HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Mesrour of Haroun Al Rasheed. I had picked | man would accept as a gift for a country resi

up a girl blacker than his mother. The bundle of shawls and silks was the mistress of the party, a little gem, if one could judge from her eyes, which sparkled with fun as she thanked us for rescuing her servants.

I take it she thanked us, though, to say truth, I paid little attention to what she said, as I bundled myself into the bottom of my own boat and we pulled back to the shore at Galata.

Time glided away rapidly in Constantinople. One day we rode on horseback to look at the triple walls that once guarded the northern side of Stamboul; another, we were in a caique pulling up the Bosphorus to the Giant's Mountain, where we could look out on the stormy Symplegades and the dark waves of the Euxine.

A delicious morning was that when we manned our large caique with six stout oarsmen and went up the Bosphorus to the old Genoese castle that stands tottering on the bank of the river it once commanded, a mournful relic of ancient grandeur.

dence unless with intent to pull it down and rebuild on the fine site some more graceful structure. The whole shore is lined with these old and decaying structures. Every thing here, in a falling and ruinous condition. Constantias in all other parts of the Turk's dominions, is nople has none of the melancholy grandeur of other Oriental cities. It has almost none of mosques tower above the low huts and bazars the relics of ancient wealth and power. of the city, through which, almost daily, fires sweep with uncontrolled fury. All looks mean, poor, decaying, and weak.

The

hands of a race of enterprising men the city Doubtless the end is not far distant. In the shores of the Bosphorus would gleam with marwould become the pride of the world, and the ble palaces.

prayer. It was Friday. It had been announced One morning we went to see the Sultan go to that he would pray at Scutari. He usually goes going to Scutari, must do so, as he crosses the to the mosque in his caique, and, of course, when river.

It would be a vain task for me to attempt the relation of one in a hundred of the points of interest in the history of the Bosphorus. old castle is a memorial of the days of Genoese water. This The new palace stands on the edge of the power on the Straits. In the fourteenth cen- parapet awaiting him. His boat lay at the side of the stone tury they commanded the passage and levied geous barge that floats on water, measuring, It was the most gorits tolls, building then the grand fortress that perhaps, a hundred feet in length, and gleamnow frowns in ruin over the swift stream. The imagination of travelers has been allow-canopy, was a sofa waiting his occupation. Foring with gold. In the stern, under a splendid ed full play in describing the beauties of the ty rowers, dressed in white, sat on the benches. Bosphorus. It has always been represented as A band of musicians stood outside the palace lined on both sides with palaces, and I had an- door, and, as it opened, a flourish of trumpets ticipations of splendor that were sadly disap-announced the coming of Abdul Medjid. He pointed. Probably most readers will be equally so when they learn that all these palaces of the great straits are wooden buildings, generally destitute of paint, and many of them in sadly ruinous condition. There is not a palace on the Bosphorus, excepting only the new palace of the Sultan, which an American gentle

advanced to the edge of the water with an easy, jaunty air, and then I was not more than ten yards from him, and had a full view of his face.

of countenance, dressed in a French uniformHe is a young man, with a mild expression blue coat and pantaloons. His collar was studded with diamonds.

GENOESE CASTLE ON THE BOSPHORUS.

This seems to be his favorite dress. I have seen it frequently described as his dress on court occasions. He wore the red tarbouche on his head, with black silk tassel, no more costly or elegant than my own. He stood a few minutes looking up at his new palace and around at his harbor, in which floated the great navies of England and France, his powerful allies. Was it pride or was it grief that I saw cross his countenance? A change there certainly was on it for the moment, and the next he caught my eye, and as I bowed low with my hand to my head, he returned the salutation as

AN AMERICAN IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

RUINED MOSQUE AT DIARBEKIE (AMIDA).

gracefully as a Parisian gentleman.

The next | of their royal liberality. Even mosaics of their instant he stepped lightly into his boat, and ev-day remain in churches and elsewhere in Italy, ery rower sprang upright on the bench before illustrating their renown. In the age that succeeded the decline of the him. The oars dipped, and the men fell back at full length, in perfect line, till they lay down Roman Empire the battles of the world were each with his head over the feet of the one be- fought on the Bosphorus. The crusaders pourPilgrims gathered their scollop hind him. Then they rose like puppets, and ed over it. again fell back. The boat sprang as if alive. shells on the banks of the Sea of Marmora. I never saw such motion through water. I have Power succeeded power on the throne of Byno doubt her speed excelled the swiftest steam-zantium, and the Greek emperors of the famcr. Before I had time to think, the magnifi-ily of Palæologus made the glory of the ancient cent barge vanished in a cloud of smoke from wane before the gorgeous splendor of their city a hundred guns that were discharged on board in the later centuries. the shipping. The whole scene was like a vision of the fabled splendor of the Arabian Nights, and was the most perfect realization of Oriental magnificence we had seen.

Then came the contests of the powers of southern Europe, and at last the Moslem, to tear down the Cross from Saint Sophia and place the Crescent in its place above the great church of Justinian.

I am writing no history, not even a skeleton of history. He who would read that must open Gibbon, and be overwhelmed with the strange story of the Bosphorus. I am but jotting down the thoughts that came into my brain as I floated down the Bosphorus one sunny afternoon, lying at full length in my caique, and balancing it against the weight of a friend who talked to me of the waning crescent.

