The Bosphorus is about two miles broad; it is salt water, you
know, and leads from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea, which is
farther north. This narrow piece of water going westward out of the
Bosphorous is called the Golden Horn. Constantinople--which is built,
like Rome, on hills--rises above the shores of the Bosphorus and on both
sides of the Golden Horn. The part of it which is south of the Golden
Horn is called Stamboul, and is the especially Turkish Quarter. Across
the Golden Horn from Stamboul lies the Quarter called Galata--the
commercial port--and beyond that Pera--beautiful Pera!--the Quarter
where English people live when they live at Constantinople. North of
these are more suburbs, and then detached Turkish villages and gay
gardens dotting the banks of the Bosphorus."
"But you lived at Pera?"
"Yes, I lived at Pera; in a house looking into the Turkish cemetery."
"Was it nice, Cousin, like our churchyard? or do the Turks do horrid
things with their dead people, like those Chinese you told us about, who
put them in boxes high up in the air?"
"The Turks bury their dead as we do, my dear Maggie, and they plant
their graveyards with cypresses, which, standing tall and dark among the
headstones of the graves, have a very picturesque effect.
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