I cannot now write
copiously; I have only time to tell you that I have passed many a
fatiguing, but never a tedious moment; and all that I am afraid of is
that I shall contract a gipsylike wandering disposition, which will
make home tiresome to me: this, I am told, is very common with men in
the habit of peregrination, and, indeed, I feel it so. On the third of
May I swam from _Sestos_ to _Abydos_. You know the story of Leander,
but I had no _Hero_ to receive me at landing.
"I have been in all the principal mosques by the virtue of a firman:
this is a favour rarely permitted to infidels, but the ambassador's
departure obtained it for us. I have been up the Bosphorus into the
Black Sea, round the walls of the city, and, indeed, I know more of it
by sight than I do of London. I hope to amuse you some winter's
evening with the details, but at present you must excuse me;--I am not
able to write long letters in June. I return to spend my summer in
Greece.
"F. is a poor creature, and requires comforts that I can dispense
with. He is very sick of his travels, but you must not believe his
account of the country. He sighs for ale, and idleness, and a wife,
and the devil knows what besides. I have not been disappointed or
disgusted. I have lived with the highest and the lowest. I have been
for days in a Pacha's palace, and have passed many a night in a
cowhouse, and I find the people inoffensive and kind. I have also
passed some time with the principal Greeks in the Morea and Livadia,
and, though inferior to the Turks, they are better than the Spaniards,
who, in their turn, excel the Portuguese.
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