the turbans that rolled on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band.
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,
All the rest was shaven and bare.
The scalps were in the wild dogs' maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw.
But close by the shore on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,
Who had stolen from the hills but kept away,
Scared by the dogs from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Pick'd by the birds on the sands of the bay.

This hideous picture is a striking instance of the uses to which
imaginative power may turn the slightest hint, and of horror
augmented till it reach that extreme point at which the ridiculous
commences. The whole compass of English poetry affords no parallel
to this passage. It even exceeds the celebrated catalogue of
dreadful things on the sacramental table in Tam O' Shanter. It is
true, that the revolting circumstances described by Byron are less
sublime in their associations than those of Burns, being mere visible
images, unconnected with ideas of guilt, and unlike

The knife a father's throat had mangled,
Which his ain son of life bereft:
The gray hairs yet stuck to the heft.

Nor is there in the vivid group of the vulture flapping the wolf, any
accessory to rouse stronger emotions, than those which are associated
with the sight of energy and courage, while the covert insinuation,
that the bird is actuated by some instigation of retribution in
pursuing the wolf for having run away with the bone, approaches the
very point and line where the horrible merges in the ludicrous. The
whole passage is fearfully distinct, and though in its circumstances,
as the poet himself says, "sickening," is yet an amazing display of
poetical power and high invention.

The frigate sent the travellers on shore at Tophana, from which the
road ascends to Pera. Near this landing-place is a large fountain,
and around it a public stand of horses ready saddled, attended by
boys. On some of these Lord Byron and his friend, with the officers
who had accompanied them, mounted and rode up the steep hill, to the
principal Frank Hotel, in Pera, where they intended to lodge. In the
course of the ride their attention was attracted to the prodigious
number of masterless dogs which lounge and lurk about the corners of
the streets; a nuisance both dangerous and disagreeable, but which
th