THE PEOPLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2877, 6 May 1878, Page 3

THE PEOPLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

The best place to realise the strange mixture of nationalities is on the lower bridge of boats which connects Stamboul with Galata, and from which the little steamers run up and down the Bosphorus. There are two such bridges crossing the Golden Horn, both somewhat rickety. The pontoons to form a new one have been made for some years, and are now floating beside the lower one, in the waters of the harbor, but, owing to a dispute between the government and the Frank contractors, they have never been put together, and may probably lie rotting there for years to come, perhaps till some *&w government is established in Stamboul. It is a delightfully Turkish way of doing things. This lower bridge is also the wharf whence start the little steameis that run up the Bosphorus and across to Scutari and Chalcedon, ott~ the Asiatic shore. Stalls for the sale of food and trinkets almost block up its ends, arid little Turkish newspapers, hardly bigger than a four-, page tract, are sold upon it, containing such news as the Porte" thinks proper to i issue. Take your stand upon it, and you see streaming over it an enilleas crowd of t every dress, tongue, and religion; fat old Turkish pashas lolling in their carriages, keen-faced wily Greeks, swarthy Armenians, easily distinguished by'their large - noses, Albanians with prodigious sashe| ; of purple silk tied round their waists^ ana glittering daggers and pistols tstuck air over them, Italian sailors, wild-eyed soldiers from the mountains of Asia Minor, Circassian beauties'peeping out of their carriages from behind their^ veils, and swarms of priests with red.^i white, or green turbans, Ihe green d\sj* tinguishing those who claim descent from* the Prophet. All these races have nothing to unite them; no"relations except those of trade with one another, no iutermarriage, no* common civic feeling, nocommon, patriotism. In Constantinople there is "neither municipal government nor public opinion. Nobody knows what the Sultan's ministers are doing, or what is happening at the scene of war. Everybody lives in a perpetual vague dread of everybody else. The Turks believe that the Christians are conspiring.with .Russia , to drive them out of Europe. The Christians believe that the Turks are only waiting for a signal to set upon and massacre them all. I thought these fears exaggerated; and though my friend and I were warned not to,venture alone into St. Sophia, or through Turkish quarters, we did both, and no man meddled with us. Indeed, I wandered alone in the streets of Stamboul at night, and met no worse enemies than the sleeping dogs. But the^fcjarms are quite real if the dangefs^are not; and one must .never forget that in these countries a. slight incident may provoke a massacre like that of Salonika. Imagine, if you can—you who live in a country where an occasional burglar is the worst.that ever need he feared —a city where one-half of the inhabitants are hourly expecting to be murdered by the other half, where the Christian native tells you in a whisper that every Turk carries a dagger ready for use. It is this equipoise of races, this mutnal jealousy and suspicion of the balanced elements, that makes it so difficult to frame a plan for the future disposal and government of the city.

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