BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS. 134
Many of the more ancient of the tombs are very richly and intricately wrought; and the shapes of several of these sarcophagi are eminently classical; but nearly all the modern ones are mere oblong slabs, mounted in some cases upon circular pedestals three or four inches in height, and perfectly simple in design. The situation of the Armenian burial-place is superb; and it is generally occupied by groups of people of that nation, seated upon the grave-stones, beneath the cool shadows of the acacia-trees, talking and smoking, as though no symbol of the dead were near.
Dead has no gloom for the philosophical Orientals !
PLATE: THE GUZ COULI, OR MAIDEN'S TOWER.
THE GUZ-COULI, OR MAIDENS'S TOWER.
A fairy-fortress, girdled by the sea,
Rock-seated, and alone; whose single tower
Was mirrored in the waves, and from whose hights
The eye glanced round on two fair cities, spread
Along still fairer shores.
MS.
THE popular and poetical traditions attached to this sea-girdled edifice have already been given, and its peculiar position has rendered it a very striking object in several of the sketches of Mr. Bartlett; it is, indeed, so essentially one of the "Beauties of the Bosphorus," that it could not fail to create its own interest, even were it without its peculiar record; but such is far from being the case. The massaldjhes love to tell the tale of the fair and high-born girl, who died, Cleopatra-like, from the bite of an adder, within its walls; the poets love to sing the adventures of the Persian Prince who delivered the imprisoned beauty on a night of storm, when there was no tell-tale moon to reveal the enterprise to jealous guards and watchful eunuchs; and when the wild waves of the Propontis were lashing themselves to foam against the rocky shores of Asia, while the hoarse gusts which swept down from the Black Sea, driving the current of the Bosphorus madly before them, swelled the midnight diapason, and was sweeter than the voice of the būlbūl of Nishapor in the ears of the lovers.
But neither has the sober historian passed it by; and pretty and fanciful as may be the fables which were have quoted, we are bound in our turn to treat the subject more gravely;