style.  The men wear the European dress, often surmounted by the red fez:  the women dress in an insane imitation of French fashions, and glitter with jewelry—­a passion with Eastern women of all races and creeds.  Frequently a woman carries her whole fortune and her husband’s in these ornaments, which, in a country where the difference between meum and tuum is so little observed by persons in authority, is regarded as the safest mode of investment.

The European Sweet Waters are rather more dull and less interesting than the Asiatic, owing to the causes already described, nor is compensation to be found in the superior beauty of the women; for, as a general rule, the Greek men are better looking than the women; and the intercourse between the sexes is regulated on the Eastern plan to a very great extent, though there is not the same absolute prohibition, nor the same peril attendant on the attempt to open an acquaintance.  In all Eastern countries, however, the position and treatment of woman are modified by the prevailing prejudice, which places her on a much lower level than the man, and deprives her of most of the cherished privileges of her more favored Western sisters.  If the Turk has failed in forcing his religious faith on his Christian vassals, he has succeeded in fixing the social status of their women on much the same basis as his own.

The day selected for visiting the European Sweet Waters by the native or Greek population is either Sunday or on the festival of some one of the many saints whose names are legion in the Greek calendar.  Never was there a people so fond of holidays, or who take them oftener under religious pretexts.  Yet they celebrate them in anything but a pious manner.  Their fasts are much fewer and not so punctiliously observed.

As the restriction on intoxicating beverages is not such a cardinal article of faith at the European as at the Asiatic Sweet Waters, that element enters into the diversions at the former place, to the frequent scandal of the decorous and abstemious Turks.  The fiery wines of Sicily and the Greek islands are freely indulged in, and tipsy cavaliers, caracoling on the hacks of Pera and Galata, are not infrequent accessories, aggravating the danger and discomfort to the stranger of the return in carriage or on horseback.  The roughness of the road, its heat and dust, are bad enough; but to aggravate these discomforts you have a crowd of hacks and a swarm of cavaliers pursuing the same route, with all the collisions inevitable from unskillful coachmen and tipsy riders.  It is a long, dreary drive too, with no scenery worth looking at on the route, even could you discern it through the dense clouds of dust which envelop you from its commencement to its close.  When you reach your hotel you take a bath to refresh yourself, and go down to supper, exclaiming with a sigh of relief, “Well, thank Heaven!  I have seen the Sweet Waters!”

EDWIN DE LEON.