Once on a time this gigantic fabric must have presented a magnificent appearance.

Now a miserable wooden staircase, lamentably out of repair, leads you down a flight of thirty or forty steps into the depths of one of these cisterns, the roof of which is supported by three hundred pillars.

This cistern is no longer filled with water, but serves as a workshop for silk- spinners.

The place seems almost as if it had been expressly built for such a purpose, as it receives light from above, and is cool in summer, and warm during the winter.

It is now impossible to penetrate into the lower stories, as they are either filled with earth or with water.
The aqueducts of Justinian and Valentinian are stupendous works.
They extend from Belgrade to the "Sweet Waters," a distance of about fourteen miles, and supply the whole of Constantinople with a sufficiency of water.
COFFEE-HOUSES--STORY-TELLERS.
Before I bade farewell to Constantinople for the present and betook me to Pera, I requested my guide to conduct me to a few coffee- houses, that I might have a new opportunity of observing the peculiar customs and mode of life of the Turks.