Passing from the quay through a highly ornamented Gothic gateway, we ascended the famous historic street, still called the Street of the Knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of earthquakes and the devastation of Saracenic and Turkish occupation. At this hour the street was as deserted as it was three centuries and a half ago, when the Knights sorrowfully sailed out of the harbor in search of a new home. Their four months' defence of the city., against the overwhelming force of Suleiman the Magnificent, added a new lustre to their valor, and extorted the admiration of the victor and the most honorable terms of surrender. With them departed the prosperity of Rhodes. This street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab balconies, but the façades are gray with age. All along are remains of carved windows. Gothic sculptured doorways, and shields and coats of arms, crosses and armorial legends, are set in the walls, partially defaced by time and accident; for the Moslems, apparently inheriting the respect of Suleiman for the Knights, have spared the mementos of their faith and prowess. I saw no inscriptions that are intact, but made out upon one shield the words voluntas mei est. The carving is all beautiful.
We went through the silent streets, waking only echoes of the past, out to the ruins of the once elegant church of St. John, which was shaken down by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and utterly flattened by an earthquake some years afterwards. Outside the ramparts we met, and saluted frith the freedom of travellers, a gorgeous Turk who was taking the morning air, and whom our guide in bated breath said was the governor. In this part of the town is the Mosque of Suleiman; in the portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving, remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to come and cook their food; it is in decay now, and the rooks were sailing about its old round-topped chimneys.