strangled the son of Soliman; and the stupid Ahmed Second, who continually repeated “Koso!  Koso!” (Very well, very well) crouching before the door of the copyists’ bazaar, in the square of Bajazet.  All the personages of the ’Thousand and One Nights,’ the Aladdins, the Zobeides, the Sindbads, the Gulnares, the old Jewish merchants, possessors of enchanted carpets and wonderful lamps, passed before me like a procession of phantoms.

BIRDS

From ‘Constantinople’

Constantinople has one grace and gayety peculiar to itself, that comes from an infinite number of birds of every kind, for which the Turks nourish a warm sentiment and regard.  Mosques, groves, old walls, gardens, palaces, all resound with song, the whistling and twittering of birds; everywhere wings are fluttering, and life and harmony abound.  The sparrows enter the houses boldly, and eat out of women’s and children’s hands; swallows nest over the cafe doors, and under the arches of the bazaars; pigeons in innumerable swarms, maintained by legacies from sultans and private individuals, form garlands of black and white along the cornices of the cupolas and around the terraces of the minarets; sea-gulls dart and play over the water; thousands of turtle-doves coo amorously among the cypresses in the cemeteries; crows croak about the Castle of the Seven Towers halcyons come and go in long files between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora; and storks sit upon the cupolas of the mausoleums.  For the Turk, each one of these birds has a gentle meaning, or a benignant virtue:  turtle-doves are favorable to lovers, swallows keep away fire from the roofs where they build their nests, storks make yearly pilgrimages to Mecca, halcyons carry the souls of the faithful to Paradise.  Thus he protects and feeds them, through a sentiment of gratitude and piety; and they enliven the house, the sea, and the sepulchre.  Every quarter of Stamboul is full of the noise of them, bringing to the city a sense of the pleasures of country life, and continually refreshing the soul with a reminder of nature.

CORDOVA

From ‘Spain’

For a long distance the country offers no new aspect to the feverish curiosity of the tourist.  At Vilches there is a vast plain, and beyond there the open country of Tolosa, where Alphonso VIII., King of Castile, gained the celebrated victory “de las Navas” over the Mussulman army.  The sky was very clear, and in the distance one could see the mountains of the Sierra de Segura.  Suddenly, there comes over one a sensation which seems to respond to a suppressed exclamation of surprise:  the first aloes with their thick leaves, the unexpected heralds of tropical vegetation, rise on both sides of the road.  Beyond, the fields studded with flowers begin to appear.  The first are studded, those which follow almost covered, then come vast