To every four or five blacks may be reckoned a mulatto, and it is
only here and there that a white man is to be seen.
This horrible picture is rendered still more revolting by the
frequent bodily infirmities which everywhere meet the eye: among
these elephantiasis, causing horrible club-feet, is especially
conspicuous; there is, too, no scarcity of persons afflicted with
blindness and other ills. Even the cats and dogs, that run about
the gutters in great numbers, partake of the universal ugliness:
most of them are covered with the mange, or are full of wounds and
sores. I should like to be endowed with the magic power of
transporting hither every traveller who starts back with affright
from the lanes of Constantinople, and asserts that the sight of the
interior of this city destroys the effect produced by it when viewed
at a distance.
It is true that the interior of Constantinople is exceedingly dirty,
and that the number of small houses, the narrow streets, the
unevenness of the pavement, the filthy dogs, etc., do not strike the
beholder as excessively picturesque; but then he soon comes upon
some magnificent edifice of the time of the Moors or Romans, some
wondrous mosque or majestic palace, and can continue his walk
through endless cemeteries and forests of dreamy cypresses.
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