THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.       78

Stone tunnels, into which the writhing wretches who were doomed to this merciless death were forced by the sharp scimitars and handjars (*) of their jailors, and there left to expire of famine; and oubliettes, whose gnawing jaws opened to receive their victims only to deliver them back mutilated and bleeding to the depths of the ocean-grave, where their sufferings were destined to end for ever, are to be seen on all sides; while the promenades provided for the prisoners within the guarded precincts are overshadowed by the funeral cypress, as though fresher and brighter foliage would there have been a mockery.

Not the least remarkable object pointed out to the stranger within the walls of the Seven Towers is a dry well, celebrated as that into which Mustapha III., on some misunderstanding between the courts of the Sultan and the Czarina Catherine, very unceremoniously caused her representative, the Count Obrescoff to be lowered, and left during several days, ere he entered upon his more legitimate period of a captivity which endured three weary years; while racks, and wheels, and other complicated instruments of torture, are scattered through the fortress, as if to prove the ingenuity of mankind in inventions of pain and horror!

Four of the towers to which the stronghold is indebted for its appellation, are now partially in ruin; and the gloomy walls no longer give back the stifled echoes of moral suffering. From a state-prison for attainted Turks, the fortress became the compulsatory abode of the Moscovite Ambassadors on all outbreakings of discord between the Autocrats of Russia and Turkey; and still more recently it has served as a plague-hospital for the Greeks, and thus exchanged its experience of human torture for one which, although equally bitter, is Heaven-inflicted, and not born of a malice or the tyranny of man. But, although the record of blood is now filled up, and the dark volume of violence sealed - it may be hoped, for ever - the entrance-gate of the Seven Towers is still an object of dread and terror to the Turks; and it is difficult even for the traveller to pass it by without quickening pulse!

(*) Daggers.