When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed. 
So well had they broken a lingering fast,
With those who had fallen for that night’s repast. 
And Alp knew by the turbans that rolled on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band. 
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,
All the rest was shaven and bare. 
The scalps were in the wild dogs’ maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw. 
But close by the shore on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,
Who had stolen from the hills but kept away,
Scared by the dogs from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Pick’d by the birds on the sands of the bay.

This hideous picture is a striking instance of the uses to which imaginative power may turn the slightest hint, and of horror augmented till it reach that extreme point at which the ridiculous commences.  The whole compass of English poetry affords no parallel to this passage.  It even exceeds the celebrated catalogue of dreadful things on the sacramental table in Tam O’ Shanter.  It is true, that the revolting circumstances described by Byron are less sublime in their associations than those of Burns, being mere visible images, unconnected with ideas of guilt, and unlike

The knife a father’s throat had mangled,
Which his ain son of life bereft: 
The gray hairs yet stuck to the heft.

Nor is there in the vivid group of the vulture flapping the wolf, any accessory to rouse stronger emotions, than those which are associated with the sight of energy and courage, while the covert insinuation, that the bird is actuated by some instigation of retribution in pursuing the wolf for having run away with the bone, approaches the very point and line where the horrible merges in the ludicrous.  The whole passage is fearfully distinct, and though in its circumstances, as the poet himself says, “sickening,” is yet an amazing display of poetical power and high invention.

The frigate sent the travellers on shore at Tophana, from which the road ascends to Pera.  Near this landing-place is a large fountain, and around it a public stand of horses ready saddled, attended by boys.  On some of these Lord Byron and his friend, with the officers who had accompanied them, mounted and rode up the steep hill, to the principal Frank Hotel, in Pera, where they intended to lodge.  In the course of the ride their attention was attracted to the prodigious number of masterless dogs which lounge and lurk about the corners of the streets; a nuisance both dangerous and disagreeable, but which the Turks not only tolerate but protect.  It is no uncommon thing to see a litter of puppies with their mother nestled in a mat placed on purpose for them in a nook by some charitable Mussulman of the neighbourhood; for notwithstanding their merciless military practices, the Turks are pitiful-hearted Titans to dumb animals and slaves.  Constantinople has, however, been so often and so well described, that it is unnecessary to notice its different objects of curiosity here, except in so far as they have been contributory to the stores of the poet.