On the other bank of the Bosporus is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople.

This great city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover much more than half as much ground as New York City.

Seen from the anchorage or from a mile or so up the Bosporus, it is by far the handsomest city we have seen.

Its dense array of houses swells upward from the water's edge, and spreads over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that peep out here and there, the great globes of the mosques, and the countless minarets that meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis with the quaint Oriental aspect one dreams of when he reads books of eastern travel.
Constantinople makes a noble picture.
But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness.

From the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it.