I was amusing myself with such fancies as these one morning at about five o’clock as I lay half asleep in bed at the HÔtel de Byzance. In a sort of dreamy vision I saw the hill of Superga in the distance, and began to explain to my travelling hanum that “that arm of the Lake of Como which extends southward between two continuous chains—” Just here there rose up before me the form of my friend Yunk, candle in hand, clad all in glistening white. “What on earth,” said he, “can be going on?” I listened, and, sure enough, there was a confused murmur of voices from the street, hurrying footsteps on the stair, the subdued roar and tumult of mid-day. Running to the window, I peered out, and saw crowds of people all hurrying in the direction of the Golden Horn. I then repaired to the hall, where I succeeded in laying hands on a Greek waiter just as he was shooting by me three steps at a time. “What is it?” I said; “what has happened?” Shaking me off, he merely cried, “Yanghen Vahr! Heavens! did you not hear them calling?” And then, as he disappeared, he shouted, “Look at the top of the Galata Tower!” We ran back to the window, and, craning our necks toward Galata, saw the upper part of the great tower illuminated by a brilliant red light, while a dense black cloud, issuing from some neighboring houses amid a vortex of flames and sparks, spread itself rapidly across the starlit sky. Instantly our thoughts flew to those terrible Constantinople fires of which we had heard so much, especially that fearful one of four years before, and for a moment we were filled with alarm and dismay, but only for a moment—I confess it with shame—for, following immediately upon that first natural impulse, came the selfish eager curiosity of the painter and writer, and a smile—yes, actually that is the disgraceful truth, a smile—broke over our faces which might have served as a model for one of DorÉ’s demons of the infernal regions. Had any one opened our breasts at that moment, they would have been found to contain nothing but an inkstand and a pallet.

We flung on our clothes and ran down the Grande Rue de Pera as fast as our legs could carry us, but, happily, our curiosity was not to be gratified on this occasion. By the time we reached the Galata Tower the fire had been pretty nearly extinguished; only two small houses were actually burned; the people were dispersing and the streets were flooded with water from the pumps, and cluttered up with furniture and bedding; men and women, shivering with fright and cold, were going about in their night-clothes, talking and lamenting in a dozen different languages, nothing being distinguishable through the noise and confusion but that shrill note of terror and excitement which marks the near escape from some great danger. Finding that we were too late to see anything, we walked off toward the bridge to console ourselves for our unrighteous disappointment by watching the sun rise, and before long we were rewarded by a sight which went far beyond any fire.

The sky was just beginning to grow light beyond the Asiatic hills; Stambul, momentarily disturbed by the report of fire, had sunk back into the solemn stillness of night, and banks and bridges were alike deserted. The entire Golden Horn seemed buried in slumber beneath a covering of light fog. Not a boat moved, not a bird fluttered, not a tree rustled, not a breath of wind could be heard. That huge city, blue, hazy, silent, veiled, seemed to be an atmospheric effect—a sudden cry, a burst of sunlight,—and it would tremble and vanish. Never had it appeared so aËrial, so mysterious, so entirely to correspond to the magic city of the Eastern fairy-tale which the traveller comes upon unexpectedly, and on entering finds every one turned to stone, just as they were in the midst of their gay, busy lives when the spell of a wicked genie fell upon them. As we leaned over the bridge, gazing on the scene before us, the fire completely forgotten, we heard all at once, from across the water, a faint, uncertain noise as of persons calling aloud for help; then, as it drew nearer, shrill cries of “Allah! Allah! Allah!” echoing throughout the great empty space around us, and in a moment we beheld a noisy, evil-looking throng pouring toward us across the bridge.

