On the following day Pera presented a spectacle which, if less terrifying, was in no sense less heart*-rending, than that during the actual progress of the fire. Wherever the flames had passed there was nothing to be seen but grim wastes broken only by the naked outlines of great hills; unfamiliar views were opened up; broad sheets of light poured down upon vast open spaces covered with ashes, while here and there the melancholy column of a blackened and half-ruined chimney stood like a gravestone marking the site of a desolated hearth. Whole quarters had disappeared as completely as though they had been Bedouin encampments swept away by a cyclone. Through many streets, which could only be traced by the double line of black, smoking ruins, thousands of the homeless wandered up and down, ragged and dishevelled, imploring aid from the hurrying throng of soldiers and doctors, Sisters of Charity, and priests of every religion, while employés of all ranks distributed the food and money or directed the placing of the mattresses, bedding, and army tents issued by order of the government for the use of the entirely destitute. The heights of Tataola and the great Armenian cemetery swarmed with dense crowds of persons formed into a huge encampment; everywhere one stumbled upon piles of household goods, whose owners, utterly exhausted with what they had been through, lay stretched out upon them. The vast Galata cemetery looked like a bazâr which had been turned upside down: piled along the walks and among the tombs was a bewildering mass of household stuff--divans, pillows, bedding, pianos, books, pictures, broken carriages; the gilded sedan chair of an ambassadress; parrot-cages out of the harems; and horses who had sustained injuries tied to the cypress trees,--all watched over by porters and servants blackened with smoke and dropping with fatigue. The dregs and offscourings of the city employed themselves in searching through the ruins for stray valuables, locks off the doors, nails, and bits of iron, avoiding the outstretched forms of soldiers and firemen, who, unable to hold out any longer against sleep and fatigue, had dropped wherever they might happen to be. Here and there persons might be seen endeavoring by the aid of pieces of board and strips of canvas to erect temporary places of shelter above their ruined dwellings; groups of people kneeling before the blackened altar of some roofless church; and men and women passing in review the long lines of charred and disfigured bodies, who, finally recognizing in some pitiful blackened heap the object of their search, would burst into shuddering sobs and wails of despair, while others would suddenly be seen to drop as though they had been shot from their places in some long procession of biers and litters; and over all clouds of dust and smoke and the dense, suffocating atmosphere heavy with the sickening smell of charred human flesh. Now and then the men working with picks