some one to protect her.

She found the man in Nicephorus Phocas, who was then accounted the bravest soldier in the land. In other ways he appeared suitable, for he combined with the military genius that had led to many victories the reputation of a saint. For the rest, in person he was deformed, so that perchance Theophane’s spacious heart was aided by her head when she set about to choose the successor to Romanus in her affections. Another like him lived many centuries later and ruled over England, Richard of Gloucester—and through the hazy veil wherewith romance so kindly clothes the crude outlines of history, it is difficult to decide to what extent the religious practices and utterances of these two monarchs were prompted by sincerity or guile. For Nicephorus wore hair-cloth, fasted, and clothed his conversation with pious terms; he even wished to retire from the business of this world into the serene seclusion of a monastery. Whatever the value of the sentiments he expressed, the people and the Patriarch trusted him, and so he was invested with the command of the oriental armies.

No sooner had he received the leaders and the troops than he marched boldly into Constantinople at their head. He trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with the Empress, and assumed the title of Augustus. Unlike his double, Richard, he spared the lives of the young princes.

After some dubious dealings, the silence of the clergy made his union with Theophane possible, so he reached the height of his ambition—the Imperial Purple. But, strange to say, the once so popular general when in the Purple lost the affection of his people. No doubt the faults were equally divided, the Greeks disliked him for his parsimony, and he had ample precedent of how easily a fickle population can change from favour to fierce hatred. A demonstration of this change caused Nicephorus to fortify the Palace of Justinian; he had been stoned by his own people, and had barely reached the palace in safety.

Whilst standing by the sea under this mass of ruins, let us go back to a winter’s night in 969. The additions to the palace that Nicephorus had made to guard him against the fury of his subjects had that day been completed. The gates were locked and bolted, the windows strongly barred, and, as a further precaution, the Emperor had moved from the couch and room he generally occupied at night, and lay asleep stretched on a bear-skin on the floor of a smaller chamber. But treachery lurked within the palace walls; murderous plans were rife, and they were conceived in the brain of an adulterous empress. And listening by those dark waves we hear the sound of muffled oars. A boat takes shape in the gloom at the foot of the palace stairs. Headed by John Zimisces, lover of Theophane, a man of small stature but great strength and beauty, and a soldier of renown, shadowy forms ascend a rope ladder, lowered from a window by some female attendants. Other conspirators were hidden in Theophane’s most private chambers; they reached the Emperor’s retreat, and with much cruelty and insult Nicephorus II Phocas was done to death.

John Zimisces reigned in his stead, but ere he was allowed to assume full power with the sanction of the Church he had to face at least one upright man. On the threshold of St. Sophia, whither he went to his coronation, the intrepid Patriarch stopped his progress, charged him with entering the Holy Place with blood upon his hands, and demanded, as a sign of penance, he should separate himself from his guilty companion.

So Theophane was banished from the place that still is haunted by her baleful influence, and died unmourned in exile.

Another vision, less sombre, equally dramatic and more fleeting, comes and fades away. Amaury, king of Jerusalem, visits Manuel Comnenus in 1170, to implore his aid against Saladin. A brief pathetic scene thus re-enacts itself, brief as the reign of those, the Christian Kings of David’s Royal City, pathetic in the waste of life, the misery, the abject hopelessness that marked those chivalrous enterprises known to us as the Crusades.

One final scene before we turn away from this historic spot, the last scene in its history, and splendid in its utter despair. Here, at the last siege of Constantinople by the Turks, stout-hearted Peter Guliano and his gallant catalans held out when all else was lost.

A steep incline leads from the beach, past little wooden houses perched anywhere against the ruined walls. They look like that old house—that dear old house—Hans Andersen speaks of in the shortest of his fairy tales. We climb up the steep ascent, and at the top find more ruins—the base of a gigantic marble pillar, broken arches built of brick and glorious in their subdued colour; and then—the railway. Yes, gentle readers, the Roumelian Railway, to give it its full and awesome title. And we must follow this railway if we would see more of the city walls. You may walk anywhere you like along the single track. A little pathway winds about here and there and everywhere, and on either hand are houses, some of wood, some more pretentious, scattered about with irregularity.