“Tulumbadgi” (firemen), cried one of the bridge-guards, and we drew to one side and watched them as they rushed by, a horde of swarthy, half-naked savages with bare heads and hairy chests, streaming with perspiration, young and old, big and little, with faces of thieves and cutthroats, four of them bearing a small pump, that looked like a child’s bier, on their shoulders, while the rest were armed with long hooked poles, coils of rope, axes, and picks. On they rushed, uttering hoarse cries, panting for breath, with eyes dilated, streaming hair, grim, determined, their rags fluttering in the wind and poisoning the sweet morning air with the close, malodorous smell of wild beasts. Sweeping across the bridge, they finally disappeared in the Rue de Galata, whence fainter and fainter came the cry “Allah! Allah!” till at length profound silence reigned once more.

It is impossible to convey the impression made upon my mind by this unexpected and tumultuous irruption in the midst of the solemn, impressive calm of the sleeping city. In an instant’s luminous flash I saw distinctly portrayed before me scenes of barbarian invasions, of pillage, murder, and rape, which until then I had never been able to picture to my mind as actual events, and I asked myself if that could be the city that I was familiar with—if this really were the same bridge across which European ambassadors, ladies dressed in Parisian costumes, and venders of French newspapers were wont to cross by day. A moment later and the silence of the Golden Horn was once more broken by the same far-away cry, and another fierce, unruly, panting mob rushed by like a whirlwind, accompanied by the same tumult of hoarse shouts and sinister laughter, again followed by the mournful prolonged cry of “Allah! Allah!” which, dying out, left us once more silent and alone. Not long after another mob, with all the now familiar accompaniments, poured by, and still another, then two more, and finally the madman of Pera, stark naked and half dead with cold, rending the air with his piercing shrieks, and followed, as usual, by a crowd of Turkish ragamuffins. They, like the firemen, were swallowed up in the dark openings of the streets on the Frankish shore, and again profound silence fell upon the mighty city, now gilded by the first rays of morning.

Before long the sun rose, and simultaneously with it the muezzins appeared upon the various minarets; then the kÄiks started into life, the harbor awoke; people began to cross the bridge, and soon we could hear on all sides the dull roar of the city’s daily life as we slowly retraced our steps toward Pera. But so deep was the impression made upon us by that sight—the sleeping city, the whitening heavens, the savage hordes—that to this day we never meet without recalling it, and always with the selfsame thrill, half of wonder, half of fear, as though we had seen in a vision the Stambul of other days or dreamed it while under the mystic influence of hascisc.

And so I missed seeing a fire in Constantinople, but if I did not actually see the one that destroyed Pera in 1870, I have heard it described so often by eye-witnesses, and have collected such full and accurate details, that I may be said to have seen it with the eyes of my mind, and, it may be, can give as correct an account of what took place as though I had really been present in the flesh.

