an expression of anxiety and horror in the
face of one who has got the plague which is not to be mistaken nor
forgotten by those who have once seen them. One day at Galata I nearly
ran against a man who was sitting on the ground on a hand-bier, upon
which some Turks were about to carry him away; and the look of the
unfortunate man's face haunted me for days. The expression of hopeless
despair and agony was indeed but too applicable to his case; they were
going to carry him to the plague hospital, from whence I never heard of
any one returning. It would have been far more merciful to have shot him
at once.

There are many curious superstitions and circumstances connected with
the plague. One is, that when the destroying angel enters into a house
the dogs of the quarter assemble in the night and howl before the door;
and the Greeks firmly believe that the dogs can see the evil spirit of
the plague, although it is invisible to human eyes. Some people,
however, are said to have seen the plague, its appearance being that of
an old woman, tall, thin, and ghastly, and dressed sometimes in black,
sometimes in white: she stalks along the streets--glides through the
doors of the habitations of the condemned--and walks once round the room
of her victim, who is from that moment death-smitten. It is also
asserted that, when three small spots make their appearance upon the
knee, the patient is doomed--he has got the plague, and his fate is
sealed. They are called the pilotti--the pilots and harbingers of death.
Some, however, have recovered after these spots have shown themselves.

I had at this time a lodging in a house at Pera, which I occupied when
anything brought me to Constantinople from Therapia. On one occasion I
was sitting with a gentleman whose filial piety did him much honour, for
he had attended his father through the horrors of this illness, and he
had died of the plague in his arms, when we heard the dogs baying in an
unusual way.[13] On looking out of the window there they were all of a
row, seated against the opposite wall, howling mournfully, and looking
up at the houses in the moonlight. One dog looked very hard at me, I
thought: I did not like it at all, and began to investigate whether I
had not some pain or other about me; and this comfortable feeling was
not diminished when my friend's Arab servant came into the room and said
that another person who lodged in the house was very unwell; it was said
that he had