Not being able to spare the time for visiting all the objects of interest enumerated by the guide, I elect to see the howling dervishes as the most interesting among them.  Accordingly we take the ferry-boat across to Scutari on Thursday afternoon in time to visit the English cemetery before the dervishes begin their peculiar services.  We pass through one of the largest Mussulman cemeteries of Constantinople, a bewildering area of tombstones beneath a grove of dark cypresses, so crowded and disorderly that the oldest gravestones seem to have been pushed down, or on one side, to make room for others of a later generation, and these again for still others.  In happy comparison to the disordered area of crowded tombstones in the Mohammedan graveyard is the English cemetery, where the soldiers who died at the Scutari hospital during the Crimean war were buried, and the English residents of Constantinople now bury their dead.  The situation of the English cemetery is a charming spot, on a sloping bluff, washed by the waters of the Bosphorus, where the requiem of the murmuring waves is perpetually sung for the brave fellows interred there.  An Englishman has charge; and after being in Turkey a month it is really quite refreshing to visit this cemetery, and note the scrupulous neatness of the grounds.  The keeper must be industry personified, for he scarcely permits a dead leaf to escape his notice; and the four angels beaming down upon the grounds from the national monument erected by England, in memory of the Crimean heroes, were they real visitors from the better land, could doubtless give a good account of his stewardship.

The howling dervishes have already begun to howl as we open the portals leading into their place of worship by the influence of a cherik placed in the open palm of a sable eunuch at the door; but it is only the overture, for it is half an hour later when the interesting part of the programme begins.  The first hour seems to be devoted to preliminary meditations and comparatively quiet ceremonies; but the cruel-looking instruments of self-flagellation hanging on the wall, and a choice and complete assortment of drums and other noise-producing but unmelodious instruments, remind the visitor that he is in the presence of a peculiar people.  Sheepskin mats almost cover the floor of the room, which is kept scrupulously clean, presumably to guard against the worshippers soiling their lips whenever they kiss the floor, a ceremony which they perform quite frequently during the first hour; and everyone who presumes to tread within that holy precinct removes his over-shoes, if he is wearing any, otherwise he enters in his stockings.  At five o’clock the excitement begins; thirty or forty men are ranged around one end of the room, bowing themselves about most violently, and keeping time to the movements of their bodies with shouts of “Allah.  Allah.” and then branching off into a howling chorus of Mussulman supplications,