The fire started in a little house in the Rue Feridee in Pera on the fifth day of June—that is, in the season when the greater part of the well-to-do population of Pera is out of town, spending the summer in their country-houses on the Bosphorus—and at one o’clock, just when the entire community, European as well, is shut up in-doors taking the mid-day siesta. The only occupant of the house in the Rue Feridee was an old female servant—the family having that very day gone to the country—who, as soon as she discovered the fire, rushed into the street and began to run, yelling “Fire!” at the top of her lungs. People at once poured out of the neighboring houses with buckets and little hand-pumps, the idiotic law prohibiting persons from extinguishing a fire until the Serasker officials have arrived upon the scene having already fallen into disuse, and flew of course to the nearest fountain to have them filled. Now, the Pera fountains are only open at certain hours of the day, when the water-carriers who draw the supply for the families of the vicinity can have access to them; once the distribution is over, they are closed and locked, the keys being placed in charge of an official with orders not to give them up “except on receipt of a notice from the authorities.” At this very moment there lounged beside this particular fountain a member of the Turkish municipal guard of Pera, with the keys in his pocket, looking impassively on at the fire; the crowd surrounded him, imploring him in excited tones to unlock the fountain; but this he flatly refused to do, on the ground that he had received no orders to that effect. They pressed closer, grew threatening, and finally laid forcible hands upon him, on which he resisted, defending himself to the best of his ability and declaring that they should never get the key from him alive. In the mean time the flames had made great headway; the original house was completely destroyed, and those next to it were burning merrily. News of the fire had spread rapidly from quarter to quarter; the watchmen on the summits of the Galata and Serasker towers had hoisted the red balloons used in the day-time as fire-signals. All the city guards were running through the streets, striking the pavement with their long staves and raising the dreaded cry, “Yanghen Vahr!” (There is a fire), in response to which was heard the hollow beating of a thousand drums as all the barracks took the alarm. Then three guns fired from TopkhÂneh announced the news to every quarter of the great city, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, and at that sound the Seraskerat, the Seraglio, the foreign embassies, all Pera, all Galata, were thrown into an uproar, and in a short space of time the minister of war, accompanied by a crowd of officials, appeared in the Rue Feridee, shortly followed by a troop of firemen eager for the fray. But, as is almost always the case, their first efforts proved wholly unavailing. The narrowness of the streets interfered with their movements; the pumps would not work; the water-supply was both insufficient and distant, while the undisciplined rabble of firemen found it more to their interest to add to rather than allay the general disorder, under cover of which they were able to appropriate many stray pieces of property; and in addition to everything else it was found that an Armenian festival, which was being celebrated at Beikos, had drawn almost all the porters thither, so that hardly any were to be found to transport the contents of the burning houses to places of safety. It must be borne in mind that wooden houses were much more generally the rule then in Constantinople than at present, even those whose walls were of stone or brick being surmounted by a flimsy roof but seldom protected by tiles, and consequently very easily ignited. On this occasion there was not even the advantage of a population of Mussulmans; apathetic and fatalistic as they are, even fire does not arouse them to any great excitement, and consequently, although of little or no help so far as putting it out is concerned, they at least do not interfere by their own ill-directed efforts with what is being done by others. Here the people were almost all Christians, who immediately lost their heads: hardly had the fire spread beyond the first few houses when the entire neighborhood became a scene of the wildest, most indescribable confusion: furniture was thrown recklessly out of upper windows; shrieks and lamentations rent the air; streets were blocked up, and a general state of panic ensued, upon which neither threats nor force availed to make the smallest impression. Hardly one hour had elapsed from the time when the fire first broke out before the Rue Feridee was in flames from one end to the other. Officials and firemen beat a hasty retreat in all directions, sometimes abandoning the bodies of the dead and injured in their flight, and all hope vanished of stamping the fire out at its birth. Most unfortunately, a high wind was blowing, and this carried the flames from the burning buildings in horizontal sheets across the roofs of the neighboring houses, like flapping tents of fire, so that they all caught from above as though a volcano were being discharged upon them. In this way the conflagration spread with fearful rapidity, and many families who were still assembled in their homes, feeling that they were perfectly secure for some time yet, and would be able to remove at least a part of their belongings, were first made aware of their danger by having the roof fall in, and barely had time to escape with their lives. House after house caught as though smeared with pitch, and instantly out of each of the innumerable little windows there poured a torrent of flame, long winding sheets, curling and swaying from side to side like great fiery serpents hungry for their prey, reaching down and licking the very stones as though in search of human victims. The fire did not seem to run, but rather fly, and, instead of enveloping the objects in its path, flowed over them like an angry tide. From the Rue Feridee it swept furiously down the Rue Tarla-Bashi, then turned back to pour like a torrent through the Rue de Misc and enfold the entire quarter of Agha-Dgiami as though it had been a forest of dead trees; then the Rue Sakes-Agatshe, then that of Kalindgi-Kuluk, and then street after street with terrifying rapidity until the entire incline of Yeni-Sheir was wrapped in flames; and these met and mingled with the blazing whirlwind which swept, roaring and bellowing, down the Grande Rue de Pera. It was not even as though there had been a thousand disconnected fires to extinguish, a thousand disorganized enemies to vanquish, but rather as though each fresh conflagration were the well-aimed stroke of some master mind controlling and directing all his forces, and having no less object in view than the destruction of the entire city, not one corner of which was to be allowed to escape. The narrow streets were like so many streams of lava, which would meet and swell into rivers or suddenly spread out into fiery lakes, utterly incapable of being stopped or controlled by any one. At the end of three hours half of Pera was in flames; a thousand columns of smoke, red, blue, white, and black, swept over the houses, lightly grazing the roofs, and extending as far as the eye could reach along the hillsides, obscuring and transforming with sinister effect the vast outskirts on the Golden Horn. In all directions could be seen furious whirlwinds of cinders and sparks, while against the houses still standing in the lower quarters of the city the wind beat showers of sparks and bits of charred wood, blowing them about like so much hail. In the burning quarters the streets were simply nothing less than huge furnaces, covered on top with a thick awning of solid flame, and constantly fed with pine wood from the Black Sea used for beams, the light inflammable rafters of ciardak, balconies and wooden minarets from the smaller mosques, all of which, falling in with a crackling, splintering noise, sounded as though they were being torn in pieces by an earthquake. Down those streets which were still passable flying forms were seen of mounted lancers, illuminated by what might have been the light of the infernal regions, as they galloped furiously in all directions, carrying the orders of the Seraskerat; Seraglio officials with bare heads and faces blackened with smoke; stray horses whose riders had met with some accident; files of porters laden with all manner of household goods; troops of howling dogs; gangs of homeless fugitives stumbling and falling in their mad flight down the steep inclines, blindly treading down the dead and injured, scaling the heaps of dÉbris, and disappearing finally amid fire and smoke like legions of the damned. Once, at the opening of a burning street, the mounted figure of Sultan Abdul-Aziz appeared for an instant, surrounded by his court, pale as a ghost, staring with dilated eyes at the flames, as though repeating to himself the memorable words of Selim I.: “This is the fiery breath of my victims destined to consume my capital, my seraglio, my very self!” A moment later he had disappeared amid a cloud of smoke and cinders, followed by his courtiers.

