The Silver Water

Resorts of this description abound on the shores and in the valleys of the Upper Bosporus, under such names as “ The Water of Life,” “ The Silver Water,” “The Water under the Chestnut Trees,” “The Water beside the Hazels.” The spectacle of the great gatherings there, on Fridays, arrayed in bright colours, seated tier above tier on the terraced platforms built against the green slope of a hill, the women above, the men below, all in the deep shade of branches meeting overhead, forms a picture beyond a painter s power to reproduce.

In this connection may be mentioned also the attractive little scenes upon which one comes frequently in walking through the city—quiet nooks, a little off the great thoroughfares, with a vine or westeria spread on a trellis across the street for an awning, and a group of humble workmen, seated on low stools at the door of a cafeneh, sipping tiny cups of coffee, drinking water, smoking the naighileh, too happy to speak much. Occasionally, the court of a small khan, or a portion of a large court, is thus canopied by a trellised vine, making an oasis in the desert of lowly toil.

RELIGIOUS COLOURING

Another striking feature in the life of Constantinople is the extent to which life here has a religious colouring. The Turkish State is a theocracy. Its supreme law is a code reputed to be Divine. Citizenship is secured by the profession of a particular religion. Obedience to the law of the land is obedience to the will of God. The defence of the State is the defence of a faith. Patriotism is piety. To die in battle is to belong to the noble army of martyrs. The cemetery on the hill above Roumeli Hissar is known as “ The Field of the Witnesses” (Martyrs), because the resting-place of soldiers who died while Mehemet the Conqueror was building, in 1452, the castle which should command the passage of the straits, and cut the communications of the city with the lands around the Black Sea during the forthcoming siege, “when the bud would open into flower.”