So rapidly do the selling and weighing proceed that by eleven o'clock the market is virtually over. Then the cheeses are removed to the warehouses of the purchasing merchants, the farmers depart in their boats and wagons, and when the grand noonday burst of the chimes comes the Alkmaar cheese-market exists only as a memory.
A GEOGRAPHY CITY "COME ALIVE"
BY LINDAMIRA HARBESON
During the Great War, when the armies of Europe were trying to beat their way into Constantinople, this city, which once had been to us merely a black dot in our geographies, suddenly became very real. We used to know it as a point somewhere in the lower right-hand corner of the map, where Europe is separated from Asia by several annoying little bodies of water that were so hard for us to remember. But when I tell you that I ate a bag of peanuts while going in a ferry-boat to Constantinople from Scutari, the little Asiatic village just opposite, you will understand the width of the Bosporus better, perhaps, than your geography can tell you.
The photograph presents a good general view of the city as seen from the Galata side; and shows clearly Santa Sophia and the Golden Horn which divides in two parts this ancient and famous metropolis of the Ottoman Empire. From the roof of the American College buildings, which are on a hill in Scutari, we can look directly across toward the mouth of the Golden Horn.
Stamboul is the old part of the city, where many different peoples have dwelt—first Greeks, then Romans, now Turks, and you can still see by a bit of a house or an old wall how these people lived. Galata is where English, French, Italians, and Germans carry on their business in Turkey, and where the big boats unload their cargoes. Between Galata and Stamboul is one of the most famous and most crowded bridges in the world. Pera is where most of the Europeans live.
Constantinople is indeed like the fairy city in the Arabian Nights to which the poor brothers are whisked away on a carpet—a dream city on the edge of the water—a city of lavender-blue domes, and minarets that seem to reach to the sky. We are just aware of the little houses straggling up the hill or dipping their feet in the water. The maze of houses and the mosques are veiled in a light blue haze, just as if the city, like the women, had to wear the yachmak, or head-covering. Off beyond is the glistening Sea of Marmora, and near by, the dazzling blue waters of the Bosporus dotted with little black boats. The city stretches on farther up the shore, and just beyond are the wooded hills. At the foot of one of them, on the very edge of the water, is the long low white marble palace of the sultan—Dolmah Bagtché it is called, which means "walled-in garden."
Everybody who is young must love Constantinople. It is so full of color and soft musical sounds that one is sure something unexpected and wonderful will happen any moment. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, can be seen so many different types of people as on Galata Bridge. Let us pay ten paras—a little over one cent—and go on the bridge; we shall see and hear more than a dollar's worth. There go modern Turkish gentlemen dressed like our fathers, but wearing fezzes instead of hats. A fez is made of soft red felt and has no brim; from the top hangs a black silk tassel. Here come old-fashioned Turkish gentlemen with bent shoulders and flowing beards. They wear soft padded overcoats of many colors, and each is sure to have on a ring set with a beautiful stone that he keeps turned toward the inside of his hand. There are some priests with white scarfs round their fezzes; here are others with green ones, because they have been to Mecca, where every pious Turk wants to go before he dies. There are whirling dervishes in brown overcoats, and tall brown hats shaped like chicken croquettes. Have you ever heard of dervishes? They are priests who perform a peculiar ceremony in their religious houses. They take off their brown overcoats and dance in green or white costumes that have full pleated skirts. They spin round and round on their tiptoes, accompanied by strange music, while the chiefs of the order sit cross-legged on the floor and watch them.
Then there may pass a Tartar pilgrim all in white from the interior of Asiatic Turkey, or a Persian in gray with a Persian-lamb fez, or a fierce Kurd. The last is a soldier, and wears a brown hood with a long end knotted round his head. Since the Balkan War, when many Kurds were in Constantinople on their way to the army, the little Turkish girls have worn the same sort of hood of soft colors and fabrics. On the bridge, too, may be seen the shrouded Turkish ladies, who move silently along like black ghosts. They wear the tcharchaf—the modern Turkish dress which includes a veil over the face; old-fashioned women of the poorer class still wear the soft white yachmak that covers the head but not the face. And then, too, there are the hamals—wild peasants from the interior—who do the fetching and carrying. They wear little caps and bright sashes, and have on their backs a kind of saddle on which they put anything from a bag of flour to a piano. They walk faster than the rest and sing "Dustur, dustur," which means "Get out of the road." If we are very lucky, we shall see a string of camels with their noses in the air, and on their humps lovely faded blue and red saddle-bags. They are usually led by a donkey, and with them is a camel-driver of most fetching appearance. The camels are so big and shaggy and out of place that we pinch ourselves to see if we are really awake.