Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/99

 the same floor as the gallery, are very comfortable rooms all round, with Italian stoves in them. In these my lord the ambassador took up his abode facing the street, and we were distributed by threes and fours in different apartments, according to our personal dignity and position. Whoever goes to court must go past this house, which is built in so convenient a situation, close to the principal street, that everything can be seen from it.

As regards the situation of the city, it seems to me that the place is prepared by nature for the site of an imperial metropolis. It certainly lies in Europe, but has Asia and Egypt almost before its eyes, and Africa on the right hand. Though these lands do not adjoin the city, yet they are, as it were, united to it by the sea, and an easy voyage. On the left are the Pontus Euxinus and the Lake Mæotis, or, as the Turks name them. Karantegise, or the Black Sea, beside the waters of which many nations dwell, and into which many rivers flow on all sides. Moreover, there is nothing produced in these regions for the use of man that cannot be easily conveyed in boats to Constantinople. From one side of the city stretches the Propontis, or Sea of St. George; on another, a harbour for vessels is formed by a river which Strabo, from its shape, called the Golden Horn; the third side of the city joins the land: so that the city itself has the appearance of a peninsula, and, with its whole elevation, forms a promontory running into the sea, or an arm of the sea.