There have been periods in the history of Constantinople around which the pen of the historian lingers with interest. The days of Constantine are first among these. The period succeeding him was one of wealth and renown, There are ivory dybut we know little of it. ptiches, carved as the illustrations represent, which indicate the profusion of wealth and the plenty which characterized a time when the Empire was attaining the glory which it had "Their mosques are falling," said he; "their under Justinian, and just before the building of Saint Sophia. These tablets represent Cle-strength is gone; their faith is failing. You and mentinus, who was consul of the East in A.D. I, if we live but to the ordinary period of men's 513, seated on a curule chair, with Rome on one lives, will see the Cross above Saint Sophia." Above Alas for my friend! Already he lies in the side and Constantinople on the other. him are his signet, his name, and the cross sur- dust, sleeping serenely under the shadow of the mounting all. The days of Justinian and The-great mosque at Amida on the Tigris. Lo! here odora are honored in the Oriental churches, it stands pictured, emblem of the crumbling rewhich preserve with jealous care the evidences ligion of the False Prophet.

LIVINGSTONE'S TRAVELS IN SOUTH | design of traversing this very region. If he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of Barth and Liv

AFRICA.* HESE two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entire-ingstone. ly revolutionize all our theories as to the geo- Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are graphical and physical character of Central Af- at present specially concerned, is no ordinary rica. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series small trader in Glasgow; set to work in a cotof basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil ton factory at ten years old; buying a Latin fertile even when compared with the abound-grammar with his first earnings; working from ing exuberance of our own Western valleys and prairies.

LIVINGSTONE'S TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

His purpose was to go to China as a medical slim, loose-jointed lad-he commenced the study of medicine and Greek, and afterward of missionary, and he would have accomplished theology, in the University of Glasgow, attend- his object solely by his own efforts had not some ing lectures in the winter, paying his expenses friends advised him to join the London Missionby working as a cotton-spinner during the sum-ary Society. He offered himself, with a half mer, without receiving a farthing of aid from hope that his application would be rejected, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to any one.

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HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

work his own way to become dependent in a supernumerary wives back to their friends-HOT
measure upon others.
empty-handed-and was baptized.

By the time when his medical and theological studies were completed, the Opium War had rendered it inexpedient to go to China, and his destination was fixed for Southern Africa.

since rendered famous by the hunting exploits Mr. Livingstone's station was in the region of Gordon Cumming. He vouches for the truth of the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable Nimrod, who visited him during each of his ex

He reached his field of labor in 1840. Hav-cursions. He himself, indeed, had an advening tarried for three months at the head station at Kuruman, and taken to wife a daughter of the well-known missionary Mr. Moffat, he pushed still farther into the country, and attached himself to the band of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, or 66 Alligators," a Bechuana tribe. Here, cutting himself for six months wholly off from all European society, he gained an insight into the language, laws, modes of life, and habits of the Bechuanas, which proved of incalculable advantage in all his subsequent intercourse with them.

ture with a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by Cumming or Andersson, the result of which was one dead lion, two Bechuanas fearfully wounded, his own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to splinters, and the formation of a false joint, which marred his shooting ever after. for the "King of Beasts." Mr. Livingstone has a republican contempt ter than an overgrown hulking dog, not a He is nothing, betmatch, in fair fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and

Sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. instructions. All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer It takes a keen ear to distinguish the

"Did your forefathers know of a future judg- twaddle. ment?" he asked.

'They knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the scenes of the last great day.

"You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things? They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going.'

"He

One

When he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. of natives approach him without fear. been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the discharges an arrow, the point of which has dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while the other flings his skin cloak over his head. The beast bolts away incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. In the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the will stay at home by night, and does not go out lion is an ugly enough customer; but if a man of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in Africa of being devoured by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an omnibus -so says Mr. Livingstone.

Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language, which he had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read, with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from the lack of his accustomed exercise. His great favorite was Isaiah. was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to able life. Unable to master the larger game, he When the lion grows old he leads a miserspeak," he was wont to say, using the very prowls about the villages in the hope of pickwords applied by the Glasgow Professor to the ing up a stray goat. Apostle Paul. Having become convinced of turing out at night does not then come amiss. A woman or child venthe truth of Christianity, he wished his people When the natives hear of one prowling about also to become Christians. "I will call them the villages, they say, "His teeth are worn; together," he said, "and with our rhinoceros- he will soon kill men," and thereupon turn out skin whips we will soon make them all believe to kill him. together." Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the common belief that when the lion has once This is the only foundation for the ill success of his worthy father in the mat-tasted human flesh he will eat nothing else. A ter of Wilberforce on "Practical Christianity," did not favor the proposed line of argument. to cannibalism to avoid starvation. "man-eater" is always an old lion, who takes He was, in fact, in no great haste to urge Se- lives far from human habitations, and so can When he chele to make a full profession of faith by re- not get goats or children, an old lion is often ceiving the ordinance of baptism; for the chief reduced to such straits as to be obliged to live had, in accordance with the customs of his peo- upon mice, and such small deer. ple, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, put away all except one. head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was in The the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other wives were the best scholars in the school. After a while Sechele took the matter into his own hands, sent his

Mr. Livingstone's strictly missionary life The family arose early, and, after prayers and among the Bakwains lasted eight or nine years. breakfast, went to the school-room, where men, women, and children were assembled. was over at eleven, when the husband set about School his work as gardener, smith, or carpenter, while his wife busied herself with domestic mattersbaking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill serving for an oven; churning butter in an