Above us is the ridge on which the Hippodrome, theatre, and circus used to stand in days when a pleasure-loving population spent time and money in much the same way as do some Western nations of this day. No doubt they too considered themselves sportsmen; no doubt they too danced abject attendance and stood numerous dinners to the stalwart hero who was awarded his “Blue” or his “Green,” as the case might be. And as to some forms of sport in those days of the Byzantine Empire, we have already given account of one sportsman’s strenuous day, the Emperor Romanus, and we have seen how his wife discouraged his proclivities, by methods effective, but far too drastic for the present age.

Ancient chroniclers make mention of a polo-ground, but it is too much to expect such very learned men to tell you how the game was played. Yet this concerns the Author and Artist nearly, for both have spent much time and pleasantly in the saddle. No doubt the game, under whatever rules, was extremely picturesque; the life, the colour, the movement of horses and men engaged in such a keen pursuit can never fail to give a series of brilliant and entrancing pictures. But when you come to details! No trim pigskin saddles, but possibly some coloured bolsters, with loose bits of braid or tassels for adornment; no doubt bright-coloured brow-bands—that abomination! And then the ball. The Artist wonders whether it was painted the colour of one of the many factions that made up the political life of the city—Blue, Green, or Red—or whether, like keen sportsmen, such differences were dropped in contests of this kind.

Undoubtedly party feeling ran high when races—chariot-races chiefly—were in progress at the Hippodrome. These Green and Blue kept up a continual wordy warfare, and no doubt backed their own fancy colour with the same indiscriminate ardour not altogether unfamiliar even in the world’s greatest Empire of to-day. And here again another likeness presents itself, for the games were played and contests entered by men paid to show their skill, while thousands sat and watched, shouted advice, or yelled their disapproval, though quite unable and unwilling to venture on the game themselves.

Of fishing there is no mention as a sport. The Author much regrets to have to make this statement, as he would have liked to give Walton’s disciples of to-day some account of how their gentle art was plied in the days of Old Byzantium. But then the necessary implements were not available, for the West had not yet swamped the East with cheap manufactures and easily-twisted pins in penny packets.

The Artist has watched with interest gallant attempts with the bent pin to draw fish from the Bosphorus. The small boy with his little rod so evidently cut by himself, and one sticky little hand full of dead flies, served to remind the Artist of his own efforts in that line. Oh the unholy joy of impaling a fat blue-bottle on the point of that bent pin! But the chief pleasure of this form of sport is lacking on the banks of the Bosphorus; the long arm of the law does not interfere, and so the charm of the “strictly forbidden” is denied you.

A noble form of sport was practised in the Middle Ages, and until comparatively recent times a pastime that has given rise to much that is beautiful in poetry and painting—the art of falconry. This was a favourite pursuit of many a sultan, this and hunting with those strong hounds whose descendants (though to judge from their appearance one can scarcely believe it) now roam the streets of Constantinople, and act as rather unsatisfactory scavengers.

A mighty sportsman in these particulars was Achmet I, who reigned in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was in this monarch’s reign that the Turkish theologians propounded a peculiar doctrine. Achmet had ordered all the dogs in Constantinople to be transported to Scutari, on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, with an allowance of bread and carrion for their maintenance. By a later decree they were again removed, this time to an island sixteen miles away, where they all perished for want of food. The lives of dogs, though held unclean by Turks, were deemed of such importance that the Sultan thought fit to ask the Mufti whether it were lawful to kill them. After due deliberation the head of Islam answered (for he can give no fetvah or decree unless first consulted) that every dog had a soul, and therefore it was not lawful to kill them.

What subsequently happened to the dogs is not recorded; some legends say that they swam back to their old haunts, and incidentally to their ladies, who it appears had not been exiled. Certain it is that their lives were spared, for there are plenty to be seen everywhere in Old Stamboul and its neighbourhood, for of course Achmet, a pious Moslem, would not disregard the Mufti’s momentous utterance.

