30 THE GATE JF AY OF THE EAST. 



of Melancholy among the aqueducts of the world/ 

 and till lately the sole water-supply of the capital. 

 Nor could cold and damp check the flood of admiration 

 which swept over me at sight of the noble propor- 

 tions and unadorned magnificence of the Mosque of 

 St Sophia, or stifle the half-involuntary thrill which 

 assailed me as I saw here, in the great church of 

 Justinian, a multitude now bow down as one man at 

 the word of a priest of Islam. 



But it was not with a view to studying Con- 

 stantinople, still less to writing about it, that I left 

 England early in December 1902 and travelled with 

 all the speed and comfort afforded by the " Orient 

 Express " from one extremity of Europe to the other. 

 The object which I had in view was destined to 

 carry me farther afield than the tourist - trodden 

 streets of Stambul, and after a short stay beneath 

 the hospitable roof of the British embassy, I turned 

 my back upon the West and passed through the great 

 gateway of the East. 



Landing on the farther shore of the Bosphorus, your 

 first reflection is probably that a few minutes have 

 sufliced to transfer you from one continent to another, 

 and your second that Asia here differs in no way from 

 Europe there. The reason is simple. For centuries 

 the tide of conquest flowed ever backward and for- 

 ward between East and West, each wave leaving its 

 mark ere it receded from the shore. The armies of 

 the turbid races of the East — Persians, Arabs, Seljuks, 

 Mongols, Tartars, and Turkomans — followers of men 

 whose names are writ large in a momentous page of 

 history, — Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes ; Harun-al-Eas- 

 chid, Moslemah, and Motassem ; Toghrul Bey, Alp 

 Arslan, and Suleiman ; Timur the Tartar and the 



1 In ' The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by E. Burton. 



