It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy breed of curs, in such extraordinary numbers. They have a whimsical punishment for killing one of them. The dead dog is hung by his heels, so that his nose just touches the ground, and the _canicide_ is compelled to heap wheat about him, till he is entirely covered; the wheat is then given to the poor, and the dog buried at the expense of the culprit. There are probably five dogs to every man in Constantinople, and besides their incessant barking, they often endanger the lives of children and strangers. MacFarlane, I think, tells the story of a drunken sea-captain, who was entirely devoured by the dogs at Tophana; nothing being found of him in the morning but his “indigestible pig-tail!”
We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found the majestic plane-trees that shadow its arabesque fountains, bending beneath the weight of hundreds of pensionary pigeons. Here, as at several of the mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose business it is to expend the alms given him in distributing grain to these sacred birds. Not to be outdone in piety, my friend gave the blind Turk a piastre; and, as he arose and unlocked the box beneath him, the pigeons descended about us in such a cloud, as literally to darken the air. Handful after handful was then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures ran over our feet and fluttered round us with a fearlessness that sufficiently proved the safety in which they haunted the sacred precincts. In a few minutes they soared altogether again to the trees, and their Mussulman-feeder resumed his seat upon the box to wait for another charity.
A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear of the seraskier’s palace, attracted our attention. Upon inquiry, we found that he had married a daughter to one of the sultan’s military officers, and the bridal party was expected presently to come out in arubas, and make the tour of the Hippodrome, on the way to the house of the bridegroom. We wiled away an hour returning the gaze of curiosity bent upon us from the idle and bright eyes of a hundred women, and the first of the gilded vehicles made its appearance; though in the same style of ornament with the one I have already described, it differed in being drawn by horses, and having a frame top, with small round mirrors set in the corners. Within sat four very young women, one of whom was the bride; but which, we found no one who could tell us. It is no description of a face in the East to say, that the eyes were dark, and the nose regular—all that the jealous yashmack permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride. Their eyes are _all_ dark, and their noses are _all_ regular; the Turkish nose differing from the Grecian, as that of the Antinous from the Apollo, only in its more voluptuous fulness, and a nostril less dilated. Four darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of whiter orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those golden-rimmed mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding arubas rattled by, and in each suite four young women, with the same eternal dark eyes, “full of sleep,” and the same curved and pearly forehead, and noses like the Antinous, I thought of _toujours perdrix_, and felt that if there had been but _one_ with a slight toss in that prominent member, it would not have been displeasing.