p and down of priests and
deacons, who were surprised and perhaps a little alarmed at a visit
from so numerous a company of gentlemen belonging to the British
embassy, we were introduced into a large square room furnished with a
divan under the windows and down two sides of the chamber. This divan
was covered with a rough sacking of grey goats' hair--a stuff which is
said not to be susceptible of the plague; and people sitting on it, or
on the bare boards, are not considered to be "_compromised_"--a word of
fearful import when that awful pestilence is raging in this neglected
city. When any person is compromised, he is obliged to separate from all
society, and to place himself in strict quarantine for forty days, at
the end of which period, if the fright and anxiety have not brought on
the plague, he is received again by his acquaintances. Dealers in oil,
and persons who have an open issue on their bodies, are considered
secure from the plague as far as they themselves are concerned; but as
their clothes will convey the infection, they are as dangerous as others
to their neighbours.

There was an old Armenian, who, whether he considered himself
invulnerable, or whether poverty and misfortune made him reckless, I do
not know; but he set up as a plague-doctor, and visited and touched
those who were stricken with the pestilence. When-ever he came down the
street, every one would start aside and give him three or four yards'
space at least. Sometimes he had men who walked before him and cried to
the people to get out of the way. As the old man moved on in his long,
dark robes, shunned with such horror by all, the mind was awfully
impressed with the fearful nature of the disease; for if the Prince of
Darkness himself had made his appearance in the face of day, no one
could have shown greater alarm at his approach than they did when the
men cried out that the Armenian plague-doctor was coming down the
street.

One peculiarity of the disease is the disinclination which is always
shown by those who are plague-stricken to confess that they are so, or
even to own that they are ill. They invariably conceal it as long as
possible; and even when burning with fever and in an agony of pain, they
will pretend that they are well, and try to walk about. But this attempt
at deception continues for a very short period, for they soon become
either delirious or insensible, and generally are unable to move. There
is a look about the eye and