That Achmet was a pious man is without doubt; his mosque bears witness to his devotion, a mosque which far out-rivalled that of St. Sophia in the splendour of its decoration, though it is somewhat smaller. Great treasures were spent upon this mosque, and neither trouble nor expense were spared to make it more glorious than any other. But Achmet left behind an unpaid, discontented army and an empty treasury, having grasped the secret of laying up for himself treasure in heaven by the ingenious method of robbing other people’s possessions on earth. In those days East and West drew nearer to each other than heretofore. Where formerly the West had paid sporadic visits which were by no means always welcome, commerce had begun to spread its tendrils, and found the policy of Turkey singularly liberal. So all the greater nations established relations on that friendly basis with the Porte; England, France and Holland had each a regularly accredited ambassador at the Ottoman Court. This inaugurated a more peaceful method of settling disputes, as, for example, when the Moors of Granada brought to the Sultan their grievance against France, telling how, in their passage to that country on being expelled from Spain, they had suffered bodily harm and loss of goods. A chaus or ambassador from Sultan Achmet to Henry IV soon set matters right without resort to what diplomats call the ultima ratio. While on the subject of ambassadors a romantic story should be told, an incident which nearly disturbed the peace of Europe.

Achmet left seven sons, all infants, into whose hands he could not place the reins of government, which he himself had held but loosely. On his accession he had not found it necessary to clear his path and prevent further trouble by the usual remedy of fratricide. His only brother, Mustapha, was thoroughly incompetent, almost an idiot. Yet it was he whom Achmet declared as his successor, and the Mufti, the Ulema, the high college of priests, and the high officers of State approved his choice and placed Mustapha on the throne. In all his acts Mustapha emphasized his incapacity to rule, and one of them went near to cause a rupture with France. It fell out thus.

Two captives languished in the dungeons of a castle on the Black Sea. One was Prince Koreski, a Pole, who had been taken prisoner in Moldavia during the last reign, and was confined here because he had refused to turn Mahomedan. The other who shared Koreski’s cell was Rigault, a Frenchman, who kept up a clandestine correspondence with a fellow-countryman, Martin, Secretary to the French Embassy at Constantinople. Now Martin loved a young Polish lady, who with her mother and her maid was held prisoner by the Turks. Martin succeeded in purchasing the freedom of these ladies by a payment to the Sultan of two thousand five hundred crowns. But when the ladies returned to their home in Poland the father refused to accede to the arrangement and practically forbade the banns. So in his trouble Martin confided all to his friend Rigault, who in his turn told all to the Prince. Now Koreski was a man of great influence in his own country, and told Rigault to assure his friend that if their escape from prison could be managed, Martin should not pine long for his lady-love.

So Martin set to work right eagerly. A Greek priest who went to visit the prisoners concealed under his garments a long piece of pack-thread, and by these means the captives gained their freedom. Mustapha’s police sought diligently, but only managed to discover Martin’s share in the transaction, so the whole French Embassy were put under arrest. The ambassador was confined in the Grand Vizier’s Palace, Rigault and the domestics were put to the torture.

The protests of the English and Dutch ambassadors failed to move Mustapha, and it was only through large donations to the chief officers of State that the French Embassy was set at liberty.

While listening to the tales the Author has to tell, our travellers have picked their way along the railway-line, and have threaded in and out among the picturesque inhabitants of this quarter. Here

stand broken arches, loopholes looking out to sea; there remnants of massive walls with battlemented summits, or perhaps little wooden houses are perched on top, with their latticed windows; while beneath them one sees gardens, where part of a prophecy is at least fulfilled, for every man has his own fig-tree. And as we walk on these remains, the walls recede inland and disappear altogether, for here was formerly a harbour, and the name of the station we are passing, Koum Kapoussi—sand-gate—was given to the gate that opened out on the harbour of the Kontoscalion. A fair-sized harbour too, now all silted up and built over.

What life and bustle was here in the days of old Byzant, those days of the great traders from the East, West and South. And what stores of treasure were landed at this spot. Work from the looms of Greece was stapled here, manufacturers of linen, woollen and silk—the former industries which had flourished since the days of Homer, the latter introduced about the time of Justinian. Perhaps it was here that those rich gifts arrived for Basil I from his generous friend, Danielis, the rich matron of Peloponnesus, who had adopted him as her own. Doubtless the goods she sent were products of the Grecian looms. Even an Emperor of Byzantium must have greeted with pleased astonishment the beauty of the presents sent by his friend. A carpet large enough to overspread the floor of a new church, woven of fine wool and cunningly designed to represent and rival the brilliant eyes that adorn the peacock’s tail. Of silk and linen each six hundred pieces, the latter so exquisitely fine that an entire piece might be rolled into the hollow of a cane, the silk dyed with Tyrian crimson, and the whole ornamented with fair needlework.

