The Sultan goes in state to the mosque every Friday, and when he is then passing through the streets his people may approach him to present petitions.
The “temennah,” as the ordinary mode of salutation is termed, is a very graceful gesticulation. The hand is bent towards the ground, as if to take up the hem of the superior’s garment, and then pressed on the heart, forehead, and lips, to signify both humility and affection.
To call the pleasure-grounds that surround the Seraglio gardens, is a misnomer according to the European idea of what a garden should be, for there is scarcely a flower to be seen. They are a series of beautiful wildernesses, where the nightingales sing from the tangled thickets, and where each turn in the pathway, each opening amongst the trees, discloses some enchanting view, either of the bright blue Bosphorus, or of the misty grey of the distant mountains, or gives a peep of the city itself, whose innumerable domes and minarets rise dazzlingly white above the dark masses of cypress, their gilded crescents flashing brightly in the brilliant sunshine.
The soft rustling of the breeze amongst the trees, the sweet scent of the cypresses and flowering shrubs, all invited to a halt, and we seated ourselves on a piece of old wall, and idly watched the caïques as they glided across the Bosphorus.
Near us was a low gateway projecting over the sea, and in olden times its portals never opened, save when the sack was borne forth, that contained sometimes the living body of those odalisks whose conduct had not been sans reproche. In later years it is believed that these unhappy women were taken to a fortress called Roumel-Hissei, or Castles in Europe, and there strangled. Their bodies, sewn up in a sack, were then thrown into the middle of the stream, where the strength of the current would rapidly carry them out to sea. At any rate, whatever their punishment, the extent of it is never known beyond the walls of the Imperial Harem.
The flocks of little birds that are seen skimming so rapidly and so restlessly over the waves of the Bosphorus, are supposed by the Turks to be the souls of these unfortunates, who, for their great sin, are for ever condemned to seek in vain the lover who had led them astray.
CHAPTER III.
SECTS.
Although in olden times the Moslems were both cruel and fanatical in forcing their religion upon conquered nations, the Turks of to-day are exceedingly tolerant, and unlike the Mohammedans of Syria and Asia Minor, who abhor every denomination of Christians, permit Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Greek chapels to be erected without opposition in the neighbourhood of Constantinople.