Until within a few years, a visit to the mosques, especially the more sacred ones of St. Sophia and Sultan Achmed, was attended with much difficulty.  Miss Pardoe, according to her own account, risked her life in order to see the interior of St. Sophia, which she effected in the disguise of a Turkish Effendi.  I accomplished the same thing, a few days since, but without recourse to any such romantic expedient.  Mr. Brown, the interpreter of the Legation, procured a firman from the Grand Vizier, on behalf of the officers of the San Jacinto, and kindly invited me, with several other American and English travellers, to join the party.  During the month of Ramazan, no firmans are given, and as at this time there are few travellers in Constantinople, we should otherwise have been subjected to a heavy expense.  The cost of a firman, including backsheesh to the priests and doorkeepers, is 700 piastres (about $33).

We crossed the Golden Horn in caiques, and first visited the gardens and palaces on Seraglio Point.  The Sultan at present resides in his summer palace of Beshiktashe, on the Bosphorus, and only occupies the Serai Bornou, as it is called, during the winter months.  The Seraglio covers the extremity of the promontory on which Constantinople is built, and is nearly three miles in circuit.  The scattered buildings erected by different Sultans form in themselves a small city, whose domes and pointed turrets rise from amid groves of cypress and pine.  The sea-wall is lined with kiosks, from whose cushioned windows there are the loveliest views of the European and Asian shores.  The newer portion of the palace, where the Sultan now receives the ambassadors of foreign nations, shows the influence of European taste in its plan and decorations.  It is by no means remarkable for splendor, and suffers by contrast with many of the private houses in Damascus and Aleppo.  The building is of wood, the walls ornamented with detestable frescoes by modern Greek artists, and except a small but splendid collection of arms, and some wonderful specimens of Arabic chirography, there is nothing to interest the visitor.

In ascending to the ancient Seraglio, which was founded by Mahomet II., on the site of the palace of the Palaeologi, we passed the Column of Theodosius, a plain Corinthian shaft, about fifty feet high.  The Seraglio is now occupied entirely by the servants and guards, and the greater part of it shows a neglect amounting almost to dilapidation.  The Saracenic corridors surrounding its courts are supported by pillars of marble, granite, and porphyry, the spoils of the Christian capital.  We were allowed to walk about at leisure, and inspect the different compartments, except the library, which unfortunately was locked.  This library was for a long time supposed to contain many lost treasures of ancient literature—­among other things, the missing books of Livy—­but the recent researches of Logothetos, the Prince of Samos, prove