Duties were raised on all the goods that entered, and went towards suggesting the splendour of the Emperor and his Court. It is not possible to accurately compute the value of the goods and the vast sums they realized, but at least one traveller of experience was much impressed by what he witnessed here. A Jew, and therefore no mean authority on pecuniary matters, one Benjamin of Tudela, speaks of the riches of Byzantium, which he visited in the twelfth century—

“It is here in the Queen of Cities that the tributes of the Greek Empire are annually deposited, and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of silk, purple and gold. It is said that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign 20,000 pieces of gold, which are levied on the shops, taverns, and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and land.” Nowadays the main source of public revenue is the crushing import duty on all new articles of 11 per cent., soon with the consent of the powers to be raised to 15. Until recently every Turkish subject resident in the capital paid also a capitation tax in lieu of the military service, which is now to be endured by all alike who cannot pay an exemption fee of £50.

We walk on but a little further along the line, still past ruined walls and towers, and come to yet another gate, Yedi Kapoussi, or New Gate. This was the entrance to a very ancient harbour—the oldest, it is said, along this stretch of coast. Its origin is ascribed to Eleutherius, who was one of the first to see this city rise. The site of the harbour is now entirely covered, and market-gardens are to be seen where formerly war-galleys sought refuge from enemies or elements.

It is not certain at what date this harbour was abandoned, but it had happened before the final assault by Mahomed the Conqueror. The difficulty of keeping this harbour dredged must have been very considerable, for not only does the sea constantly cast sand along this coast, but just here the Lycus, an historic stream, empties its waters into the Sea of Marmora, and deposits at its mouth an ever-increasing burden of rich mud washed down from above.

According to tradition the harbour of Eleutherius served not only for the safety of the Empire’s ships of war, but also as an entrance to the slave-market, which is said to have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. It is too sad, sadder than all the tales of cunning intrigue, ferocious crime and unscrupulous ambitions which make up so large a portion of the history enacted behind these city walls, to remember the vast multitude of human beings bartered here like the beasts of the field. Innocent victims of misfortune were sold here, and many families must have met, possibly for the last time on earth, in this ghastly and degrading place, while captives that had escaped the sword in some bloody war of conquest or reprisal were here put up to auction, to be led away by their new masters and die in hopeless misery.

But that sombre vision vanishes too under the sun that draws such brilliant colours from the ruined walls that so long sheltered this chartered and unchallenged iniquity, and we move onward by a laughing sea towards the west, turning south by a point or two as we leave the harbour of Eleutherius behind us.

We linger for a minute at the Gate of Psamathia—sand-gate again—and look out across the sea from a shady Turkish café standing on a small spit of land that shelters a tiny harbour to westward. Here are a number of those craft that we have seen flying down the Bosphorus under full sail. The leisurely process of unloading is going forward, and stacks of wood are piled up carelessly and anywhere without undue hurry, while nimble-footed donkeys thread their way amongst the merchandise, and the driver follows sunk in his Eastern reverie. And everywhere are dogs lounging together in little knots like elderly gentlemen in a club smoking-room (and always in the way), taking no interest in anything save the adventurous flies, and only giving an occasional languid snap at them.

From here we thread our way through a maze of little narrow lanes of quaint wooden houses teeming with life and colour. Here at a street corner a modest general store, showing some melons in their thick green coats, one with a large slice cut out by way of charity or advertisement, the green skin merging from pale lemon to a delicious crimson. Near these a basketful of ripe tomatoes in their flaring red, contrasting strongly with the golden green of luscious grapes exposed for sale on delicate pink paper; yet all these colours harmonize, and in the cool depths of the background the owner sits and drowses cross-legged, amid all their glory.

As we continue on our way we lose sight of these ancient sea-walls, for we have to turn inland awhile and follow the high-road that leads out into the open country. But now and then we see between the houses a glimpse of high towers and battlements in front of us. We turn down from the high-road, recross the railway-line, and find ourselves again amongst imposing ruins. Standing out boldly is a fine tower, almost intact. As we draw nearer to it we understand how it came by its name, for this is the Marble Tower. It is a building of four storeys, constructed from the topmost string course downwards of large marble blocks, its white and gleaming foundations washed by the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora. To eastward, and joined on to the Tower, stands a two-storied mass of masonry, with deep-arched window looking out to sea. These are the ruins of a castle that stood here to mark the place where sea-and land-walls joined. Most probably it was the residence of some high military officer. Surely a pleasant place to live in, strong and secure, with a spacious courtyard and perhaps a shady garden therein.

