Its origin and its cure are both unknown—It is the hair-suspended sword ever ready to do its work of death; and none can foretell the moment in which the blow may come.—It chases the haughty Sultan from his Palace; and the labourer from his hut—It is in the close and thickly-peopled streets of the city, and on board the majestic vessels that ride the blue waves of the Bosphorus—And there is not a sojourner in the East who can forget the first occasion on which, when he asked the meaning of the gloom that hung upon men’s brows, and the mysterious murmur that ran through the crowd on a new outbreak of the malady, he was answered by some passer-by,—“IT IS THE PLAGUE!” There can be no doubt that at the present time,[9] the pestilence has spread farther and faster than it might otherwise have done from the extreme scarcity, indeed, I may almost say, want of water in the Capital. The poorer classes, whose means render them unable to purchase this necessary of life at an exorbitant price from the individuals who established an extemporaneous trade, by freighting their caïques with water at the European villages on the Channel, and vending it in the city, being necessitated to make use of foul and stagnant pools for the purpose of preparing their food; and to dispense almost entirely with a beverage generally taken to excess by both sexes. As the wells and tanks of the nearest hamlets failed, the water-sellers extended their voyages even to Therapia; and their demands became comparatively extravagant. Men watched the clouds in vain—the sun set in a blaze of gold and purple; and morning broke in blushes from behind the Asian mountains—the noon-day sky was blue and bright—not a vapour passed across its beauty—and no rain fell. Women crowded about the fountains in the vain hope that each moment the exhausted spring might well out afresh—Children wept, and asked vainly for their accustomed draught; the marble basins of the city remained empty, and the bright sunbeams played upon the smooth surface of the glittering stone. On the Asian shore, the waters had not yet failed; and the famous fountain of Scutari, fed by a mighty volume descending from the dusky mountain of Bulgurlhu, still poured forth its flashing stream; but, from some superstition, whose nature I was unable to ascertain, the authorities did not permit the transfer of water from the Asiatic to the European shore; and this noble fountain, which would have supplied all the wants of the city, was suffered to flow on, and waste its stream in the channel.