VIEW FROM MOUNT BULGURLHU. 40
This is, perhaps, the most favourable point for contemplating Stamboul in all its extent, and fully comprehending its extraordinary magnificence as a whole; its singular outline, its ocean-girdle, where the blue waves seem to follow lovingly whithersoever the sinuosities of the shores invite them; its thousand domes, and its shaft-like minarets beckoning to the blue heavens, against which they glitter like polished ivory; its forest-trees overshadowing the party-coloured dwellings; its cypress-groves stretching down to the water's edge and all the blended beauties of the unrivalled locality.
The artist has indeed a rich field for his talent when he gazes around him from Mount Bulgurlhu; but the traveller, although he may idly heap expletive on expletive, until his praises swell into hyperbole, must ever fail in conveying by mere verbal description, a correct impression of so bright, so varied, and so beautiful a panorama.
PLATE: TURKISH COUNTRY HOUSES, ON THE BOSPHORUS.
TURKISH HOUSES ON THE BOSPHORUS
"It was indeed a wide extensive building
Which opened on their view, and o'er the front
There seem'd to be besprent of deal of gilding,
And various hues, as in the Turkish wont -
A gaudy taste; for they are little skill'd in
The arts of which these lands were once the font:
Each villa on the Bosphorus looks a screen
New painted, or a pretty opera-scene."
BYRON.
HOWEVER the description of the noble poet which heads the present chapter may apply to many of the residences on the channel, it cannot be denied that to others it is entirely inapplicable; for there are only to great a number which resemble nothing less than
A screen new painted."
The shores of the Bosphorus are a study - not only for their beauty, but because, in the general aspect of the dwellings that fringe them, the traveller may read a great moral lesson; for Turkey is a country where the population do not fall back upon the past, where they are almost careless of the future, and where the present is every thing. The Turk builds for himself, toils for himself, intrigues for himself, as his father did before him; and leaves his children to strive and to create in their turn with the "Inshallah!" of an earnest and unaffected philosophy.