Maritza and Tundsba. It is very fertile in grain. The city of Adrianople is situated in this sandshak. It was founded by the Emperor Adrian in a large and beautiful plain near the confluence of the Tundsha and the Arda. Its gilt minarets rising above groves of cypress and gardens of roses, its ornamented galleries and colonnades, its beautiful fountains and piazzas, give it a splendid appearance. Its population was recently estimated at 120,000 souls, one third were Turks; but the plague which broke out here in 1812 greatly reduced this number, and Madden, who visited it in 1828, estimates the population at only 90,000 souls. Its principal export is raw silk. It is 140 miles N.W. from Constantinople.-The town of Tchirmen has a population of about 2,000 souls.-Hermenli is a pretty little town on the Maritza chiefly inhabited by Bulgarians.-Jeni-Zaghra, which D'Anville confounds with Eski-Zaghra, contains about 1,300 souls. The Sandshak of Kirk-kilissa.] The counter-forts of the Strandsla intersect this district from N.E. to S.E. and terminate abruptly on the coasts of the Black Sea. A ramification of these heights, called Cheitan, incloses the country of the ancient Syrmiades. The town of Eski-Baba, in this sandshak has a population of 8,000 souls. Of the 40 churches which in the time of the Greek empire gave name to the city of Kirkkilissa, only one remains. The population amounts to 8,000 souls, chiefly Jews. The surrounding country is well-cultivated.-Ainada or Niada is a fortified town inhabited by about 3,000 Turks. Its port under cape Ainada, the Thynias promontorium of the ancients, is capable of receiving large vessels.-Sizeboli, the ancient Sozopolis, is situated on one of the promontories formed by the chain of Mount Cheitan, on the S. of the gulf of Bourgas. Geographers have confounded this town with that of Anchialle, which belongs to the sandshak of Silistria, and is situated on the opposite side of the gulf. Both these towns are well-fortified and protect the entrance of the gulf. The inhabitants of Sizeboli amount to 8,000 souls, chiefly Christians, and furnish the best pilots of the Black Sea. We may here remark that the cupidity of the Turkish pashas has thrown the geography of the sandshaks in some instances into inextricable confusion. After passing over many leagues of country we often meet with towns and districts which politically belong to the sandshaks we have already discussed; and this confusion is nowhere more remarkable than in this part of the country. A great portion of the southern declivities of the Hamus belong to the sandshak of Viza, although they are geographically situated in that of Kirk-kilissa. And again, at the southern extremity of this insulated portion of Viza, we find a small canton politically belonging to the sandshak of Silistria in Bulgaria.

The Sandshak of Viza.] This sandshak is the most mountainous and least fertile district of Thrace. It is divided by the Kutchuk-Balkan into two equal portions. The ancient Melinophagi inhabited the eastern district of this chain. Besides the metropolis of the empire, this sandshak contains the town of Indchiguis a little to the N.W. of Constantinople, chiefly inhabited by Bulgarians; Tchorlow to the W. of the Kutchuk-Balkan with a population chiefly Greeks; Caristaran with 3,500 inhabitants in the plains of Caristaran-Ovassi; Tchatal-Bourgas, on the great road to Constantinople, famous for its manufactories of the kind of pipe-bowls so highly prized by the Turks, called loules; Visa, the ancient residence of the kings of Thrace, under the western heights of Samakoska; and Serai, which now affords a tranquil habitation to the last descendants of the Khans of the Crimea.

