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Immediately below, and stretching away to right and left, were the curving shores of Europe, with the villas and palaces of Buyukderer held between the blue sea and the tree-covered heights of Kabatash; the park of the Russian Palace, the summer home of Russia's representative at the Sublime Porte, gardens of many rich merchants of Constantinople and of Turkish, Greek and Armenian magnates, and the fertile and well-watered country extending to Therapia, Stania and Bebek on the one hand, and to Rumili Kavak, with the great Belgrad forest behind it, and to Rumili Fanar, where the Bosporus flows into the Black Sea, on the other.
Between Fanar, the last northern point of lookout over the Black Sea, and Galata, down on the Golden Horn, there are about thirty hamlets, villages and cities specking the European shore of the Bosphorus. Each of them has its settlement of fishermen. Aside from a voluminous net, the prime necessity for successful pursuit of the ancient and honorable calling is a boat.
Across its tranquil waters, and the waters beaten up into waves by the winds from the Black Sea, rose the shores of Asia, Beikos, Anadoli Kavak, Anadoli Fanar, with lines of hills and the Giant's Mountain.
By midnight the settlements and farmhouses of the up-country were abandoned; almost the entire district from Galata to Fanar on the Black Sea was reduced to ashes. The Greek Emperor had no longer a frontier or a province all that remained to him was his capital.
The Greek smiled pleasantly and reflected that the nobility of the Fanar, which goes back to the Byzantine Empire, is as good as any in France, and even less virtuous.
"Judged by our catches the year through, and the prices we get in the market, O Princess, it is not boasting to say our betters cannot be found, though you search both shores between Fanar and the Isles of the Princes." This was too much for the bystanders. The presence they were in was not sufficient to restrain an outburst of derision. "But the conditions of the race shut you out.
"The Giaours already see the tents of the foreign hosts pitched on the Tsiragan piazza, already see the half-moon cast down, and the double cross raised on the towers of the mosques, the khanzé plundered, and the faithful led forth to execution. In the Fanar quarters they are already assembling the people, and saying to one another: 'To-morrow! to-morrow!
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