The Express.
London, England, 1856-01-30 00:00:00

TO VIZ ZDITOR OF TIM IXPIIII4.

CONSTANTINOPLE, JAx. 17.

BM—There is at Pen a large wooden building of
irregular form which is called " The Flower Garden."
The floor of this building is in summer strewed with
sawdust, and in winter it is covered with a layer of
mud of varying thickness. There are wooden table'
covered with slabs of stone, at which the guests ait
and make merry; and there are wild-looking wires,
unintelligible in several tongues, with a demoiselle
du eoniptoir, and a heterogeneous orchestra. Here
of nights meet the Bohemians of European society;
sharp featured men, who have adopted refugeeism u
a social position, and whose means of existence were
a mystery till the Turkish Contingent and the Os.
manli Cavalry offered them a refuge, and covered
them with the segis of the British uniform. Hers,
too, is to be found the native Pera ruffian, the ready
instrument of every vice, with the lonian bravo and
the Maltese outlaw. And mixed with these are
swaggering Frenchmen, " barons" and " counts,"
who quail, nevertheless, under the prying eye of the
gendarmes; and a few Englishmen, who have used
up Baden• Baden, and were too well known in the
hells about St. James's.

With no other places of public resort except the
wretched theatre, open at irregular intervals during
the week, English officers and gentlemen were forced
in despair to go at times to the Flower Garden" as
a means of passing the dreary winter evenings of
Constantinople. In any civilised country it would
certainly be reprehensible in au officer and gentleman
to frequent such a den ; but at Pers, where society
in general is but a modification of what we have tried
to deecribe above, the "Flower Garden" ceases to ex.
cite feelings of repugnance. In England one would
hesitate before sitting down at the same table with
an usessin or a highwayman, or at entering into
conversation with a seindler or • professed cheat;
but in Perm, where one is at every instant elbowed by
crime, and where atrocities at which men in other
countries shudder are the daily subjects of light and
pleasant conversation, one will, without a thought,
nod to a murderer and confidingly give hilehand to
• blackleg.
About • fortnight ago a masked ball was advertised
to take place at the Pera Flower Garden. The pro-
gramme was attractive; brilliant lights, splendid
decoration, exquisite music, youth sod beauty, B:c.,
were amongst the items of the night's entertainment.
The announcement of the coming bal masque spread
through the tables d'hote of Pers, and was wafted
acne' the Propontis to Scutari, where is at present
quartered a brigade of her Majesty's cavalry. The
programme was believed in by those honest young
dragoons, and they instantly left their meditations
amongst the cypress groves of Scutari, and flocked in
bodies to partake of the delights of the garden of
flowers. Count Von Kutbune, who wears the uniform
of the Turkish Contingent, and Baron Von Bil-
liardkue, of the Osmanli Cavalry, went there too, to
assist some old friends, reduced noblemen, who had
established in one of the bowers of the garden rote.
lette and rouge et noir tables. The honest young
dragoons came with pockets well lined with gold,.
intending to pour it into the lap of some Greek
beauty, but they found nothing of woman-kind save
some of the haggard helpmates of the Bohemians.
The gold of the dragoons went therefore chiefly into
the hands of the reduced noblemen or into the canvas
bags which the nationlese waiters carry on their
stomachs like a philibeg.
Your young dragoon, who has been band and
glove with death and disease, with tough beef sad
precarious washing during twelve months in the
Crimea, thrives in the mud of Pere, and is cheerful
in his rickety quarters at Scutari. He is in •
chronic state of exuberant spirits, opens his bosom
and shares hie wine with any one who sits near him
ate table d'lsale, cells the waiter Johnny, and is
affectionate with the landlord. He has forgotten all
his fine gentlemaniun, and in his gigantic boots, his
promising beard, and his clipped hair, is as unlike
the pretty fellow we used to see on the steps of" the
Rag," or trotting in Rotten-row, eighteen mood=
ago, as the Foreign-office "Cupid" of 60 years since
is unlike the " bottle-holder " of the present day. But
he is still, and ever will be, generous, frank, and
brave; and though he has laid down that wonder.
fat deeming case, with its gold-stoppered bottles, its
soaps, and its perfumes, and though he laughs at kid
gloves and glued boots, he is still the fellow the
dinky women of these countries look on with plea-
sure. He has never been • sophist, nor can ha
distinguish the delicate shades of what in sultry
climates is called " coquetterie." He has always
divided men and women into two classes—those who
are honourable and virtuous, and those who are not.
If a pair of dark eyes leer at him in the streets of
Pen, he interprets such a demonstration according to
his general rule.
That the men of this country have no particular
love for those blue-eyed Anglo-Saxons, and that
they are happy to get them into trouble, will be
readily understood.

The men of Constantinople are not remarkable for
their personal courage, and an insult which they
would have to resent themselves they generally
permit to pass unnoticed. But they have lately dis-
covered that General Stokes, who commands at Sae.
taxi, will lend an ear to their jealous complaints, and
tor some time past his office has been inundated with
requests that he will prevent English officers from
staring at the ladles of Pere, &c. No particular
effect could be produced by such vague accusatioes,
but about a fortnight ago a tangible case was made
out of an event which took place at the "Flower
Garden;" the ire of the General was roused, and a
general order was Maned forbidding any officer to
quit Scutari without a special permission. The event
at the "Flower Garden" was simply as follows:—
The gallant young " Heavies" were desperate at find-
ing at the bal marque neither Circassian odaliaks,
nor Greek beauties. They drank and made others
drink, they lost their money in heaps to the reduced
noblemen of the gaming table., and I hey finally beoams
demonstrative in their admiration for the female
Bohemians who were present. The owners of these
syrens became indignant ; jealousy made them Mod,
and one in his delirium struck an English officer of
Dragoons. Is an instant there was a general
melie, in which even the wild waiters and the
orchestra joined. Missiles of every kind whistled
through the air, and the women hid, shrie king, beneath
tables. British fiats were matched against knives
and life-preservers; but, thougn there were broken
heads and bloody noses, no dangerous Wounds were
given. The next day a report of the row was made
to General Stokes, and the whole of the blame wu
thrown on the English officers. The general at once
issued the order I have mentioned, and, not content
with that, he had it published in the local French
papers, whose editors added, that any British officer
found at Pera without permission from General
Stokes would be iastantly arrested "without pity by
the police." I need not odd with what avidity the
order and the articles that followed it were read by
the motley population of Pera, or what exultation
they caused amongst thou who looked with green
eyes upon our honest young Heavies. tl

The Russian journal, the Caucasus, states that
after the late inspection of the Turkish prisoaers (726 ill
amber. iaeluding 70 °Meer%) at Tiflis,—ths whole of them
WWII limited to a banquet, prepared at bit own expense, by
111.laloff, a bourgeois of the town.
TM Enxina Sabmarioe Telegraph table reoently
broken, will not, it is 'speed, be r. -established before
April seat. Messages for transenierion to Paris and London
are at present conveyed from the Crimea by steamer to
Versa, the nearest telegraph statioa.