I Can Fancy The Scene About The Quays Somewhat To Resemble The
River Of London In Olden Times, Before Coal-Smoke Had Darkened The
Whole City With Soot, And When, According To The Old Writers, There
Really Was Bright Weather.
The fleets of caiques bustling along
the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look
at:
In Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry-
boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed. Here the
caique is still in full perfection: there are thirty thousand
boats of the kind plying between the cities; every boat is neat,
and trimly carved and painted; and I scarcely saw a man pulling in
one of them that was not a fine specimen of his race, brawny and
brown, with an open chest and a handsome face. They wear a thin
shirt of exceedingly light cotton, which leaves their fine brown
limbs full play; and with a purple sea for a background, every one
of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering picture.
Passengers squat in the inside of the boat; so that as it passes
you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with
their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of
expression which the sucking of a tobacco-pipe is sure to give to a
man.
The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of
craft. There are the dirty men-of-war's boats of the Russians,
with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds
of passengers to the villages; the melon-boats piled up with
enormous golden fruit; His Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve
men bending to their oars; and His Highness's own caique, with a
head like a serpent, and eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that
goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon.
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