Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-07-10
In CONSTANTlNOPLE.
Scenes in the Turkish Capital Pictur-
ed by Mary j. Holmes.
Beauty Of the Yelled Women-Shop-
ping in the BOZaarS-The Ancient
Mosques and Obelisks.

thickly on the hills around Us that we
could see but little of the city except its
hundreds of minarets, raising like masts
against the gray sky, and its tall cypress
trees, which mark the graves OF the dead.
As large ships cannot come very near the
shore we were landed in small boats, and
were soon picking our way through what
seemed to be narrow lane. but was in
fact a street, the dirtiest and muddiest |
ever saw, with narrow sidewalks and
tumble-down houses, which might have
been standing when Constantine rebuilt
the city in A. D. 320. But once out of the
lane, we were on a broader. wider street,
which wound up the hill to our hotel,
from which, an hour latter, we started
with our guide to explore the town.
Crossing the Golden Horn on the long
bridge, which was swarming with people.
whose strange, Oriental costumes would
have looked odd enough to Us if we had
not first come from Cairo, we found our
selves III Stamboul, the oldest part of
Constantinople, and more interesting to
strangers than Galatra or Pera. where the
hotels are situated and the buildings more
modern. Here In STEAMBOAT you plunge at
once into labyrinth of dark, winding.
dirty streets, many of them without
name, and apparently leading nowhere in
particular so abruptly do they turn and so
completely do they seem in the distance to
be closed by the houses of which writer
has aptly said that they were dropped down
anywhere and the people left to get round
them as they could. These houses, which
are mostly of wood, and depend upon
light and air from their interior courts,
present succession of dingy. dead walls
to the eyes, with the exception of few,
where rags and boken shutters show that
windows were intended, and which are so
old that an American blizzard would sweep
them down like leaves before the Autumn
wind.
The streets are crowded with a motley
mass of people-Turks and Greeks, Syrians
and Egyptians; and dogs-three hundred
thousand dogs, we were told, and they are
on the increase every year. No one owns
them. no one pets them, although many
feed them, and you will often see them
proving around pile OF refuse thrown
out for their benefit, or lying in the mid
die of the street and on the sidewalks,
where you step over them and around
them, and sometimes on them, with i'm
punity, for they are very good-natured and
quiet, except after nightfall, when their
privacy is intruded upon by one of their
kind. These dogs live in wards, and as the
Englishman's house is his castle, so a
Turkish dogs ward is his fortress, and
woe to the canine found near it at night,
and woe to the tired tourist when a battle
between the invader and invaded is going
on. | have heard such battle, and know
whereof | write.
Leaving the dogs, of which | counted
nearly seven hundred in one drive, our
first visit was to the old Seragolio. which
stands upon high triangular point over
looking the sea, and is the first object you
see as you enter the harbor, and the last as
yOus all away. 1t was built by Moham-
med H., and is shut in by lofty walls and
gates, and with its suites of apartments,
its mosques and gardens, and tall cypress
es, all thrown together without the least
idea of harmony Or order, it covers a space
nearl y three miles in circumference. Here
the old Sultans kept their court Or harem,
which, we were told sometimes consisted
of several hundred wives, goodly number
for one man to manage. 1t is not strange
that the sultans own private palaces was
outside the gates, where he could flee for
quiet and safety when the domestic
cyclones which must often have arisen,
were at their height. Sometimes it was
whispered, when a wife was very refrac-
tory, or he was tired of her, she was sew
ed up In canvas and quietly dropped over
the wall into the waters below, which tell
no tales of the death struggles they have
witnessed, or the dying means they have
smothered. Occasionally a better fate as
some might think, awaited the fair rebel,
who was bestowed upon one of the sultan's
off 10 a #
punishment it mattered little which to
the imperious man whose word was life or
death to so many thousands But the
harem is no longer in the Saraglio, for
when the palace was burned it was re-
moved, and is now across the Golden Horn
In the modern part of the city.
Here the present Sultan, Abdul Hamid,
leads life of nervous dread and fear
second only to that of the Gar of Russia.
Warned by the fate of his predecessor,
Abdul ASST, who was murdered in his
magnificent palace on the shore of the
Bosporus, he is in constant expectation
that like calamity will some day befall
him, and so he secludes himself as far as
possible from the public, and when, on
Friday-the Mohammedan Sunday-he
goes, as he is compelled to do, if he would
avoid an instruction, to the Moscow, Just
across the street, he is guarded by 1000
soldiers, each of whom he looks upen as a
possible assassin. On these occasions
there is deal of ceremony and show,
and the officers are gorgeous in their APP
parel but the Sultan is very plainly dress
ed in black, with cheap red fez upun his |
head, while his dark eyes, which look as if |
sleep were unknown to them, wander
H.
from which he shrinks in fear, only breath
of his palace. Past this palace our party
by an official with fierce gestures, whose
meaning we could not mistake, and so we
contented ourselves with going down a
side street, where we could look at the
building, but not speak aloud of it or its
pitiable, cowardly occupant, for when we
asked some questions, using the Sultan S
guide, who spoke only in whispers, with
he feared do not know, but if ever we
were glad for the religion founded on
peace and good Will to men, it was when
we stood that sunny afternoon not far
from the Sultans handsome palace and
thought of all the superstition and distrust
which cluster around the Mussulman's
faith.
The Mosque of ST. Sophia, which stands
near the old Seraglio, is, perhaps, the
most interesting building in Constantine
Pile. 1t is in the form of Greek cross,
and the central dome is $50 feet above the
floor, and must once have been much
higher, as the glrdle cupola could be seen