The araba is entered by means of a small temporary ladder at the back. There is a conductor, or arabagee, who leads the oxen by a chain attached to their heads, and a yanashma, or boy, who walks by the side, and goads them on.
But many of the families are now to be seen in public, in European carriages, and they delight in excursions on the water in their beautiful cayiks.
Nature has been so lavish in her gifts to the land of the Osmanlis, that they have every temptation to linger for hours in some one of the many lovely spots which are to be found all along the Bosphorus.
Boghas-itchy or the Bosphorus, is the most magnificent stream in the world. Its winding way, its shores besprinkled with palaces, mosques and minaré's, in the peculiar picturesque style of the East; the gradually sloping hills, here and there studded with airy and pretty dwellings, and decked out in green array--all combine to enchant the eye and delight the mind.
There is nothing so exquisite as the cayiks of the Bosphorus. Their forms are as slender as the canoe's, and certainly more graceful than the gondola's, defying any other aquatic conveyance rowed by men. They are always propelled by long sculls of one, two, or three pair, fastened on the gunnels at about midships, to pins, by leather bands.
The hold is allotted to the accommodation of passengers; there you recline amid downy cushions, and noiselessly glide along, with the measured oars of the boatmen, who look like very sea-nymphs, in their snow-white robes.
By moonlight, the shores, with their latticed and irregular buildings, seem to be some fantastic realms in the distance; and the blue waters reflecting back the silvery stars, almost tempt one to plunge beneath their glassy surface. No wonder, then, that the Osmanlis should spend most of their time, when the summer sun cheers and invigorates, in loitering among such scenes as these.
The sultan has numerous kiosks of his own; on the most lofty summits of the hills, in the most sweetly embosomed valleys, by the margin of the briny sea, where wave after wave has "noiselessly rolled up the beach" ever since the waters which were above the firmament were divided from those below--in the midst of plains, by the roadside, and in the noisy populous streets of the metropolis, are these tasteful pleasure bowers ever to be met with, but carefully guarded from profane footsteps. Generally, however, in the spots thus consecrated by royal pleasure, are to be found coffee shops, and mats or low stools, for the accommodation of other classes of this nature-loving multitude, where at all times the most lovely groups of men, women, and children are collected.