Or more likely still, this space, now a market-garden, was the scene of military life for many

centuries; here the heavy-armed infantry of Roman tradition made way for lighter troops whose dexterity replaced the armour they had abandoned.

What discussions must have taken place when news came that a powder had been invented in the West, a powder which could hurl stones and leaden shot with greater impetus than any engines then in use, that a breast-plate and helmet and even stone walls were no protection against this deadly stuff. And the sentry pacing the ramparts on his lonely post at night would ruminate upon this matter, and wonder what power of evil could let loose a force capable of destroying both the stout walls under him and that fair marble gleaming white in the light of the moon. Probably with the simple faith of his time he laid the whole matter at the door of Satan himself, and his chosen agents—the workers of black magic—and no doubt glanced fearfully out to sea and crossed himself piously when he realized how much influence these unpleasant people still possessed even in a Christian world which caused them to be burned on the barest suspicion of such malpractices.

Moon and stars and the plashing waves are now the only guardians of these walls.

CHAPTER VI
THE GOLDEN GATE

A SMALL, deep-arched postern leads our travellers out of the precincts of the ruins that surround the Marble Tower. The masonry above the postern bears inscriptions dating back to the days when several emperors reigned together. Basil II and Constantine IX, who have been already mentioned in connection with the Palace of Justinian, left records of their reign upon this section of the walls. The postern leads us outside the city walls, and as we turn for a last glance at the Marble Tower and the wonderful view it commands, we notice a strange Byzantine device carved on its keystone.

A narrow tongue of land runs out into the sea just here, and under its lee the cargo of several small sailing craft is being leisurely brought ashore, for staring us in the face is commercial enterprise and all it entails in the shape of a tannery. Here in former days was open country which many a time had witnessed thrilling scenes. For at this small harbour

the hero of a victorious campaign in Asia Minor was wont to land, and with him his troops. Spoils taken in the war were stacked and hapless prisoners paraded to follow in procession through the Golden Gate at the conqueror’s chariot wheels. From this harbour the Turkish fleet of 305 vessels attempted to cut off the five gallant ships that brought provisions from the island of Scio to the city during the last siege; these managed to force their way to the Golden Horn.

The sentry on the ramparts over the postern we have left behind us, looking over this rolling plain, would see the glittering domes and pinnacles of yet another lordly place away on the curving sea-coast—the palace of the Hebdomon. This, it appears, served as a rustic retreat for the emperors of the East. Important functions took place there, for here Valens was inaugurated as colleague of his brother, the Emperor Valentine, and proclaimed Augustus. And others followed him, such as Arcadius and Honorius, raised to imperial rank by Theodosius the Great, Leo the Great and Leo the Armenian, and he with whose fate we became familiar when talking of Theophane, Nicephorus II Phocas.

But we will hasten away from that malodorous evidence of progress, the tannery, for we are strongly drawn towards those towering ruins gleaming through the dark cypresses. We cross the railway-line and note where it has cut a path through the ancient defences of Byzantium.

Climbing a bank, we reach a little Turkish cemetery, its weird and tumbling tombstones shaded by those solemn, watchful cypress-trees. Now look towards the walls: between us and them is a deep fosse, where fig-trees grow and throw out their twisted branches as if to protect these ancient ramparts from crumbling further to decay. Ivy in dense dark masses clings to the crenulated scarp, and beyond that a broad roadway, all neglected, rises in gentle gradient till it turns sharply towards an archway, guarded on either hand by massive towers built of blocks of polished marble.

This is the Golden Gate, the “Porta Aurea” of so many glorious moments in the life of Constantine’s great city.

Here the procession that had formed on the plain down by the harbour made its triumphal entry, and worthy was this monument in those days to serve as frame to a conquering Augustus. Walls and towers were crowned with parapets, over which glittered the glint of armour and the flashing light of spear-heads. The gates, too, were all on fire with the precious metal from which its name comes, though it now lives

only in memory. Statues and sculptured ornaments added to the splendour of which the only traces now to be seen are some remains of marble cornices, and, at the south-western angle of the northern tower, a Roman eagle with wings outspread in solitary grandeur.

