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Nothing is mentioned about charges, and the uninitiated new arrival naturally wonders what kind of a place he has got into, when, upon offering what his experience in Western countries has taught him to consider a most liberal recompense, the guide shrugs his shoulders, and tells you that he guided a gentleman the same distance yesterday and the gentleman gave usually about double what you are offering, no matter whether it be one cherik or half a dozen.
After drinking a cup of coffee, I have had the kahuajee refuse to take any payment rather than change a cherik.
The howling dervishes have already begun to howl as we open the portals leading into their place of worship by the influence of a cherik placed in the open palm of a sable eunuch at the door; but it is only the overture, for it is half an hour later when the interesting part of the programme begins.
Prices for eatables are ridiculously low; I hand him a cherik for the supper; he beckons me out of the back door, and there, with none save ourselves to witness the transaction, he counts me out two piastres change, which left him ten centa for the supper.
Were he entertaining me in a private capacity he would feel injured at any hint of payment; but being a khan- jee, he opens the purse and extracts a cherik twenty cents.
The first named is a large silver coin worth four and a half francs; the cherik might be called a quarter dollar; while piastres and paras are tokens, the former about five cents and the latter requiring about nine to make one cent.
The usual percentage charged is, for changing a lira, eighty paras; thirty paras for a medjedie, and ten for a cherik, the percentage on this latter coin being about five per cent.
Constant watch and ward is kept over the city below by men snugly housed in quarters near the summit, who, in addition to their duties as watchmen, turn an honest cherik occasionally by supplying cups of coffee to Visitors. No fairer site ever greeted human vision than the prospect from the Tower of Saraka.
I take my departure in time to catch the six o'clock boat for Galata, well satisfied with the finest show I ever saw for a cherik.
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