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

going to Scutari, I ordered my people to go on shore as soon as possible; for, during my reverie upon hospital duties, our good vessel had anchored. There was only room at Messerie’s Hotel for General Cannon and his aide-de-camp. He had bespoken his apartments. Two young gentlemen apprised us of the fact, and recommended their hotel, as we could not get accommodation at the “Hôtel d’Angleterre.” As I had a letter of introduction to Mr. Messerie, I directed my friend T. G. to call there and make inquiries; and if he found that we could not be received, to go to the “Hôtel des Ambassadeurs,” that establishment being the next in standing. As I promised to remain on board till he returned, I was left almost alone. There was only a lady and her maid. The former was going by a transport-ship the same evening, to join her husband at Balaklava; she therefore had no time to go on shore. Colonel St. George, Captains Ponsonby and Gordon, Mr. Ball, and General Canrobert’s aides-de-camp, and others, had all left. By this time the weather had assumed a most brilliant aspect--the morose and monotonous-looking clouds, which before monopolised the region in the immediate vicinity of the famed city of Mahomet, had been chased away by a strong breeze; the sun shed his golden rays in gorgeous streams from the purple vault of heaven, and the utmost depths of the lucid waters of the Bosphorus reflected his splendours. The entrance of the Corne d’Or--so called, no doubt, because it takes the shape of a horn of plenty--is in truth a Golden Horn, from the facilities it affords for maritime and commercial intercourse, as well as navigation, penetrating, as it does, into the very bosom of the imperial city. Constantinople, like London, has no quays; and on every side this immense metropolis plunges its feet, or banks, into the Bosphorus, from which it rises, offering to the view the most magnificent spectacle beneath the canopy of heaven. This is particularly the case from the Seraglio Point, where the real city of Istamboul is