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.