Osmanlis captured Constantinople they adopted it as their national device. It is a pretty story, and well—"si non é vero é ben trovato." I saw before me a city which had already been besieged twenty-four times since its foundation and captured six times. Among others, Persians, Spartans, Athenians, Romans, Avars, Arabs, Russians, Crusaders, and Greeks had besieged it before it fell at last under the terrific assault of the forces of Mahomed II. in 1453. I landed at Galata, the port of Pera, which is separated from Stamboul proper by the Golden Horn, and went straight up to Misserie's Hotel, which is to Constantinople what Shepheard's Hotel is to Cairo, one of the famous hostelries of the world.

Next day we reported ourselves at the War Office. We were shown into a room where four or five old pashas were sitting cross-legged on divans, and we handed in our credentials. We presented our respects through the medium of an interpreter, and I was told to leave my address and hold myself in readiness for active service at once in the Servian war, which had then been going on for about six weeks.

I was no longer a civilian. I was now commissioned as a military surgeon in the service of the Sublime Porte, and engaged in a practice which included some three hundred thousand patients more or less, of whose language I was entirely ignorant, and of whose manners all previous impressions had taught me to be suspicious. It is right to say here, at the outset, that my experience of over two years among the Turks proved to me that the estimate formed of their character by other reputedly more civilized nations was entirely false and misleading. That there was a large amount of corruption in the officialdom of Turkey at that time was no doubt true; but the real samples of national character, the men in the rank and file of the army, I found to be simple-minded, courteous, honourable, and honest in time of peace, while braver men on the battle-field than those who fought under Osman Pasha at Plevna are not to be found in Europe. The magnificent physique and robust constitution of the ordinary Turkish private soldiers I believe to be due mainly to two causes. In the first place they never touch alcohol, and in the second the traditions of Turkish social life and the rigid guardianship exercised over Turkish women have effectually kept out the scrofulous taint which has so appreciably affected the populations of other European nationalities.

Having been gazetted at once as an army surgeon with the rank of colghassi, or major, which entitled me, among other privileges, to draw rations for four men, I left the luxuries of Misserie's Hotel behind me, and installed myself in the barracks close to the War Office, with a determination to see as much as possible of Stamboul before we were ordered to the front.

There are few cities in the world where nightfall makes such a difference as in Stamboul. By day the surroundings of the city as well as the city itself make up a kind of earthly paradise. I climbed the tower of the Seraskierat, and gazed with astonishment at the panorama which lay before me. I saw two seas, the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora; two straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles; two gulfs, the Gulf of Ismet and the Gulf of Nicodema. At my feet lay twenty different cities, the houses of which, painted with the true Oriental love of bright colours, nestled against a background of hills clothed with patches of dark cypress and tall, spiry pines. Before me was the spot where two continents meet; and as my eye passed from the streets of Stamboul in Europe to Scutari lying yonder across the mouth of the Bosphorus in Asia, I realized how the tide of Eastern thought had swept across the waters of this narrow strait, and left its mark indelibly upon the strange people among whom I had come to take the chances of the battle-field. I knew too that across there in Scutari was the burial-ground where the bones of those English officers and men who died in hospital after the Crimea lay buried, and I felt that with the brave dead of my own race so near me I was in good company. The old military hospital at Scutari has been turned into barracks now; but the room which Miss Florence Nightingale occupied while she was performing her mission of mercy to the wounded there is still preserved untouched, while her name is kept in affectionate remembrance by the sons of many whom she nursed back to life, or whose last hours she soothed with womanly ministering. As I looked out upon the landscape, I saw it set in the clear atmosphere of Southern Europe, so that every separate minaret stood sharply out and the marble domes of St. Sophia glistened in the bright sunlight.

All is warmth and colour, life and brightness, in Stamboul by day. By night, however, the difference is appalling. The streets were never lighted, and people were not supposed to be out after nine o'clock. If one went out at all, one went at one's own risk, and took the chance of attack by any of the thousands of stray dogs that prowl at will about the city and camp undisturbed in the streets. To one who had been accustomed to Paris and Vienna, where it is never night in this sense, where gas and arc lamps form an admirable substitute for sunlight, and where the patter of feet on the trottoirs and the hum of human life in the cafés are practically ceaseless, the sensation of wandering through these dark, deserted streets among hordes of starving curs was a strange one. By day Constantinople is modern, pulsating, alive. By night, with those dogs about, it is like one of those deserted cities of a long forgotten civilization, in which Briton Rivière shows us the panther and the tiger that have taken the place of man.

During my stay in Stamboul I often walked through the bazaars, where solemn old Turks in baggy breeches sought to swindle me with polite decorum, and where the whole atmosphere breathed of the Arabian Nights. One half expected to see Prince Camaralzaman come swaggering down the street, with his scimitar clanking on the pavement behind him; or Amina or Zobeide, heavily veiled, and with only her dark eyes showing through the yashmak's folds, slide past demurely with a sidelong glance at the stranger from the West.

The population of Constantinople do not believe in overwork; and for business purposes there are practically three Sundays in the week—namely, the Turkish Sunday, which falls on our Friday; the Jewish Sunday, which falls on Saturday; and the Christian Sunday. I went out one day to the "Sweet Waters," a favourite picnic place near the head of the Golden Horn, where the Turkish women and children enjoy their holiday under the trees, and the real Turkey lolly-men drive a thriving trade in sweetmeats and sherbet. It was curious to note how the veneer of Western social routine was superimposed upon the changeless institutions of the East. I saw the ladies from the harems of sundry wealthy Turkish gentlemen driving out to "Sweet Waters" in the afternoon in carriages as perfectly appointed as any that roll through Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne in the height of the London or Paris season. Two ladies from one harem generally occupied one carriage; and the gigantic eunuch on the box, who was responsible for them while they were out under his charge, would use his London carriage whip without hesitation on the heads and shoulders of any young Turkish or Giaour mashers who attempted to make eyes at the closely guarded beauties.

I spent many a pleasant hour too in the long, narrow caïques that plied for hire on the waters of the Golden Horn like the gondolas of Venice; but I still had much to see when, after a week's stay, an official communication was