Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/60

38 Constantinople corresponded with that gorgeous picture which the celebrated description in Anastasius presents to the imagination. But when, after landing on the muddy wharf at Tophanah, we began to plod our way through the steep and narrow streets which lead from Galata to Pera, we realized at every step all the annoyances which the accounts of former travellers had prepared us to expect in this detestable thoroughfare. Juvenal, in his third satire, describes in a few terse lines the miseries and perils encountered by an unhappy pedestrian in the streets of ancient Rome; how he has to fight his way through the mud, forced forward by the throng behind, only to be driven back by the counter-stream, jostled and elbowed at every turn by porters carrying great beams or barrels, while ever and anon the nailed boot of some rough soldier stamps on his toes; the rich man, meanwhile, surveys from his luxurious litter the struggling crowd, as the dense mass yields to the momentum of his sturdy bearers. This description, written more than seventeen centuries ago, will serve for the streets of Galata at the present day, if we substitute the arabah and the sedan chair for Juvenal's litter, and for the swaggering Roman soldier the cavass who clears the way for some Pasha, prancing through the mud on a gaily caparisoned steed.

Immediately after our arrival I presented my credentials to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who received me with a most cordial welcome, and entered into the project of my future researches with a lively interest, promising that whenever it should be