Close by this castle stands Robert College.
Further south, obliquely opposite is Candilli, a place where it is good to be. At first glance, but for its prominent situation, it may appear to be much like other places along the banks of the Bosphorus. A short bit of narrow street, stone-paved and very bad to walk on, leads to a cross-road, the cord that connects all these little villages. It is equally badly paved, but as many of the blocks of stone that once served as pavement have vanished, there are quite a number of softer spots wherein a man may set his feet when walking. There is a café by the waterside, where Turks, Armenians, Greeks and others take their
leisure, drink endless cups of coffee and gaze into the water.
The gentleman who sells tickets to those who leave by boat, and collects them from those who land here, may generally be seen fishing from the landing-stage. He is a philosopher; it is but little that he wants, and he takes a long time getting it. There is a mosque close by whose Hodja is counted among the Artist’s personal friends. He is a busy man, as Turks go: he sweeps out his mosque, trims and lights the candles that adorn it by night, and fulfils all the Koran’s requirements in daily prayer, encouraging others in the same commendable practice. He also possesses a magnificent tenor voice which is heard to best advantage rising up from his minaret to the hill overlooking Candilli, when exactly one hour and a half after sunset he announces to the world that “Allah is Great. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.” He has a son who is learning to chant the same refrain and to quote the Koran. Like most of the early apostles, he is a fisherman.
All around by the seaport, on the hillside, in garden and under trees, stand the houses of those who live in Candilli, either permanently or as summer tenants only. Should the reader ever visit here, let him turn sharp to his right and keep along the sea-front, a stone-paved terrace about 8 feet broad occasionally broken to admit boats into the boathouses, caverns in the stone foundations of the houses that stand here. These breaks are planked over for the convenience of foot-passengers; and so we keep on till a sharp turn to the left takes us to a flight of steep steps. We ascend and join the high-road, the cord referred to above. You are welcomed there by a sportive litter of pariah pups who have an al fresco lodging here on a luxurious bed of melon-skins, which provide food and bedding at the same time, and quite a plentiful supply of each during the season. The neighbourhood for miles round, city and suburbs, is full of little corners convenient for receiving things that you no longer want. A few hundred yards along the high-road another sharp turn to the left, another litter of pariah pups and their white mother, generally called the “old lady,” all most pleased to see you; another ascent, short but sharp with holes torn out of the pavement as if the shell of a cow-gun had struck it, and you arrive at a doorway in the wall. It is quite unpretentious, in fact its modesty is carried so far that a piece of string that dangles out of a hole will, when you pull it, lift the latch and so give you admittance.
You enter an unpaved yard, in fact after a few days’ rain you may call it a garden, for grass grows up without any other encouragement, just as it does in all Eastern gardens. Before you stands a wooden house, shrouded with vine and overshadowed by a fig-tree; there is yet another fig-tree in the garden, and a walnut-tree and another sitting-out-under tree, which finds that sufficient avocation, and therefore yields no fruit of any kind.