All of the army stationed at Constantinople, in addition to the innumerable brigades of firemen, were pressed into service, being formed into long chains and immense semicircles, which, under the direction of the viziers, officials of the court, pashas, and ulemas, endeavored to surround whole quarters, or, by concentrating their efforts upon some special spot, check the advance of the fire in that direction. Row after row of buildings would fall in the space of a few minutes; the roofs swarmed with intrepid men waging the unequal conflict at close quarters, and ever and anon falling into the yawning crater at their feet, only to be succeeded by others, as when some daring attack is making upon a powerful enemy, sending up hoarse cries and waving their singed fezzes in the midst of the smoke and flames. But, notwithstanding all these efforts, the fire still advanced triumphant, lit up the thousand streams of water directed against it, and leaped at a bound across the gardens, open squares, small cemeteries, and great stone buildings which lay in its path, forcing back soldiers, firemen, and citizens on all sides, like an army in retreat, and beating them about the shoulders as with red-hot muskets. Yet even in all that frightful panic and confusion there were those who preserved their self-possession sufficiently to perform noble acts of heroism and devotion. White-veiled Sisters of Charity could be seen in the midst of blazing ruins leaning over the prostrate forms of the dying; Turks threw themselves into the flames and reappeared bearing in their scorched and blackened arms the bodies of Christian children; other Mussulmans were known to have stood, apparently unmoved, with folded arms watching a burning house, and, while the families of Christians around them, utterly beside themselves with fright, filled the air with useless lamentations, would coldly offer a reward of a hundred Turkish francs to any one who would rescue a European boy who had failed to escape with the rest; and others, again, who made it their business to look after the injured children whom they found in the streets, binding up their wounds with strips torn from their own turbans, and seeing that they were restored to their parents; and still others who generously threw open their doors to the half-naked fugitives; while more than one was seen to set an example of courage and indifference to the things of this world by seating himself upon a rug in front of his burning domicile, calmly smoking a narghileh, and only moving farther off as the flames advanced.

