Occasionally one notices among the busy throngs a person wearing a turban of dark green; this distinguishing mark being the sole privilege of persons who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  All true Mussulmans are supposed to make this pilgrimage some time during their lives, either in person or by employing a substitute to go in their stead, wealthy pashas sometimes paying quite large sums to some imam or other holy person to go as their proxy, for the holier the substitute the greater is supposed to be the benefit to the person sending him.  Other persons are seen with turbans of a lighter shade of green than the returned Mecca pilgrims.  These are people related in some way to the reigning sovereign.

Constantinople has its peculiar attractions as the great centre of the Mohammedan world as represented in the person of the Sultan, and during the five hundred years of the Ottoman dominion here, almost every Sultan and great personage has left behind him some interesting reminder of the times in which he lived and the wonderful possibilities of unlimited wealth and power.  A stranger will scarcely show himself upon the streets ere he is discovered and accosted by a guide.  From long experience these men can readily distinguish a new arrival, and they seldom make a mistake regarding his nationality.  Their usual mode of self-introduction is to approach him, and ask if he is looking for the American consulate, or the English post-office, as the case may be, and if the stranger replies in the affirmative, to offer to show the way.  Nothing is mentioned about charges, and the uninitiated new arrival naturally wonders what kind of a place he has got into, when, upon offering what his experience in Western countries has taught him to consider a most liberal recompense, the guide shrugs his shoulders, and tells you that he guided a gentleman the same distance yesterday and the gentleman gave — usually about double what you are offering, no matter whether it be one cherik or half a dozen.  An afternoon ramble with a guide through Stamboul embraces the Museum of Antiquities, the St. Sophia Mosque, the Costume Museum, the thousand and one columns, the Tomb of Sultan Mahmoud, the world-renowned Stamboul Bazaar, the Pigeon Mosque, the Saraka Tower, and the Tomb of Sultan Suliman I. Passing over the Museum of Antiquities, which to the average observer is very similar to a dozen other institutions of the kind, the visitor very naturally approaches the portals of the St. Sophia Mosque with expectations enlivened by having already read wondrous accounts of its magnificence and unapproachable grandeur.  But, let one’s fancy riot as it will, there is small fear of being disappointed in the “finest mosque in Constantinople.”  At the door one either has to take off his shoes and go inside in stocking-feet, or, in addition to the entrance fee of two cheriks, “backsheesh” the attendant for the use of a pair of overslippers.  People with holes in their socks and young men wearing