Having seen the Sultan’s great City, mosques, ambers, sponges, perfumeries and beads, I am now passing the Custom House, on my way back to Greece.

In the front part of this vessel the cabin is all one, and whoever gets any kind of a berth is lucky, as the passengers are numerous. The beds or berths are one over the other, like our lake boats’ second class cabin. One berth is a little higher than the other, they are three stories, and one person has to climb over another to get in bed, and even then you are too close together. The second class passengers find their own bedding, and sleep upon deck, and we have some very rich Greecian families aboard, with their bedding and food, who sleep on deck. Yesterday we passed by Smyrna, and stopped and took aboard three beautiful Albanian girls. When you see a pile of old rubbish lying about on these Dardanelle boats, there is always some owner lying under it.

These Albanian girls were dressed very different from the Turkish girls, and the pretty ones are not veiled. They had on a very pretty costume, but over it they wore a very large and coarse cloak, composed of either camel’s hair, or wool of some ugly animal. They have a bonnet attached to it, that they can either throw back, or wear on their heads, and this cloak drags the ground. On board of our vessel was two young gentlemen from New York, trying to attract the attention of these Albanian girls, though they had their beaux with them. These young gents are very rich, their wholesale oil establishment, in New York, is said to do a business of millions of dollars per annum, and their names were Bridgers. They were seen to follow these beauties wherever they promenaded the deck, still they received no encouragement. Sometimes these girls would hide themselves in their winding sheet, and throw the bonnet part over their heads, and fall down upon the deck as singular and as natural as an apple from a tree, and then they would appear as a pile of rubbish of old sacks. At last the gay Messrs. Bridgers lost them, and they hunted in all directions, but could not find these fairies. They got tired hunting, and seated themselves to talk on some old piles of blankets and quilts, but before he got seated. I mean only one, he was thrown flat on his face by one of th............