Отрывок из книги
William Stearns Davis
Published by Good Press, 2021
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Plato shifted the helm, hugging close to the walls of the palace, so that on the battlements above could be seen pacing the silver-armoured guardsmen of majesty. Then as the wind bore them around a fortified headland, suddenly there flashed forth a new vista. A long, deep inlet of the sea was revealed, its length again fading into the distance. On the left hand, as the coaster turned westward, the buildings of Constantinople (no longer restrained by walls) seemed crowding tier above tier down to the harbour’s edge. Brightly coloured wooden houses appeared, mingled with marble palaces. Everywhere waved foliage. There were even gleams of flowering gardens. Churches, columns, residences, public buildings, colossal statues, many-storied dwellings, all were thrown together in an astonishing disorder.
These were on the southern bank of the harbour, while on the northern apparently rose another city of innumerable black buildings and of labyrinthine lanes, backed in turn by a lofty ridge. This was crowned with yet more cypresses and gardens, and by masses of white houses with nobly wooded hills spreading out beyond the range of vision.
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