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36 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
goddess Hecate, daughter of the starry night sky, whom the
semi-barbarian Thracians worshipped.
Afterwards I took a walk in the Sultan’s beautiful park,
with its shady trees and quiet paths, so far from the noise of
the city ; and enjoyed the view from the terrace overlooking
the Golden Horn and the Bosporus while the sun sank in the
west. But the Sultan is no more, and Constantinople is no
longer the seat of the Khalif, the centre of power in Islam,
as once it was. A new generation is trying to make Asiatic
Turkey into a European state, while at the same time it wants
to retain the warlike customs of a conquering race. Tempora
tnutantur.
In the evening I saw a very different, modern aspect of this
world. We went to the restaurant Maxim, started and run
by a Russian negro from Moscow. There was music and
singing and dancing ; another feature was the striking propor
tion of Russian waitresses and, where suitable, ladies who
kept the guests company at table ; in the latter case they were
often very loud-voiced and merry. Many were of good
family. They had escaped and come here with WrangePs
army in 1921, and I had seen several of them when visiting
Constantinople three years ago. At that time they were
trying their best to get away before the Turkish Government
returned, but now they seemed quite settled down.
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