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Updated: September 25, 2025
I am not long in finding English-speaking friends, to whom my journey across the two continents is not unknown, and who kindly direct me to the Chamber of Commerce Hotel, Eue Omar, Galata, a home-like establishment, kept by an English lady.
Perhaps Alexander had broken away without injury, and fled out into the streets of Stamboul. If so, he was in no common danger, for, utterly ignorant of the topography of the great city, he might as easily have gone towards the Seven Towers or to Aiwán Serai as to Galata bridge or Topkapussi, the Canon Gate at Serai point. There was still one hope left.
Galata is the business section of the city which includes the wharves, steamship offices, and wholesale establishments. Pera, situated on the heights above Galata, contains the residences of the wealthier class, as well as hotels, modern stores, and the residences of the ambassadors and consuls."
The most populous districts of Pera, of Galata, and of Stamboul are now disfigured by great areas of fire-blackened ruins reminders of the several terrible conflagrations from which the Turkish capital has suffered in recent years.
And though in this sorry business the Genoese seem to be less blameworthy than the rest of Christendom for they with but four galleys defeated the whole Turkish fleet Genoa suffered in the loss of Galata more than the rest, a fact certainly not lost upon Venice and Naples, who refused to move against the Turk, though the honour of Europe was pledged in that cause.
At the further end of this unique approach he placed a large gun; and so destructive was the bombardment thus opened that fire-ships were sent against the bridge and battery. But the Genoese of Galata betrayed the scheme, and it was baffled. The prisoners captured were hanged in view of the Greeks, and in retaliation Constantine exposed the heads of a hundred and sixty Turks from the wall.
He searched every street and alley; he interviewed the Bekjees, who stamp along the streets, pounding the pavement with their iron-shod clubs; he tramped out to the Taksim, and down again to Galata tower, plunging into the dark alleys about the Oriental Bank, skirting lower Pera to the Austrian embassy, and climbing up the narrow path between tall houses, till he was once more in the Grande Rue; crossing to the filthy quarters of Kassim Paschá and emerging at the German Lutheran church, crossing, recrossing, stumbling over gutters and up dirty back lanes, silent and determined still, addressing only the sturdy Kurd by his side to ask if there were any streets still unexplored, and entering every new by-path with new hope.
My good constitution was luckily proof against the attacks of all enemies, and waking the next morning, on March 24th, in tolerable health, I betook myself on board our new steamboat the Galata, of sixty-horse power: this boat did not, however, appear to me so tidy and neat as the Marianna, in which we had proceeded from Vienna to Pesth.
Come to revel in color; to sit for hours, following with reverent pencil the details of an architecture unrivalled on the globe; to watch the sun scale the hills of Scutari and shatter its lances against the fairy minarets of Stamboul; to catch the swing and plash of the rowers rounding their caiques by the bridge of Galata; to wander through bazaar and market, dotting down splashes of robe, turban, and sash; to rest for hours in cool tiled mosques, which in their very decay are sublime; to study a people whose rags are symphonies of color, and whose traditions and records breathe the sweetest poems of modern times.
On my way across the Galata Bridge to my quarters in Pera that same afternoon Joe followed until Yusuf had made his kotow and we had made ours, the three ending in a triple flight of fingers waited until the guard was well on his way back to the Pasha's office it was but a short way from the Stamboul end of the Galata and drawing me into one of the small cafes overlooking the waters of the Golden Horn, seated me at the far end near a window where we could talk without being overheard.
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