'This is how I concluded the first day of my reviews. Returning home, I sat all evening on my balcony, in front of my mother-in-law, smoking tobacco, enjoying the views, the goodness of the air, and getting lost in dreams and thoughts of all kinds, until it was time to go to bed.
For the first time I entered the interior of the city through the Baluk-Bazarsyu gate. It must be said that the first glance at it is not attractive: the capital of Great Constantine barely seems like a 14% city; it shows, on the contrary, several different settlements scattered along the seashore and over many hills, battered buildings, houses painted in all colors, vast wastelands between them, where the remains of charred houses are visible, hundreds of trees in the middle of the most populated quarters, mosques everywhere, with their domes in Arabic style, and minarets rising to the sky on near the air columns; behind the walls there are cemetery cypress trees surrounding the city with a grave belt: this is what first strikes the eye. In the middle of this picture, the Golden Horn, or pier, like the sea flows into the middle of the city, touches its main parts and serves for communication between them, 'There, thousands of boats glide in their directions and cover the pier. Further, there are many masts, and between them there are battleships with the Flags of the Ottoman Porte; finally Flags of all lands. In the city you see narrow and dark streets, broken and dirty pavements, unclean shops, poorly furnished houses. In a word, Constantinople close up disappoints the viewer; It is necessary to look at it from a height, from afar. He presents wonderful prospects, and each of them is like a hope moving away from us into the future, as we move closer to it.