But neither courage nor indifference, real or assumed, availed to check that fiery tempest. Now and then, with some temporary dying down of the wind, it would seem to abate a little of its fury, but not for long: the wind rising again with renewed violence, the flames, which had hardly begun to subside, would burst forth afresh, shooting out their sharp points like well-directed arrows, and accompanied by a deep, rumbling roar, broken from time to time by sharp explosions from the petroleum shops or gas in the dwellings, where the pipes were transformed into streams of molten lead; or when roofs would suddenly fall as though borne down by an avalanche; or a grove of cypress trees all at once begin to twist and writhe, and then burst into flame, sending down showers of burning resin; or some group of old wooden houses explode simultaneously like rockets, and emit such a fury of flame that it would seem as though the bellows of a thousand workshops were being turned upon them. It was a scene of ruin and wholesale destruction and disaster such as might result from fire, flood, earthquake, and the sacking of the city by a victorious army, all going on at once. No one had ever seen or imagined such horrors, and the effect upon the whole population was as though it had gone stark mad. In the streets of Pera the wildest confusion reigned, such noise and panic as are found on the deck of a vessel about to founder. There, in the midst of heaps of overturned furniture, beneath the flashing blades of the officers’ swords, the knocks and blows of porters and water-carriers, the hoofs of the pashas’ horses, gangs of firemen advancing at a dead run, overturning and treading down all they came in contact with,—were French, Italian, Greek, and Armenian families, rich and poor, old and young, men, women, and children, lost, distraught, groping blindly about in search of missing relatives, filling the air with shrieks and lamentations, choked with smoke and blinded with sparks; or a foreign ambassador followed by a troop of servants laden with books and valuable documents; or monks holding the crucifix aloft above the heads of the terrified throng; groups of Turkish women, their arms filled with costly objects from the harem; processions of men bending beneath the spoils of mosque and school, church or theatre; and from time to time a suffocating cloud of smoke, blown down by some sudden gust, would wrap everything in temporary darkness and increase still more the general terror and confusion.

An added feature of the horrors of that fearful time were the armies of thieves and desperadoes, who, having assembled, in obedience to some secret code of signals in use among them, from every hole and den in Constantinople, arrayed themselves in the guise of porters, soldiers, or respectable citizens, and then, boldly entering houses on pretence of lending assistance, made off with armsful of plunder: sometimes these gentry, being detected, would be pursued as they fled with their booty to Kassim Pasha or Tataola by parties of soldiers, and on being overtaken and surrounded pitched battles would ensue.

Firemen, porters, and water-carriers, reinforced by their numerous families and relatives, organized into bands, and before the very eyes of the distracted owners would all at once strike for higher wages, utterly declining to go on working unless their pay were doubled or quadrupled. Furniture and household goods heaped in the narrow streets and guarded by the families who owned them would be captured by crews of armed plunderers, the owners driven away, and the defences strengthened to afford resistance against other bands of blackguards. Troops of fugitives escaping with some of their personal property, encountering similar parties in some narrow thoroughfare, would dispute the right of way fiercely, desperately, abandoning in their mad flight those who were overthrown or injured in the onslaught.

