Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a
market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted
against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they
could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first
astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images.
The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at
Tophanné--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole
eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople
appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other,
without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking,
growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and
continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard
at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and
woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same
tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like
tranquillity was restored."
The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the
next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion;
some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh
that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of
desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses
and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades;
but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a
human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having
one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but
his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must
expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern.
Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for
the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment
in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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