The dogs are curious animals. It is probable that civilization does as much injury to the lower tribes of creation, as it does good to man. If it polishes our faculties, it enfeebles their instincts. The Turkish dog, living nearly as he would have done in the wilderness, exhibits the same sagacity, amounting to something of government. For instance, the Turkish dogs divide the capital into quarters, and each set has its own; if an adventurous or an ambitious dog enters the quarters of his neighbours, the whole pack in possession set upon him at once, and he is expelled by hue and cry. They also know how to conduct themselves according to times and seasons. In the daytime, they ramble about, and suffer themselves to be kicked with impunity; but at night the case is different: they are the majority--they know their strength, and insist on their privileges. They howl and growl then at their own discretion, fly at the accidental stranger with open mouth, attack him singly, charge him _en masse_, and nothing but a stout bludgeon, wielded by a strong arm, can save the passenger from feeling that he is in the kingdom of his four-footed masters.
The Marquis arrived during the Ramazan, when no Turk eats, drinks, or even smokes, from sunrise to sunset. Thus the Turk is a harder faster than the papist. The moment the sun goes down, the Turk rushes to his meal and his pipe, "not eating but devouring, not inhaling but wallowing in smoke." At the Bajazet colonnade, where the principal Turks rush to enjoy the night, the lighted coffee-houses, the varieties of costume, the eager crowd, and the illumination of myriads of paper lanterns, make a scene that revives the memory of Oriental tales.
Every thing in Turkey is unlike any thing in Europe. In the bazar, instead of the rapid sale and dismissal in our places of traffic, the Turkish dealer, in any case of value, invites his applicant into his shop, makes him sit down, gives him a pipe, smokes him into familiarity--hands him a cup of coffee, and drinks him into confidence; in short, treats him as if they were a pair of ambassadors appointed to dine and bribe each other--converses with, and cheats him.
But the Marquis regards the bazars as contemptible places, says that they are not to be compared with similar establishments at Petersburg or Moscow, and recommends whatever purchases are made, to be made at one's own quarters, "where you escape being jostled, harangued, smoked, and poisoned with insufferable smells."
