CONSTANTINOPLE. 
123 
The Turks are in many respects a most singular and in¬ 
comprehensible people. Effeminate in their habits ; dallying 
half their lives in the harem , or frittering away their time in 
trifling conversation ; sipping their coffee from morning till 
night, and never without the chibouck, which must have a 
stupefying and enervating effect; yet they seem to be capa¬ 
ble of enduring extraordinary fatigue ; and when once roused 
into action no race of people exhibit greater physical courage 
or more ferocious determination. The toils of travel; the 
torments of hunger and thirst; the extremes of heat and cold ; 
all the privations of military life, and all the terrors of death, 
fail to swerve them from their bloody career of revenge or 
rapine. This wonderful power of endurance may be attri¬ 
buted, in some measure, to their simple mode of living, and 
the frequent use of cold water in their daily ablutions. What 
would be considered extreme privation in America, in the 
matter of food and clothing, is habitual with the Turk. A 
crust of dry bread, with a bunch of grapes, or a dish of soup, 
is his ordinary meal; and his clothing, in winter or summer, 
consists of a few simple robes thrown loosely around him. 
Flesh of all kinds is sparingly used, and strong liquors are 
almost unknown in Oriental climates ; and even here in Con¬ 
stantinople, where the winters are often as severe as in New 
York, the native population sit whole days in their shops 
without fire, and never think of destroying themselves by the 
use of hot-air stoves or the death-dealing salamander. It is 
a matter of surprise how they exist through the inclemency of 
the season, without those ordinary comforts which we are apt 
to regard as essential to life. Their houses are built without 
fire-places or chimneys, and no provision is made for heating 
them; so that all who are accustomed to these luxuries find 
it almost impossible to endure, even for a few weeks, what 
the Turks endure all their lives. For this reason, perhaps, 
they know little of those fireside enjoyments which tend so 
much in other countries to refine and socialize the human 
family, and cultivate the better feelings of our nature; for, 
whatever may be the sanitary evils of an atmosphere vitiated 
by an excessive use of fire, it may be set down as an axiom 