TH

City of Constantinople.] Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman empire, situated in 41° 12′′ N. Lat. is placed at the extremity of a counterfort, that forms part of a chain of high hills, which, running along the shores of the Black Sea, of the Bosphorus, and of the Propontis, joins Mount Hamus at Rhodope. The formation of this counterfort on the south side is such that three-fourths of the houses of the city have a view of the sea. Some large ravines, deepened by the rain, serve as outlets to the waters of the fountains, and divide the irregular base on which this city is built into seven parts or hills, thus giving it a physical similitude to ancient Rome. Constantinople, founded by Byzas the leader of a Megarian colony, and formerly celebrated under the name of Byzantium, became more populous and more important as soon as Constantine, sensible of the immense advantages of its position, fixed his residence and the seat of the Roman empire here, in 330. This emperor gave it the name of New Rome, in order to make it a sharer in the glory and the advantages of the ancient mistress of the world. No one, however, called it any thing but Constantinople, or the city of Constantine;' and this appellation has been preserved to it by the Persians, by the Arabs, and even by the Turks, for, in the style of the Ottoman chancery, and upon the coin of the empire, this city is designated by the name of Constantiniah, although the Turks commonly call it Stamboul or Istamboul." The hills upon which this city is built,-the superb imperial mosques, surmounted by immense cupolas, and surrounded by lofty minarets, of which the chief occupy the most elevated points of this promontory,-the monuments of ancient art, the houses, painted in different colours, and interspersed with gardens, which are overtopped by cypress and other trees of perpetual verdure, the disposition of all the edifices in form of amphitheatres, the aspect of the harbour, animated by the presence of vessels of all sizes, and by thousands of gondolas,-lastly, the distant perspective of the country, covered with the richest vegetation,-present a coup-d'œil the most beautiful and the most imposing that is to be found in the whole universe. The plantain and cypress, in particular, give an oriental aspect to the environs of Constantinople. The mulberry, the mimosa of the Nile, the acacia, the Trebizond palm, the pine, and the fig-tree, beautifully intermingle, and diversify the enchanting scenery around this metropolis. From the northern side of the harbour, the eye traces the longitudinal expanse of the city. Towards the S. it discoves the Mysian Olympus clad in eternal snow, and, immediately opposed to it, the oak-clad Arganthonis. Immediately behind Scutari lies the double-peaked Damatus, from the summit of which, following the sinuous course of the Bosphorus from its very mouth, the view spreads across the thickly studded towers of Constantinople to the expanding plains of the Propontis, where it encounters the Marmoric isles, and thence stretches to the far-distant mouth of the Hellespont. The celebrated 'mountains of Giants' rises immediately from the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, near its uppermost narrowing, opposite to Berjukdere. But this physical appearance is like the moral aspect which the vast empire of which Constantinople is the capital presents. The traveller, struck by the great extent of the Ottoman empire and by the recollection of its glory, thinks that he is about to traverse one of the most rich and power. ful states in Europe; but, as soon as he has entered it, he sees nothing but weakness, disorder, anarchy, and all the symptoms of rapid decay.

This is a Romaic appellation, signifying the city.' It has another name halfTurkish and half-Romaic, namely, Islam-boul, or the city of the Faith.'

The magic of the aspect of Constantinople disappears in the same manner. The heart shrinks, a feeling of deep melancholy seizes on the soul of the traveller when, after having admired the exterior of this capital, which Nature has destined to be the queen of cities, he finds within it nothing but narrow, crooked, dirty, ill-paved streets,-houses of wood, of brick, and of mud, and covered with a deceptious cement,-large spaces strewn with the blackened ashes of conflagrations, and a multitude of men, whose grave and unquiet physiognomy announces the pride that has dominion over them, or the fears that invade them, and on whose countenance there is seldom to be perceived a smile, or that pleasing gaiety which characterises a contented and happy people.

Constantinople, situated opposite the southern extremity of the canal of the Bosphorus, the enclosure of which, between two parallel chains of hills, forces the air to follow the rapid movement of the waters, enjoys the double advantage of having its atmosphere continually renovated and refreshed, and its accumulations of waste and pluvial waters carried away by the currents, which precipitate themselves from the harbour into the sea of Marmora. A N. wind prevails from April to September, and is usually succeeded by a S. wind which blows during the winter. When the wind blows during the latter season from the E. or N.E., the neighbouring mountains occasionally appear covered with a slight sprinkling of snow. No marshy ground exists near this city. Its temperature, very mild, never presents cold of more than from 4 degrees to 5 degrees below 0 of the thermometer of Reaumur, nor heat of more than 26 degrees. The meteorologic variations it experiences in the course of the year are about 64 days rainy, 5 snowy, 5 wintry, 20 overcast, 36 variable, 15 stormy, and 220 perfectly serene. With all these meteorologic advantages, Constantinople ought to be ignorant of the plague, which-always most active in heavy and wet weather-owes probably its origin and its renewal, as many observations have proved, to the warm and marshy places in the environs of Damietta, in Lower Egypt, whence this scourge, less fatal than the yellow fever, because it is easy to restrain and avoid it, spreads itself throughout all the provinces of the Ottoman empire, particularly in Autumn and Spring. But the carelessness of the government, the dominion of fanaticism and of established usages, will preserve the germs of this destructive malady as long as this capital shall continue under its present yoke. Constantinople has been frequently devastated by the bursting of the sea over its bulwark. In 1322 its violence threw down a considerable portion of the city-walls; and twelve years afterwards the adjacent country presented one wide sheet of water for a distance of 10 stadia. Under Justinian the Great it had been previously inundated for a space of 15 miles. These excesses of nature were generally the effect of earthquakes, with which this city has been often visited, and of which none were so pregnant with calamity as that of 875, when the whole of Asia was shaken to its centre, and the promontory of Laodicea engulphed in the ocean.

The suburbs of Fenar or Phanar, and Eyoub or Eïoub, form part of Constantinople, and are only separated from it by the walls. Both are situated at the extremity of the harbour. Phanar was inhabited by the Patriarch and the principal Greek families, and by the numerous suite of domestics and dependents which were attached to them. Eyoub is peopled by Turks only, and it contains the famous mosque called by the same name, where the standard of the prophet is deposited, and whither the Ottoman