the great city, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, and at that sound the Seraskerat, the Seraglio, the foreign embassies, all Pera, all Galata, were thrown into an uproar, and in a short space of time the minister of war, accompanied by a crowd of officials, appeared in the Rue Feridee, shortly followed by a troop of firemen eager for the fray. But, as is almost always the case, their first efforts proved wholly unavailing. The narrowness of the streets interfered with their movements; the pumps would not work; the water-supply was both insufficient and distant, while the undisciplined rabble of firemen found it more to their interest to add to rather than allay the general disorder, under cover of which they were able to appropriate many stray pieces of property; and in addition to everything else it was found that an Armenian festival, which was being celebrated at Beikos, had drawn almost all the porters thither, so that hardly any were to be found to transport the contents of the burning houses to places of safety. It must be borne in mind that wooden houses were much more generally the rule then in Constantinople than at present, even those whose walls were of stone or brick being surmounted by a flimsy roof but seldom protected by tiles, and consequently very easily ignited. On this occasion there was not even the advantage of a population of Mussulmans; apathetic and fatalistic as they are, even fire does not arouse them to any great excitement, and consequently, although of little or no help so far as putting it out is concerned, they at least do not interfere by their own ill-directed efforts with what is being done by others. Here the people were almost all Christians, who immediately lost their heads: hardly had the fire spread beyond the first few houses when the entire neighborhood became a scene of the wildest, most indescribable confusion: furniture was thrown recklessly out of upper windows; shrieks and lamentations rent the air; streets were blocked up, and a general state of panic ensued, upon which neither threats nor force availed to make the smallest impression. Hardly one hour had elapsed from the time when the fire first broke out before the Rue Feridee was in flames from one end to the other. Officials and firemen beat a hasty retreat in all directions, sometimes abandoning the bodies of the dead and injured in their flight, and all hope vanished of stamping the fire out at its birth. Most unfortunately, a high wind was blowing, and this carried the flames from the burning buildings in horizontal sheets across the roofs of the neighboring houses, like flapping tents of fire, so that they all caught from above as though a volcano were being discharged upon them. In this way the conflagration spread with fearful rapidity, and many families who were still assembled in their homes, feeling that they were perfectly secure for some time yet, and would be able to remove