has been made by a colony of lepers. I went to visit them once, when I thought less of my skin than I do now. They live in a stone quadrangle set back from the Haïdar Pasha road, with windows opening only into their own court. In front of the gate is a stone post where people leave them food. When they offered me some of it, out of the hospitality of their hearts, I must confess I drew the line. They kept house in families, each in its own little apartment, and the rooms were clean and comfortable in the simple Turkish way. But the faces and hands of some of the inmates were not good to see. It made one’s heart sick for the children who are born and innocently grow up in that place of death. [Illustration: Gravestones] The stones of Scutari are a study which I have often wished I had the knowledge to take up. Every grave has a headstone and a footstone, taller and narrower than our old-fashioned tombstones. You can tell at a glance whether a man or a woman is buried beneath the marble slab that generally joins the two stones. In old times every man wore a special turban, according to his rank and profession, and when he died that turban was carved at the top of his headstone. The custom is still continued, although the fez has now so largely taken the place of the turban. Women’s stones are finished with a carving of flowers. Floral reliefs are common on all monuments, which may also be painted and gilded. And in the flat slab will be a little hollow to catch the rain—for thirsty spirits and the birds. The epitaphs that are the chief decoration are not very different from epitaphs all over the world, though perhaps a little more flowery than is now the fashion in the West. The simpler ones give only the name and estate of the deceased, with a request for a prayer or a _fatiha_—the opening invocation of the Koran—and some such verse as “He is the Everlasting,” “Every soul shall taste death,” or “We are God’s and we return to God.” This sentiment is also characteristic: “Think of the dead. Lift up your hands in prayer, that men may some time visit your grave and pray.” The epitaph is often rhymed, though it may be of a touching simplicity—like “O my daughter! O! She flew to Paradise and left to her mother only the sorrow of parting,” or “To the memory of the spirit of the blessed Fatma, mother of Ömer Agha, whose children find no way out of their grief.” Others are more complicated and Oriental, ending, like the inscriptions on public buildings, in a chronogram. Von Hammer quotes one, not in this cemetery, which is peculiarly effective in Turkish: