Greatest wonders of the world (1906) (14789434453)

Identifier: greatestwonderso00sing (find matches)
Title: Greatest wonders of the world
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Singleton, Esther, d. 1930
Subjects: Curiosities and wonders Landscapes
Publisher: New York, The Christian Herald
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress



Text Appearing Before Image:
e so far to be disenchanted ? I did notwish to look at it any longer; however, the ceaseless tack-ings of the ship brought us sensibly nearer; we coastedalong the castle of the Seven Towers, an immense mediaevalgrey block, severe in construction, which faces the sea atthe angle of the Greek walls of the ancient Byzantium,and we came to anchor beneath the houses of Stamboul inthe Sea of Marmora, in the midst of a host of ships andboats delayed like ourselves from port by the violence ofthe north winds. It was five oclock, the sky was sereneand the sun brilliant; I began to recover from my disdainof Constantinople; the walls that enclosed this portion ofthe city picturesquely built of the debris of ancient wallsand surmounted by gardens, kiosks and little houses ofwood painted red, formed the foreground of the picture;above, the terraces of numerous houses rose in pyramid-like tiers, story upon story, cut across with the tops oforange-trees and the sharp, black spires of cypress; higher
Text Appearing After Image:
THE GOLDEN HORN 345 Still, seven or eight large mosques crowned the hill, and,flanked by their open-work minarets and their mauresquecolonnades, lifted into the sky their gilded domes, flamingwith the palpitating sunlight; the walls, painted with tenderblue, the leaden covers of the cupolas that encircled them,gave them the appearance and the transparent glaze ofmonuments of porcelain. The immemorial cypresses lendto these domes their motionless and sombre peaks; and thevarious tints of the painted houses of the city make thevast hill gay with all the colours of a flower-garden. Nonoise issues from the streets; no lattice of the innumerablewindows opens; no movement disturbs the habitation ofsuch a great multitude of men: everything seems to besleeping under the broiling sunlight; the gulf, furrowed inevery direction with sails of all forms and sizes, alone givessigns of life. Every moment we see vessels in full sail clearthe Golden Horn (the opening of the Bosphorus), the trueharbour