CISTERN OF BIN-VEBER-DIREC.       100

PLATE: CISTERN OF BIN-VEBER-DIREC. (Or the Thousand and One.)

Every object within the harbour was as visible as at noonday, but wore a spectral brightness never to be forgotten by those who witnessed the grand and imposing spectacle; the dark hulls of the shipping seemed to float upon a sea of molten lead, while the delicate tracery of the cordage appeared to be hanging in links of gold from mast to mast. The dome of St. Sophia glowed like a huge carbuncle; and the slender minarets stood out like silver wands from an atmosphere of brass; while the rigid cypresses, whose dense foliage flung back the unnatural brightness as if in mockery, loomed darkly on the eye like the presiding forms of destroying demons overlooking their work of devastation.

Amid all this ruin, the Aqueduct of Valens remained unscathed. Some portions of its leafy coronal, parched by the intense heat, hung on the morrow, scorched and blighted, but the hoary remnant of by-gone centuries still soared proudly above the prostrate city at its feet, and received as incense the smoke of its destruction.

No single inscription can now be traced on any portion of the work; not a lettered stone has ever repaid the search of the curious, or rewarded the labour of the antiquary; and the tradition cited by Dr. Walsh is said to be the only record of its date, of of its founder. To the picturesque traveller, the Aqueduct of Valens will, however, require no historical interest to lend it value; as of all the antiquities of Constantinople, none form so prominent a feature in the landscape, or tend so greatly to contrast their classic and graceful shadowing with the broad lights and vivid colouring of the reminder of the picture.

Many others exist without the city, but all more or less in a state of decay; the Turks, by an unaccountable fatality, neglecting their aqueducts and cisterns, while they are rigorously strict on the subject of the Bendts; planting the embankments; and condemning to severe penalties, not only the "drawers of water," but also the "hewers of wood," who may be rash enough to exercise their vocation within the guarded precincts.

The cisterns of the city are, in many instances, merely immense tanks, or wells, excavated beneath the houses, and intended to act as reservoirs for rainwater; but these are far from being the most important; four vast subterraneans being yet in existence, which were the work of the Greek Emperors, and which were formerly supplied by aqueducts from the waters of the Bendts. One of them, called by the Turks Ben-Veber-Direk, is supported by three hundred and thirty-six pillars of rough marble; and is known as the "Thousand and One", because the separate blocks employed in forming the columns are said to amount that mystic number; but in the time of Romans this cistern enjoyed the appellation of the "Stranger's Friend," being a public reservoir, of which every comer might claim his share.