Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

to offer to his Sublime Majesty the Sultan, through the kind intercession of Lord de Redcliffe, to whom I had paid my humble duty, a complete set of my various culinary works, as well as my magic and model stoves. I established myself at the hotel, and, accompanied by a friend, and my Russian boy dressed _à la Cosaque_, proceeded to visit on horseback all the curiosities of the Mahomedan city. As I have already observed, though I frequently wished to inspect minutely the great metropolis of Constantine, my incessant duties never allowed me time for this: I therefore now devoted my leisure time to seeing Constantinople. I had fixed three weeks as the space requisite to visit in detail the wonders of that city. To do this, I engaged a dragoman of some intelligence, and requested him to conduct me to every place worthy of being seen, at the same time acquainting him that three weeks would be the utmost stay I should make in Constantinople. Having obtained a firman, or _passe-partout_, we were to be seen flying from palace to palace, mosque to mosque, bazaar to bazaar, kiosque to kiosque, hospital to hospital, cemetery to cemetery, prison to prison; from turning to howling dervishes, and from the Sweet Waters of Europe to those of Asia, and last, not least, to the Sultan’s kitchen, which to me was the only object of paramount interest. Almost every one attached to the army had left the banks of the Bosphorus and returned to England. Only now and then did one meet a British uniform in Pera. These were the officers of the Commissariat or the Turkish Contingent. Amongst the former were Commissaries Smith, Adams, Osborn, &c. The post-office and hospitals were given up: Therapia and Buyukderé alone could boast of possessing the tail of the British army and navy. General Storks was still on a visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; Sir Edmund Lyons was on board his splendid man-of-war, the _Royal Albert_, in the Bosphorus; Admiral Grey had left, and only a few acting naval men remained at the Admiralty.