But by the time the fire had raged for four hours it had gained such headway that few gave further thought to their property: to escape alive was the most that could be hoped for; two-thirds of Pera were in flames, and the fire had now reached such volume, and was advancing in so many different directions at once, that a whole quarter would suddenly be surrounded and cut off by a girdle of flame before the inhabitants had become aware of its approach. Hundreds of terrified creatures, flying in disorder up some narrow, steep, winding street, intent only on escaping from the hungry fiend in their rear, would at some sudden turn be confronted by a whirlwind of smoke and flame bearing relentlessly down upon them, and turn shrieking back to seek wildly for some other road of escape; entire families, one numbering twenty-two persons, were all at once surrounded, suffocated, burned, charred; some, beside themselves with terror, would take refuge in cellars, where they were soon choked to death; others threw themselves into wells and cisterns, climbed trees, or, after searching vainly through their houses for some spot or corner where they might hope for protection, suddenly losing their heads, would be seen to rush out and fling themselves voluntarily into the flames. Looking down the hillsides of Pera from some high point, families could be seen assembled upon their roofs, who, kneeling in close groups and with outstretched arms in the centre of an ever-narrowing circle of flame, invoked that aid from Heaven which man was powerless to give; herds of frantic people, rushing from the heights of Pera to scatter themselves throughout Galata, TopkhÂneh, Fundukli, and the cemeteries in the lower parts of the town, ever running farther and farther, looking for still more distant and protected spots in which to hide themselves from the enemy, whom they imagined to be still pursuing them; children streaming with blood; wild-looking women, with singed hair and torn flesh, bearing dead or dying infants in their arms; men with faces and limbs frightfully burned, who writhed on the ground in their agony; old people sobbing like children; men of wealth reduced in the course of a few moments to penury, who beat their heads against the stones; youths yelling like maniacs, who fell unconscious on the banks of the Golden Horn, spent with excitement and horror; families bearing the blackened corpses of their dead; poor creatures, driven crazy by the sights around them, who hurried along dragging chairs after them attached to strings, or clasped bits of rags or broken pottery to their bosoms as though they were of priceless value, at the same time giving vent to loud lamentations or bursts of insane laughter.

And still from the lower quarters of Galata, from the arsenals of Tersane and TopkhÂneh, from barrack, mosque, and imperial palace, there swarmed fresh battalions of nizam, crews of robbers, bands of firemen, shouting “Yanghen Vahr” or “Allah,” advancing as to an attack, scaling the hills under the steady rain of sparks and cinders and burning brands, and through streets filled with smouldering dÉbris, and with them generals, dervishes, messengers from the court, families who had turned back to search for missing members, blackguards and heroes, misery, crime, and charity,—all mingled together in a confused, inextricable torrent which swept through the narrow streets with a roar like that of the ocean in a storm, its surface lighted up with the crimson glare of that mighty furnace.

And just across from this region of torment lay Stambul, peaceful, smiling, and serene as ever, while on the other side the tranquil beauties of the Asiatic shore were mirrored in the waters of the Bosphorus, on whose unmoved bosom the ships rode peacefully at anchor. Enormous crowds of people, blackening the banks for miles, stood silent and impassive witnesses of the horrible sight; the sing-song voice of the muezzin was heard as usual announcing from every minaret the setting of the sun; flocks of birds soared lazily above the mosques on the Seven Hills; and venerable Turks, seated in the shade of plane trees on the verdant heights of Skutari, murmured placidly to themselves, “And so the final hour of the City of the Sultans has sounded? That day which was foretold has come: let Allah’s will be done.—So be it, so be it!”

Happily, with nightfall came the beginning of the end. At seven o’clock the last building took fire—the English embassy—and just after that, the wind suddenly dying down, the fire was either extinguished or went out of its own accord. It had been burning six hours, and in that time two-thirds of Pera were reduced to ashes, nine thousand houses destroyed, and two thousand lives lost.

Next to the famous fire of 1756, which demolished, in the reign of Osman III. eighty thousand houses and wiped out two-thirds of Stambul, no such disaster as this has ever visited the city, nor from the time Constantinople was conquered up to the present day has any one fire been the cause of so much loss of life.

