bottom on soft cushions, your back supported by the end of the boat, your face to the two boatmen.  The caique is gayly ornamented and pretty to look at, but it is the crankiest and tickliest of all nautical inventions—­more resembling a Canadian birch-bark canoe than any other craft you are acquainted with.  Admiring the view, you partially rise up and lean your elbow on the side of the boat.  A warning cry from your boatmen and a sudden dip of your frail bark, which almost upsets you head-foremost to feed the fishes of the Bosphorus, admonish you to sit quietly, and you can scarcely venture to stir again during the long row.  The caique is long and very narrow, and sharp at both ends—­pointed, in fact.  It is boarded over at these ends to prevent shipping seas.  These planks are prettily varnished, with gilded rails, which give the boat a gay look.

The men row vigorously, and the frail skiff skims along the water at a rate of speed equal to an express-train.  But the rushing of the rippling waters past the boat is the chief indication of the rapidity of our progress, so smoothly do we glide along.  One peculiarity of the caique is that there are no rowlocks for the oars, which are held by a loop of leather fastened on the boat.

All the senses are soothed and steeped in Elysium during this rapid transit.  The eye lazily runs over the squat-looking red houses with flat roofs which line the shore, to rest on the dark cypress trees which fill the intervening spaces, with the gilded balconies of some pleasure-palace of sultan or high Turk catching the sight occasionally.  Caiques similar to your own are darting about in all directions, following, passing or meeting you, until at length you reach your destination, indicated by the crowd of caiques tied up there, like cabs on a grand-opera night waiting for their customers.  Those of high Turkish functionaries or foreign ambassadors are very different from yours—­as different as a coach-and-four from a common cab.  Many of these have twelve rowers, all in fancy uniforms—­red fezzes and jackets embroidered with gold—­while the larger caiques are profusely and expensively ornamented.

Stepping ashore, you see a long line of carriages drawn up in several rows, and of every conceivable variety—­from the Turkish araba to the most coquettish-looking Parisian coupe—­gilded and adorned in a style to make a French lorette stare with amazement at a lavishness of expenditure exceeding her own.

The fair ones to whom these carriages belong may be seen in the distance squatting down on rugs spread out beneath the trees, and sipping coffee or sherbert while listening to musicians or story-tellers.  You stroll toward them as near as their attendant guardians—­grim-looking black eunuchs armed to the teeth, and quite ready to use those arms with very little provocation on the persons of any “dogs of infidels” who may interfere or seem to interfere with their fair charges—­will permit.