The Golden Gate had three archways, of which the central one was loftier and wider, like those more familiar to us in the Roman Forum. These were dedicated to Severus and Constantine respectively, and the gilded gates of these three arches were those of Mompseueste, placed here by Nicephorus Phocas to commemorate his victorious campaign in Cilicia.

Of all the many works of art that went to decorate the Golden Gate no traces but those just mentioned can be found; but there are records of them, and some are strange reading—for instance, the transactions between an English ambassador to the Porte from 1621-28, Sir Thomas Rowe and the “Great Treasurer.” Good Sir Thomas, it appears, had mentioned in his dispatches that two bas-reliefs which figured here were really well worthy of note. This led to another English gentleman, a Mr. Petty, being sent to Constantinople to see to the removal of these treasures to the Earl of Arundel, who sought to share them with the Duke of Buckingham. Much English gold changed hands and found its way into the hungry pockets of the Great Treasurer, who, like all other Turkish high officials before and since, had frequent and pressing need of money, and was not plagued with petty scruples as to the means employed to obtain it. The bargain was completed and all arrangements made, but at the last moment, when it came to removing these marbles, the populace, under the castellan of the castle, rose in mutiny. The precious life of the Great Treasurer was in danger, and as he had probably pouched the money by that time, he discovered it to be quite impossible to carry out his part of the contract, at least for the present; and stout Sir Thomas reported to head-quarters in these words, “So I despair to effect therein your grace’s service, and it is true, though I could not get the stones, yet I allmost raised an insurrection in that part of the cytty.”

We are standing now before the ruined remains of this, the culminating point of many a page of glorious achievement in the history of the Eastern capital. But let us now regard it with the eye of retrospection; let the past ages envelop the broken, ivy-covered monument and restore it to us in its pristine glory, for we, too, would take part in the splendid pageant that once animated this now-deserted stronghold.

So we go back into the depth of time from which perchance we issued. The fourth century of the Christian era is big with the names of those who stamped themselves upon their time for good or evil, and thus the capital of the Eastern Empire owes its second birth to one whose glorious name is writ large upon the scroll of fame—to Constantine the Great. Second only to Constantine in this succession of rulers of the Eastern Empire comes Theodosius I, also called Great, and rightly so, for Constantinople owes to him a debt almost as great as to the second founder of the Imperial City. Constantine gave to this city a new lease of life, and Theodosius insured it against capture by assault for many centuries; for all those strong defences, the remains of which, some broken beyond recognition, others practically intact, extend from the Golden Gate to the Golden Horn, are a lasting monument to the Theodosian dynasty.

This Golden Gate itself is said to have been erected by Theodosius to celebrate his victory over a formidable rival; and to enter fully into sympathy with the great incidents this monument has witnessed, let us take note of the events that led Theodosius both to the Imperial Purple and the towering place he holds in the history of the world.

The final separation into East and West of Rome’s Imperial power had not yet taken place, and Gratian was emperor. The latter years of his reign were hard and full of troubles. Northern Barbarians ravaged the provinces of Rome at their will, and none seemed capable of checking their savage onslaughts. The legions of the Roman army had time after time failed of their old tradition, and had so often been vanquished that they held their foes to be invincible. Fiercest of all these fierce foemen were the Goths, and it was they who caused the most distress. Valens had fallen in the battle of Hadrianople, and with him two-thirds of the Roman army; the rest had barely effected their escape under cover of night. The Roman Empire was in sore straits; the Goths were flushed with their victory, and likely to take advantage of it.

Five months after the death of Valens the Emperor Gratian did a deed perhaps unparalleled. He sent for Theodosius, presented him to the troops, who acclaimed him as Augustus, and invested him with the Imperial purple. The strangeness of this act lies in the history that precedes it. Theodosius the Elder, father of the new emperor, had but three years before been put to death unjustly and with ignominy by Gratian’s orders, and his son banished. So Gratian’s messengers found Theodosius managing his estates in Spain. They gave him their message, and forthwith the emperor-elect proceeded to his new duties imposed on him by one whose keen discernment found the right man in the time of need, and whose sense of right had sought the way towards redeeming a terrible injustice.