On the following day Pera presented a spectacle which, if less terrifying, was in no sense less heart*-rending, than that during the actual progress of the fire. Wherever the flames had passed there was nothing to be seen but grim wastes broken only by the naked outlines of great hills; unfamiliar views were opened up; broad sheets of light poured down upon vast open spaces covered with ashes, while here and there the melancholy column of a blackened and half-ruined chimney stood like a gravestone marking the site of a desolated hearth. Whole quarters had disappeared as completely as though they had been Bedouin encampments swept away by a cyclone. Through many streets, which could only be traced by the double line of black, smoking ruins, thousands of the homeless wandered up and down, ragged and dishevelled, imploring aid from the hurrying throng of soldiers and doctors, Sisters of Charity, and priests of every religion, while employÉs of all ranks distributed the food and money or directed the placing of the mattresses, bedding, and army tents issued by order of the government for the use of the entirely destitute. The heights of Tataola and the great Armenian cemetery swarmed with dense crowds of persons formed into a huge encampment; everywhere one stumbled upon piles of household goods, whose owners, utterly exhausted with what they had been through, lay stretched out upon them. The vast Galata cemetery looked like a bazÂr which had been turned upside down: piled along the walks and among the tombs was a bewildering mass of household stuff—divans, pillows, bedding, pianos, books, pictures, broken carriages; the gilded sedan chair of an ambassadress; parrot-cages out of the harems; and horses who had sustained injuries tied to the cypress trees,—all watched over by porters and servants blackened with smoke and dropping with fatigue. The dregs and offscourings of the city employed themselves in searching through the ruins for stray valuables, locks off the doors, nails, and bits of iron, avoiding the outstretched forms of soldiers and firemen, who, unable to hold out any longer against sleep and fatigue, had dropped wherever they might happen to be. Here and there persons might be seen endeavoring by the aid of pieces of board and strips of canvas to erect temporary places of shelter above their ruined dwellings; groups of people kneeling before the blackened altar of some roofless church; and men and women passing in review the long lines of charred and disfigured bodies, who, finally recognizing in some pitiful blackened heap the object of their search, would burst into shuddering sobs and wails of despair, while others would suddenly be seen to drop as though they had been shot from their places in some long procession of biers and litters; and over all clouds of dust and smoke and the dense, suffocating atmosphere heavy with the sickening smell of charred human flesh. Now and then the men working with picks and shovels among the ruins would dislodge showers of ashes and cinders upon the close, silent, awe-stricken crowds collected from all parts of Stambul, above whose heads would appear groups of consuls and ambassadors, drawn up at the corners of the streets and gazing in pale-faced consternation at the surrounding ruin.

And yet, overpowering as this disaster appeared at the time, as is always the case in Oriental countries, not many months had elapsed before it was completely forgotten. When I visited Constantinople four years later no traces of it were to be seen except certain tracts of bare ground at the far end of Pera, below the heights of Tataola, and the fire was referred to by the inhabitants as something which had occurred in the remote past. For some little time—that is, as long as the ruins were still warm—the papers were filled with demands that the government should be made to take some precautions against a recurrence of the same thing. They suggested the reorganization of the fire department, the purchase of new pumps, increase of the water-supply, and that regulations should be enacted controlling the manner in which houses were to be built in the future; but, finding that the government turned a deaf ear to these proposals, the Europeans soon ceased to make them, and continued to live in the Turkish fashion; that is, trusting a little to the good God and a little to good luck.

And so, as nothing or next to nothing has been done to improve the conditions, we may assume pretty confidently that the fire of 1870 was not the last of those great conflagrations which, “it is written,” are in the course of every few years or so to devastate the City of the Sultans. It is true that many of the houses in Pera are now built of masonry, but most of these are wretchedly constructed by architects without either knowledge or experience, sometimes by any one who happens to come along; and, the authorities not attempting to exercise any sort of supervision in the matter, it is not unusual for them to fall down before being completed, while those which remain standing are not in any way fitted to resist fire. Water, too, is always scarce, especially in Pera, and is everywhere subjected to the most shameful monopoly, and, being mainly derived from the reservoirs built by the Romans in the village of BelgrÂd, the supply fails altogether unless abundant rains fall in both spring and autumn; then the rich pay its weight in gold to get it, while the poor people drink mud. The fire-brigade might be likened more to an army of malefactors than an organized corps of employÉs: it is composed of men of every nationality, accountable, more in name than in actual fact, to the Seraskerat, from which they receive nothing but a ration of bread—untaught, undisciplined, dishonest, feared and dreaded by the people quite as much as the flames which they do not know how to extinguish, and suspected, not without cause, of hoping for fires as affording opportunities for pillage. As for the pumps, while there seems to be plenty of them, and the Turks pride themselves upon these wonderful machines, they are in reality absurd playthings, holding about a dozen quarts of water, which they throw out in gentle little rivulets more suitable for watering flower-beds than extinguishing fires.

