The superintendence of the monks

From the church, we traversed the court, in which were many fine goats; and a boy with a light iron collar round his neck—merely to show that he was a culprit—was at work, under the superintendence of the monks. This appeared to me to be a far better road to reform than the prison at Constantinople. Then we went up stairs and along an open gallery, into which the cells opened. One of these had a divan round three sides of it, with a wooden press on the other : and this was all the furniture. The walls and ceiling were of wood, and none of it was painted. The windows commanded beautiful views of the entire island, or nearly so—the sea of Marmora, and the opposite coast of Scutari; but it must have been a sad lonely and exposed place in winter.

We took our seats on the divan, concerning which article, by the way, I may just allude to an odd contradiction in our language. We call a couch to sit or lie upon, a sofa; and by a divan wc generally mean a room appropriated to smoking; now, by a sofa the Turks mean a particular room, and their divan is a long soft settle to recline on. In a little time an elderly woman brought up some rakee and preserved quince; and afterwards coffee. Pipes were also offered to the guests; and then, contributing a trifle each to the box of the convent, we took our leave.

Different to that of the scowling priests

I am sure these monks were good creatures. They were evidently very poor indeed; but there was a cheerful courtesy about them, very pleasing; and the mild intelligence of their faces was very different to that of the scowling priests who haunt the Italian cities. This convent was their world: they seldom left it, and the casual arrival of strangers was possibly their greatest excitement; for, in reality, their position was far more lonely than that of the Great St. Bernard monks, who see as much and as varied company, during the “ season,” as a Rhine hotel-keeper. Europe had been rent by convulsions, and was still in the throes of fresh troubles, hut Prince’s Island was too much out of the way for any one to disturb its tranquillity ; and so the inmates of the old convents lived on, calmly enough, waiting for death, and if they knew no great joys, they had but few sorrows.

We had great excitement all the way down the hill. The descent was on smooth grass, and our saddles were not of a first-rate description, but kept slipping on to the donkeys’ necks ; and then we all went down together. This happened to each of us three or four times. The stirrups also were fastened to the same strap, which played loosely through the saddle; so that if you made too great an inclination on one side, without counteracting it, you came over that way. I never tumbled about so much as on that short journey; hut the grass was soft, and it made fun enough city tours istanbul.

We went to another convent, close to which was a covered wooden platform, like a steward’s stand at the races, only much lower. Here three or four handsome girls were dancing a polka to their own voices, and an old monk was looking on. As they saw us approach, they stopped, and flew off, like startled deer, into the adjoining woods. We sat with the priest a little time, and made him a present of some sweetmeats, which a travelling vendor passed with at that minute. He told us that the girls had come up from the village, and that it did him good to see them dancing.

I do not wonder at this.

Calling back their pretty faces,

I do not think there are many who would not also have felt considerably better from a glimpse of them.

We spent a pleasant idle day in the woods, and got back to the village between four and five, when its most novel and characteristic feature presented itself. The whole population had turned out, to walk about in their finest clothes, up and down the promenade in front of the wooden coffee-houses. All the seats and narghiles were engaged, as well in the cafes as on the sea-view platform opposite. Some of the people had evidently taken up their positions at an early hour, to have a good place: others formed little groups in the porticos; others flitted and vended about from one party to the other.