[Illustration:  ENTERING A MOSQUE.]

We have been to see the Howling Dervishes, and I will endeavor to give you some idea of their performances.  Crossing to Scutari in the steam ferryboat, we walked some distance till we reached the mosque, where the services were just commencing.  The attendant who admitted us intimated that we must remove our boots and put on the slippers provided.  N——­ did so, but I objected, and the man was satisfied with my wearing them over my boots.  We were conducted up a steep, ladder-like staircase to a small gallery, with a low front only a foot high, with no seats but sheepskins on the floor, where we were expected to curl ourselves up in Turkish fashion.  Both my slippers came off during my climb up stairs, and were rescued in their downward career by N——­, who by dint of much shuffling managed to keep his on.  Below us were seated some thirty or forty dervishes.  The leader repeated portions of the Koran, in which exercise others occasionally took part in a quiet manner.  After a while they knelt in line opposite their leader and began to chant in louder tones, occasionally bowing forward full length.  Matters down below progressed slowly at first, and were getting monotonous.  One of my feet, unaccustomed to its novel position, had gone to sleep, and I was in a cramped state generally.  Moreover, we were not the sole occupants of the gallery:  the sheepskins were full of them, and I began to think that if the dervishes did not soon begin to howl, I should.  Some traveler has said that on the coast of Syria the Arabs have a proverb that the “sultan of fleas holds his court in Jaffa, and the grand vizier in Cairo.”  Certainly some very high dignitary of the realm presides over Constantinople, and makes his head-quarters in the mosque of the Howling Dervishes.

[Illustration:  CASTLE OF EUROPE, ON THE BOSPHORUS.]

The dervishes now stood up in line, taking hold of hands, and swayed backward, forward and sideways, with perfect uniformity, wildly chanting, or rather howling, verses of the Koran, and keeping time with their movements.  They commenced slowly, and increased the rapidity of their gymnastics as they became more excited and devout.  The whole performance lasted an hour or more, and at the end they naturally seemed quite exhausted.  Then little children were brought in, laid on the floor, and the head-dervish stepped on their bodies.  I suppose he stepped in such a manner as not to hurt them, as they did not utter a sound.  Perhaps the breath was so squeezed out of them that they could not.  One child was quite a baby, and on this he rested his foot lightly, leaning his weight on a man’s shoulder.  I could not find out exactly what this ceremony signified, but was told it was considered a cure for sickness, and also a preventive.