Grecian blood in their veins, the costume is graciously beautiful, but these, the maidens of Limesol; their robes are more gently, more sweetly imagined, and fall, like Julia's cachmere, in soft, luxurious folds. The common voice of the Levant allows that, in face, the women of Cyprus are less beautiful than their brilliant sisters of Smyrna; and yet, says the Greek, he may trust himself to one and all of the bright cities of the Ægean, and may yet weigh anchor with a heart entire; but that, so surely as he ventures upon the enchanted Isle of Cyprus, so surely will he know the rapture, or the bitterness of love. The charm, they say, owes its power to that which these people call the astonishing politics' (ToλTiên) of the women; meaning, I fancy, their tact, and their witching ways. The word, however, plainly fails to express one half of that which the speakers would say. I have smiled to hear the Greek, with all his plenteousness of fancy, and all the wealth of his generous language, yet vainly struggling to describe the ineffable spell, which the Parisians dispose of, in their own smart way, by a summary 'Je ne sçai quoi.'"*

On the third day we made the coast of Caramania ; on the fifth we cast anchor in the harbour of the Isle of Rhodes. The city presents very much the appearance one would be led to expect from its situation and its history: a mingling of European with Asiatic dwellings; churches and mosques, spires and minarets, * Eothen.

intermingled with cypress and sycamore; and, without the town, a pleasant boulevarde affords shade for the varied population to saunter under, à la Parisienne, or to sit and smoke under, à la Turque. Here, also, we were prevented from landing, on account of quarantine; but I pulled round the harbour in one of the ship's boats, and surveyed the inner harbour, across the mouth of which the Colossus strode. It was only twenty-four feet in breadth, so that it requires no great stretch of the imagination to equal that of the image.

This island well deserves a visit, and has been hitherto very imperfectly explored. In the interior it is said to be very beautiful, and many remains of antiquity lie strewn about there, unexamined.

In the evening we weighed anchor, and passed along a fine, mountainous coast (Asia Minor) on our right. Patmos, on the left, with many an island of mythologic fame, keeps alive the attention that has henceforth no time to sleep; for every wave of this historic sea is full of memories. Scio and Mitylene now arise; the Gulph of Smyrna opening within this last; and morning's earliest light shows us Ida's Mountain, over the level plain of Troy, with the tombs of Hector and Achilles appearing like Irish raths.

Soon afterwards, we enter the Dardanelles, against a current that continually runs to the southward at the rate of three or four miles an hour. This strait is generally about three miles wide, but sometimes narrows to half that breadth.

There is little that is picturesque in these celebrated Straits the shores consist of steep and barren hills, with but few trees scattered along their sides. Their most interesting feature to me was the sloping roofs of the villages, which here, for the first time, met my eye, and spoke of Europe.

The fortifications of the Dardanelles are very respectable, and they have some few guns that throw stone balls of two feet and a half in diameter. These guns can only fire in one direction, however, and, should they miss, the object of attack has sailed far away before they can be brought to bear again upon her. In the evening we entered the little Sea of Mar

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mora, which was throwing up as heavy a swell as if it was an ocean.

The next morning-the seventh after our departure from Beyrout-revealed to us a distant view of magnificent Stamboul, but we were obliged to bear away to the right, to disembark the troops on the "Princes' Islands," where they were to perform quarantine. Their sufferings during the voyage must have been extreme, exposed during the daytime to a burning sun, and at night to the spray that constantly broke over the ship; yet they showed the same profound apathy in recovering their freedom, as they had done during their painful voyage. I never heard a murmur escape from one of them, though some of their officers remonstrated once or twice with the captain about their unavoidable miseries. These officers were, without exception, coarse, mean, dirty, and unsoldierlike: they seemed to belong to the very lowest class of the population.

After a long delay, while the arrival of the Princes was being announced at Constantinople, we were ordered to land at Kartal, a quarantine station on the Asiatic shore. I steered the captain's gig with the royal party in it, while a larger boat took their suite, and a beautiful mare which they had brought from the banks of the Euphrates.

And now I found myself floating on the moonlit Sea of Marmora, in the shadows of the minaretted Asiatic shore, with a fair Persian princess in my charge. I could not see her face; but her voice was as soft and

gentle as the breeze that breathed through the folds of her long white veil. The princes sate one on each side of me, in high conical caps of black Astrakan fur, and a female slave, enveloped in black drapery, sate opposite her young mistress.

We pulled for many a mile along that placid sea, laughing and talking merrily. Prince Timour several times endeavoured to remove his sister's veil, and appealed to me as to whether the most beautiful women in England had any objection to being seen. The khanum,* however, resisted the unveiling, goodhumouredly but firmly.

The moon was shining brightly over the Princes* Islands, and mingling her pale beams with the golden haze that still lingered where the sun had sunk behind the European hills. We floated tranquilly along under the shadows of the Asiatic shore, till silence gradually stole upon our senses, or was scarcely broken by the measured stroke of the sailor's oar, and the low, monotonous chant of their Ægean song. The high black caps of the Persians began to glisten with the dew, the veiled figures of the princess and her slave drooped gradually from their unusual attitude, the dolphins played about our prow, and phosphorescent light flashed along the crest of every little wave: the mysterious-looking group, and every thing around, were in harmony with the romantic scene and hour.

At length we landed on a tongue of land, under a

* Khan, prince; khanum, princess, in Persian.

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