RETROSPECT . 333 



the Bhuddist East, all Rangoon flocked on this day to pay 

 homage to the great apostle, all clad in their best and brightest 

 silk. The pretty little women, most fascinating always, even 

 when smoking their huge cigars, were doubly so now, their rich 

 complexion and elaborately arranged black hair decked with 

 flowers in charming contrast with the bright colouring of their 

 most becoming dress. Whole families came together, men, 

 women, children, and tiny babies, all bringing some little offer- 

 ing, flowers and fruit generally, to place on their favoured shrine 

 one of the very many erected on the platform, surrounding 

 with minor pagodas innumerable the base of the greatest of all 

 these gorgeous creatures, happy and laughing ever, formed a 

 dense crowd which resembled nothing more than a huge bed of 

 the brightest flowers in full bloom. Monks with shaven head, 

 soberly clad in yellow robe, moved among the crowd, and a few 

 nuns in white who also had parted with their hair, and now 

 perhaps looked with envy at the abundant tresses of their festive 

 sisters. The heavily gilt pagoda, brilliant in the intense sun- 

 light, the wonderful carving and vivid colouring of the smaller 

 pagodas and images crowding round the golden ones, the many 

 flowers brought as offerings, the scores of burning candles, and 

 above all the indescribable gorgeousness and infinite variety of 

 colours worn by the crowd of visitors, formed a scene of fascinat- 

 ing beauty which can never be forgotten. 



A scene which impressed itself deeply on my mind and has 

 hardly faded, although nearly thirty years have passed since it 

 was witnessed, was in the interior of the Mosque of Santa Sophia 

 at Constantinople in 1879. It was towards the end of the 

 Russo-Turkish War ; the Russians indeed picked men of picked 

 corps were then at St. Stephano, able to look at the Turkish 

 capital, but not to enter it, owing to the presence of our fleet in 

 the Sea of Marmora. At the time of my visit the floor of that 

 wonderful mosque, built in 583 as a church, on the site of several 

 successive churches, but made into a mosque in 1457 by 

 Mohammed, was occupied by no less than five thousand Bulgarian 

 refugees fed and looked after by the Stafford House Red Cross 

 Committee all in their national dress, each family on its own 

 little carpet square of many colours, with no space wasted. The 

 effect of these thousands of people huddled together, the bright 

 colouring of every possible shade and variety of clothing and 



