les, and supply the whole of Constantinople with a
sufficiency of water.

COFFEE-HOUSES--STORY-TELLERS.

Before I bade farewell to Constantinople for the present and betook
me to Pera, I requested my guide to conduct me to a few coffee-
houses, that I might have a new opportunity of observing the
peculiar customs and mode of life of the Turks. I had already
obtained some notion of the appearance of these places in Giurgewo
and Galatz; but in this imperial town I had fancied I should find
them somewhat neater and more ornamental. But this delusion
vanished as soon as I entered the first coffee-house. A wretchedly
dirty room, in which Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and others sat cross-
legged on divans, smoking and drinking coffee, was all I could
discover. In the second house I visited I saw, with great disgust,
that the coffee-room was also used as a barber's shop; on one side
they were serving coffee, and on the other a Turk was having his
head shaved. They say that bleeding is sometimes even carried on in
these booths.

In a coffee-house of a rather superior class we found one of the so-
called "story-tellers." The audience sit round in a half-circle,
and the narrator stands in the foreground, and quietly begins a tale
from the Thousand and One Nights; but as he continues he becomes
inspired, and at length roars and gesticulates like the veriest
ranter among a company of strolling players.

Sherbet is not drunk in all the coffee-houses; but every where we
find stalls and booths where this cooling and delicious beverage is
to be had. It is made from the juice of fruits, mixed with that of
lemons and pomegranates. In Pera ice is only to be had in the
coffee-houses of the Franks, or of Christian confectioners. All
coffee-house keepers are obliged to buy their coffee ready burnt and
ground from the government, the monopoly of this article being an
imperial privilege. A building has been expressly constructed for
its preparation, where the coffee is ground to powder by machinery.
The coffee is made very strong, and poured out without being
strained, a custom which I could not bring myself to like.

It is well worth the traveller's while to make an

EXCURSION TO EJUB,

the greatest suburb of Constantinople, and also the place where the
richest and most noble of the Turks are buried.

Ejub, the standard-bearer of Mahomet, rests here in a magnificent
mosque, built entirely of white marble. None but a Mussulm