The villages by the water-side are so close together, that Pera may be said to extend from Tophane to the forts beyond Bujukdere. The residences of the pashas, the imperial palaces of the Sultan, and the retreats of opulence, lined these favoured shores; and as the stranger passes on, in steamer or caique, he may catch a view of some hoary pasha or ex-governor sitting cross-legged in his garden or verandah, smoking away, and each looking so like the other that they might all pass for brothers. The windows of one portion of these houses are mostly closely latticed and fastened, but here and there a bright flash of a yellow or red robe shows the harem is not untenanted. These dwellings succeed each other the whole length of the Bosphorus, quite as numerously as the houses on the road from Hyde Park Corner to Hammersmith; and at places such as Therapia and Bujukdere they are dense enough to form large villages, provided with hotels, shops, cafes, and lodging-houses. The Turks delight in going up in their caiques to some of these places, and sitting out on the platforms over the water, while the chibouque or narghile confers on them a zoophytic happiness; and the greatest object of Turkish ambition is to enjoy the pleasures of a kiosk on the Bosphorus. The waters abound in fish, and droves of porpoises and dolphins disport in myriads on its surface, plashing and playing about, as with easy roll they cleave their way against its rapid flood, or gambolling about in the plenitude of their strength and security, till a sword-fish takes a dig at them, and sets them off curvetting and snorting like sea-horses. Hawks, kites, buzzards, and sea eagles are numerous, and large flocks of a kind of gregarious petrel of a dusky hue, with whitish breasts, called by the French dmes da?nnees, which are believed never to rest, keep flying up and down close to the water.
Amidst such scenery the expeditionary flotilla began its voyage at eleven o'clock. It consisted of two steamers for staff officers and horses, seven steamers for troops and chargers, one for 300 pack horses, four sailing transports for horse artillery, and two transports for commissariat animals. Off Tophane, frigates, some of them double-banked, displayed the red flag with the silver crescent moon and star of the Ottoman Porte. They were lying idly at rest there, and might have been much better employed, if not at Kavarna Bay, certainly in cruising about the Greek Archipelago.
It was five o'clock ere the last steamer which had to wait for the transports got under weigh again, and night had set in before they reached the entrance of the Black Sea. As they passed the forts (which are pretty frequent towards the Euxine), the sentries yelled out strange challenges and burned blue lights, and blue lights answered from our vessels in return; so that at times the whole of the scene put one in mind of a grand fairy spectacle; and it did not require any great stretch of the imagination to believe that the trees were the work of Grieve — that Stanfield had dashed in the waters and ships — that the forts were of pasteboard, and the clouds of gauze lighted up by a property man — while those moustachioed soldiers, with red fez caps or tarbouches, eccentric blue coats and breeches, and white belts, might fairly pass for Surrey supernumeraries. Out went the blue lights! — we were all left as blind as owls at noontide; but our eyes recovered, the stars at last began to twinkle, two lights shone, or rather bleared hazily on either bow — they marked the opening of the Bosphorus into the Euxine. We shot past them, and a farewell challenge and another blue halo showed the sentries were wide-awake. We were in the Black Sea, and, lo! sea and sky and land were at once shut out from us! A fog, a drifting, clammy, nasty mist, bluish- white, and cold and raw, fell down upon us like a shroud, obscured the stars and all the lights of heaven, and stole with a slug-like pace down yard and mast and stays, stuck to the face and beard, rendered the deck dark as a graveyard, and forced us all down to a rubber and coffee. This was genuine Black Sea weather.
Later in the night we passed through a fleet which we took to be Turkish men-of-war, but it was impossible to make them out, and but for the blockade of their ports these vessels might have been Russians.* In the morning the same haze continued drifting about and hugging the land; but once it rose and disclosed a steamer in shore, with a transport cast off hovering about it, just as a hen watches a chicken. The Vesuvius fired a gun, and after some time the steamer managed to take the transport in tow again, and proceeded to rejoin the squadron. We subsequently found it was the MegcBra. The line of land was marked by a bank of white clouds, and the edge of the sea horizon was equally obscured.