THE ARSENAL.       114

Above the Admiralty stand the ruins of what was once the palace of Capudan Pasha, looking more like the remains of an aqueduct than of a dwelling; and forming a long line of arches extremely picturesque in the effect. Before it spreads the harbour, bounded by the seven hills of the Golden City, and the wide and historical plain of Daoud Pasha; and beside it stands the barrack of Kassim Pasha, whence the cemetery of Pera stretches away, built in by houses, and covering every height and hollow, until it is bounded by the streets of the infidel faubourg.

The little nook which lay at the artist's feet, as he looked upon the scene that I have endeavoured to describe, gives an admirable idea of this singular necropolis. Every house, whose upper stories overhang the graves, is filled with tenants, wholly unsaddened by their constant companionship with death; the beadstones are closely clustered together, each group denoting the resting-place of a family, and situated as near to the habitation of the surviving relatives as circumstances will permit; while rigid cypresses deepen the gloom of the death-glen, and parasitical plants trail along the walls, and wave their feathery branches over the mouldering sods.

It was in this very corner of the far-spreading cemetery, that, in the year 1936, a Frank lady, residing in Pera, was one day attracted by a line of graves, flung up on the border of a narrow pathway through the hollow; they had evidently all been filled since sunrise, for there was that fresh, humid, clammy look about the mould which it loses after four-and twenty hours' exposure to the atmosphere; and the work was still going on as she reached the spot. The idea of plague was instantly suggested; for, as her eye rapidly ran over the nineteen graves already completed, and then fell upon the four others which were in process of preparation, it was evident that some unusual case must have produced so fatal an effect, this obscure nook being so very minute a portion of the burial-ground, as to receve seldom more than one new tenant weekly. It had been one of her favourite haunts; for she it loved its stillness, its long deep shadows, and its almost unbroken solitude, coupled with the feeling that she was within sight and hearing of her fellow-beings, although apparently alone; and she was painfully startled by so unexpected an invasion of the hallowed spot.