There was another source of constant anxiety for the people of Constantinople fifty years ago, in regard to which there has unfortunately been but little change. The city was often visited by terrible conflagrations. In those days they were generally attributed to the Janissaries, who always improved such opportunities to enrich themselves by wholesale plunder. To this day it is often suspected that the Government itself is responsible for these fires, especially as they frequently occur in quarters where it is proposed to widen the streets. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are supposed to have a political significance, as a manifestation of popular discontent; but probably, then as now, they generally resulted from carelessness, and when once they had commenced there were no adequate means for extinguishing them. Only two months after the destruction of the Janissaries, at the moment when the sacred standard of the Prophet was being taken back from the mosque, a fire broke out in Stamboul which raged for thirty-six hours, destroying the bazaars and about an eighth part of the city, including the richest Turkish quarters. The people universally attributed this to the friends of the Janissaries, and the discontent with the Sultan was general; but he acted with the greatest vigour. He opened his palaces for the reception of those who had no shelter, distributed food and clothing, and undertook to rebuild the bazaars. At the same time, he sent his spies into every public place, and every one who was heard complaining of the Government was at once arrested and decapitated. Even the women were not spared, but many were strangled and thrown into the Bosphorus, without any form of trial. These vigorous measures soon put an end to all complaints, but unhappily did not prevent the burning of Pera in 1831, when 10,000 houses were destroyed, a calamity which the Mussulmans attributed to the wrath of God against the Europeans for the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, but which the Christians naturally attributed to the wrath of the Mohammedans themselves. It is probable that both these fires were accidental, as were those which burned over almost the same ground in 1865 and 1870; but the alarm and suffering of the people were as real and as great as they would have been if these fires had resulted from the cause to which they were attributed. It is a very curious fact that, in both cases, just five years intervened between the destruction of Stamboul and of Pera.