And yet the inhabitants of Constantinople might consider themselves fortunate were these the only evils existing in this connection. There is doubtless no foundation for the reports—credited, however, by some—that the government instigates many of the fires with a view to widening the streets: the dangers and inconveniences of such a method would be too great in comparison with the advantages; nor does it now happen, as it has sometimes in the past, that the “opposition” sets fire to a certain quarter in order to intimidate the sultans, or the army to enforce its demands for higher pay; but the general suspicion that many fires are started deliberately by persons who have something to gain thereby has but too often been verified, and hence the people of Constantinople live in a continual state of dread. They are afraid of the water-carriers, porters, architects, lumber- and lime-merchants, and, more than all the rest, of their servants, who are the evil geniuses of Constantinople: these people are all in league with organized bands of thieves, they in turn being in communication with various other secret organizations which manage the sale of every kind of stolen property and facilitate the commission of all manner of crimes, while the local police treat them all alike with a leniency which savors strongly of complicity. No incendiary was ever known to be punished, and thieves are rarely arraigned after a fire; more rarely still are the stolen goods restored to their rightful owners. Moreover, Constantinople being a rendezvous for miscreants from all over the world, the course of justice is constantly being blocked by international complications: consuls demand the surrender of criminals of their own countries; trials drag on for centuries; and so many delinquents escape altogether that the fear of punishment as a restraining influence upon the criminal class is almost nil, and they have come to look upon the plundering of houses during a fire much in the light of a privilege tacitly acknowledged by the authorities to be theirs, just as soldiers were formerly allowed to sack and plunder a vanquished city. And so the word “Fire” still means for the inhabitants of Constantinople “every misfortune,” and the cry Yanghen Vahr is charged with a dread meaning, terrible, fateful, carrying with it dismay—a cry at which the entire city is moved to its very depths, and pours forth as at the announcement of a scourge from God. And who can tell how often yet the great metropolis is doomed to fall before the flames and rise again ere European civilization shall have planted its triumphant ensign upon the imperial palace of DolmabÂghcheh?

In the old days, when a fire broke out in Constantinople, if the Sultan happened to be at that moment in the harem, news of the disaster was sent to him in the person of an odalisque dressed in scarlet from head to foot, with orders to present herself before him wherever he might be, were it even in the embraces of the favorite. She had only to appear upon the threshold: the flaming color of her attire would do the rest and be the mute announcement of her errand. Will any one believe that among all the striking and terrible pictures which my mind conjures up at the thought of a Constantinople fire the figure of that odalisque moves my artistic sense the most, and makes me long to be a painter that I might depict the scene as it rises before me? At all events, I shall go on begging every artist I meet to do it for me, until I come across one whose fancy will be struck with the idea, and who will earn my undying gratitude. The picture will represent an apartment in the imperial harem flooded with soft light. Seated upon a broad divan by the side of a fair young pearl-bedecked Circassian, Selim I., the mighty Sultan, suddenly disengages himself from the arms of his companion, and fixes his great black eyes upon the scarlet-clad odalisque standing in the doorway, mute, erect, immovable as a statue, one hand holding back the curtain beyond which is seen the open terrace, and in the blue distance the great smoking city, while her pallid, terror-stricken face would seem to say, “King of kings, Allah summons you to go to the relief of your unhappy people.”