ss and the chances thereby of falling headlong into a
receptacle of filth and mud. The streets of Stamboul are still more
narrow, filthy, and fetid than those of Galata and Pera. Wooden hovels,
badly constructed, and worse painted; a species of cages pierced with an
infinite number of trellised windows, with one story projecting over the
ground floor, flank on the right and on the left hand these passages,
through which hurry a motley crowd with noiseless tread. The pavement,
made of little stones placed in the dust, slip from under one's feet and
expose one to continual falls. Upon the boards of the first shops one
passes are piled heaps of large fish, whose scales glitter in the sun,
in spite of the dust. Fawn-coloured dogs, in much greater numbers than
at Galata, run between your legs--and wo to whosoever should disengage
himself too energetically from these hideous brutes, which are protected
by Mussulman bigotry! The habits of these animals, whose number amounts
to above a hundred thousand, are exceedingly singular. They belong to no
one, and have no habitation; they are born, they live and they die, in
the open street; at every turn one may see a litter of puppies suckled
by their mother. Upon what these quadrupeds feed it would be difficult
to state. The Turkish government abandons to them the clearing of the
streets, and the offal and every sort of filth, together with the dead
bodies of their fellows, compose their apparently ordinary nourishment.
At night they wander about in the burying grounds, howling in the most
frightful manner. Whatever may be their means of existence, they
multiply their species with the most surprising rapidity. Some years
ago, the canine race had increased to such a degree at Constantinople
that it became dangerous, when, to the pious horror of the Old
Mussulmans, the Sultan Mahmood, among other reforms, caused twenty
thousand of these animals to be, not poisoned, he would not have dared
to so greatly offend against the prejudices of the inhabitants, but
transported to the isles of Marmora. In a few days they had devoured
every thing in the place of exile, after which, tormented by hunger,
they made such a hideous row, and uttered such plaintive howls, that
pity was taken upon them, and they were brought back in triumph to
Constantinople. Fortunately hydrophobia is unknown in the Levant.

The bazars of Constantinople have been so often described that it would
be useless to describe the