But these, with the pleasures and
displeasures of Constantinople,--the limit of our voyage,--I will pass
over, to the midsummer eve when, with all the arrangements for our
return voyage completed, we swung slowly out of the northern eddy of
the Golden Horn into the clear blue Bosphorus.
Already the lengthening shadows of a thousand domes and minarets
stretched across its waters, and glimpses of sunlight lay between them,
like golden clasps linking continent to continent. Around us were ships
and sailors from all parts of the habitable globe; while through shine
and shadow flitted boats and caiques innumerable, and except where
these, or the rising of a porpoise, or the dipping of a gull, broke
the surface of the water, it lay as smooth as a mirror, reflecting its
palace-guarded shores.
The men were lounging about the deck or leaning over the bulwarks,
listening to a neighboring crew chanting their vespers, while we
awaited the coming on board of our captain. Meanwhile the shadows crept
up the Asian hills, till the last sombre answering smile to the sun's
good-night faded from the cypress-trees above the graves of Scutari.
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