238 VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 



vermilion hues of the houses ; the countless mina- 

 rets of the different mosques, interspersed with 

 trees of various kinds, and these relieved by the 

 deep sombre of the stately, formal cypress, now^ 

 towering its head, in lonely grandeur, in some 

 rather open space, now joining with a hundred 

 others in forming a melancholy avenue, which 

 indicates the final abode of thousands of deceased 

 Moslems ; this again varied by the ponderous 

 dome of St. Sophia, with her gilded spire, and the 

 nearly equally large one of Sulimanie, with the 

 domes of other mosques, of apparently minor 

 dimensions, but which, seen away from the two 

 large ones, would fairly exhibit their own stateli- 

 ness and magnificence : again, the arches of the 

 ancient aqueduct of Trajan, the walls of the 

 seraglio, the countless shipping in the Golden 

 Horn, from a three-decker of 140 guns, down to 

 the light, elegant, easily-upset, but picturesque 

 caique, and the long wooden bridge connecting 

 Stamboul with Pera — all this, seen under the 

 blaze of an Eastern sun, the delicate azure of the 

 sky causing a corresponding brightness in the 

 Bosphorus and Golden Horn, and the soft tints 

 of the not very far distant Asiatic hills, backed by 



