, wearisome if they
are bored, and gay if they are making money.

Constantinople and the Bosphorus are no exceptions to this general rule.
People who live there are sometimes well and sometimes ill, sometimes
rich and sometimes poor, sometimes in love with themselves and sometimes
in love with each other. A grave Persian carpet merchant sits smoking on
the quay of Buyukdere. He sees them all go by, from the gay French
secretary of embassy, puffing at a cigarette as he hurries from one
visit to the next, to the neat and military German diplomat, landing
from his steam launch on his return from the palace; from the
devil-may-care English youth in white flannel to the graceful Turkish
adjutant on his beautiful Arab horse; from the dark-eyed Armenian lady,
walking slowly by the water's edge, to the terrifically arrayed little
Greek dandy, with a spotted waistcoat and a thunder-and-lightning tie.
He sees them all: the Levantine with the weak and cunning face, the
swarthy Kurdish porter, the gorgeously arrayed Dalmatian embassy
servant, the huge, fair Turkish waterman in his spotless white dress,
and the countless veiled Turkish women from the small harems of the
little town, shuffling along in silence, or squatted peacefully upon a
jutting point of the pier, veiled in _yashmaks_, the more transparent as
they have the more beauty to show or the less ugliness to conceal. The
carpet merchant sees them all, and sits like Patience upon a monumental
heap of stuffs, waiting for customers and smoking his water-pipe. His
eyes are greedy and his fingers are long, but the peace of a superior
mendacity is on his brow, and in his heart the lawful price of goods is
multiplied exceedingly.

By the side of the quay, separated from the quiet water by the broad
white road, stand the villas, the embassies, the houses, large and
small, a varying front, following the curve of the Bosphorus for half a
mile between the Turkish towns of Buyukdere and Mesar Burnu. Behind the
villas rise the gardens, terraces upon terraces of roses, laurels,
lemons, Japanese medlars, and trees and shrubs of all sorts, with a
stone pine or a cypress here and there, dark green against the faint
blue sky. Beyond the breadth of smooth sapphire water, scarcely rippling
under the gentle northerly breeze, the long hills of the Asian mainland
stretch to the left as far as the mouth of the Black Sea, and to the
right until the quick bend of the narrow channel hides Asia from