s painted white within and without, with rich gilt
mouldings, under which runs a broad external green border, ornamented
with gilded arabesques. The oars are painted white, with gold scrolls;
the stern is adorned with massive gilt carvings; and the long
projecting prow with a richly-gilded ornament, representing a
palm-branch curling upwards. Behind this flutters a gilded falcon, the
emblem of the house of Osman. The carvings and ornaments of these
boats are elaborately finished, and exquisitely light and graceful.
These embellishments, combined with the loose white dresses,
blue-tasselled red caps, and muscular forms of the boatmen, as they
rise from their seats, vigorously plunge their oars into the dark blue
waters, and propel the kayiks with racehorse speed, give to these
splendid vessels an air of majesty and brilliancy, not less
characteristic than original and imposing.

Many instances have occurred, in which men have risen from the class
of boatmen to stations of high honour and dignity; the most recent
instance of which was in the case of the arch-traitor Achmet Fevzy
Pasha, who, in 1839, betrayed the Ottoman fleet under his command into
the hands of Mohammed Ali--a deed of unparalleled perfidy, for which
he righteously received a traitor's reward, perishing in January 1843
(as was generally believed) by poison administered by the orders of
the Egyptian Viceroy. The kayikjees, as a class, are generally
considered, in point of personal advantages, the finest body of men in
the empire; and share with the _sakkas_, or water-carriers--another
numerous and powerful guild, equally remarkable with the kayikjees for
their symmetry and athletic proportions--the dangerous reputation of
being distinguished favourites of the fair sex--doubly dangerous in a
country where, in such cases, "the cord or scimitar is the doom of the
stronger sex--the deep sea-bed that of the weaker. Money will
counterbalance all crimes in Turkey save female frailty. For this
neither religious law nor social customs admit atonement. Tears,
beauty, youth, gold--untold gold--are of no avail. The fish of the
Bosphorus and Propontis could disclose fearful secrets, even in our
days:"--and as a natural transition, apparently, from cause to effect,
Mr White proceeds, in the next chapter, to give an account of the
Balyk-Bazary, the Billingsgate of Stamboul. But we shall not follow
him through his enumeration of such a carte as throws the glories of a
Bla