No unfrequent occurrence in Constantinople

Several years ago, delay in the payment of salaries, no unfrequent occurrence in Constantinople, caused great suffering among the humbler employees of the Government Other methods of redress having failed, the aggrieved parties betook themselves to the weapon of female force. Accordingly, a large body of women, mostly the wives of the poor men, but including professional female agitators, invaded the offices of the Minister of Finance. They filled every corridor, swarmed upon every stairway, blocked every door they could find, and made the building resound with lamentations and clamours for payment.

The Minister managed to escape by a back entrance. But the women would not budge. It was vain to call in the police or soldiers to intervene. The indecorum of a public application of force in dealing with the women would have created too great a scandal, and so the authorities bowed before “ the might of weakness,” and made the best terms they could induce the victors to accept A more recent experience of the power of Turkish women to interfere, in spite of their seclusion, with the affairs of the outer world, may be added. The owners of a piece of land adjoining a Turkish village on the Bosporus decided to enclose their property with a substantial wall of stone and mortar.

Villagers very naturally regretted

As the ground had long been a pleasant resort for the women and children of the village, especially on Fridays, where sitting on the ground under the shade of trees they enjoyed the fresh air and the beautiful views on every side, the villagers very naturally regretted the loss which the erection of the wall would involve, and they determined to prevent the execution of the work to the utmost of their power. The opposition first assumed a legal form. It was urged that the wall would interfere with the water-course which supplied the village fountain, and furthermore, would include a piece of land belonging to the community. Both objections were shown to be without foundation, and building operations were begun. No difficulties were raised until the wall approached the fountain and the land in dispute, when it became evident that if the work proceeded farther the opposition would resort to violent measures.

Bridge to the Golden Gate

Nowhere, perhaps, is the mark of change more evident than in respect to the means of communication, whether in the city or on the straits. Long lines of tramways run from the Galata Bridge to the Golden Gate and the Gate of S. Romanus, from one end of Stamboul to the other. Along the railway that forms the highway to Europe, there are five stations within the city limits for the accommodation of the districts beside the track.

The sedan chairs in which ladies were usually carried, in making calls, are now occasionally employed to convey them to and from evening parties. The groups of horses standing at convenient points in the great thoroughfares to carry you up a street of steps or to a distant quarter, with the surudji, switch in hand, running beside you to Urge the animal onward and to take it back at the close of your ride, have given way to cabstands, and to a tunnel that pierces the hill of Galata. A tramway carries one through Galata and Pera as far out as the suburb of Chichli, while another line runs close to the shore from the Inner Bridge to Ortakeui.

Villages of Therapia

There are persons still living who remember the first steamer that plied on the Bosporus, in the forties of last century. Its main occupation was to tug ships up or down the straits; but once a day, in summer, it conveyed passengers between the city and the villages of Therapia and Buyukderd A second steamer soon followed, and charged eleven piasters for the trip each way. Owing, however, to the opposition of the caiquedjis, the steamer could not moor at the quay, so that passengers were obliged to embark and disembark at both ends of the journey in caiques, at the rate of one piaster each way. Thus a return trip, which now costs one shilling and eight pence, involved an expense of four shillings and four pence.

No one, of course, undervalues the advantages of steam navigation, or suggests a return to sailing ships. At the same time it remains true, that never again will men see the Bosporus so beautiful as it looked in days when its waters were untroubled by steam. Owing to the prevalence of northerly winds in these regions, ships bound for the Black Sea were liable to long detention on their way up from the Mediterranean. Great fleets of merchantmen were accordingly apt to collect in the Dardanelles and in the Golden Horn, waiting for a favourable breeze.

Numerous churches adorned the city

What does cause surprise, however, is that so few of the numerous churches which once adorned the city, and embodied the piety of its people, have left one stone standing upon another to recall their existence. At most, thirty-five remain, and of these several of them are so dilapidated that they only serve for the identification of an interesting site, or to emphasise the vanity of earthly things.

Of course all the churches of the city were never contemporaneous. In a city which had a life of more then eleven centuries, the list of almost any class of edifices erected in the course of that period would necessarily be a long one, without implying the existence of numerous edifices of that class at one and the same time. According to the description of Constantinople which dates from the first quarter of the fifth century, the number of churches then in the city is given as only fourteen.

Churches appeared and disappeared, and while some of them were, for special reasons, maintained throughout the whole course of the city’s history, many came to flourish for a while and then decayed in the ordinary course of things, bequeathing as their memorial only the withered leaves of their names.

Constantinople during the Middle Ages

Then we must remember the frequent and disastrous earthquakes which shook the soil of Constantinople during the Middle Ages, and the terrible conflagrations which again and again reduced the wealth and glory and beauty of extensive tracts of the city to dust and ashes. For example: the three fires associated with the capture of the city by the Latins in 1208-1204 inflicted a blow from which the city never recovered. One of those fires raged for a night and a day; another for two days and two nights, with the result that almost all the territory along the Golden Horn, as well as the territory extending thence to the Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmora, as far away as Vlanga, were turned into a wilderness of smoking ruins.