Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
Steam ferryboats of the English kind were passing to and fro, and caïques flitted in and out with the dexterity and swiftness of sea-gulls. Quite a deputation of fez caps came on board to receive the bride and groom, and when we went ashore they were still smoking cigarettes and sipping at what must have been in the neighborhood of their twentieth cup of Turkish coffee.
In the aft part of this caique is the space allotted for the 'fare, a crimson-cushioned little divan in the bottom of the boat, in which two persons can lounge comfortably. The finish of the caique is often extraordinary finest fret-work and moulding, carved and modelled as for Cleopatra. The caiques of the Sultan are the richest boats in the world, and probably the most rapid and easy.
He saw bins and barrels and barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken oar.
The fleets of caiques bustling along the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look at: in Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry- boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed.
A large Drummond light on Seraglio Point, and another at the Battery of Tophaneh, poured their rival streams across the Golden Horn, revealing the thousands of caiques jostling each other from shore to shore, and the endless variety of gay costumes with which they were filled.
At the bottom, both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant to reach the Speranza, she being then safely anchored some distance up the Bosphorus coast.
All the open space next the water was filled up with the clumsy arabas, or carriages of the Turks, in which sat the wives of the Pashas and other dignitaries. We took a caique, and were soon pulled out into the midst of a multitude of other caiques, swarming all over the surface of the Golden Horn. The view from this point was strange, fantastic, yet inconceivably gorgeous.
We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in exhausting marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in caiques, we steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, and steered for a new land a new one to us, at least Asia.
We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in exhausting marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in caiques, we steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, and steered for a new land a new one to us, at least Asia.
We made haste to reach the landing-place, in order to avoid the crowd of caiques; but, although we were among the first, we came near being precipitated into the water, in the struggle to get ashore. The market-place at Tophaneh was so crowded that nothing but main force brought us through, and some of our party had their pockets picked.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking