17,1

— rg
rE
v rey

almost in Pera, the Fr nk quarter, to touch a person, a»
the whole population were '-~ing ~ game of prisoner’s base.
With this multitude « * misaries t+ encounter without and
within doors, I have seen little here to amuse or gratify me;
and if it were not for the extreme kindness of all the merchants
 here, with almost &ll of whom I have dined or visited ;
and if I had not had other objects in view than merely to
see this city and :+ ch -wrhood, I should scarcely have
stayed a week ¢° ~ ws! atinople. The plague has been
more than commc- destructive; various accounts give
from 50 to 100,” deaths, and I have little doubt that
more than one eig! ” c.f the population has been swept
away. I must, however, tell you for your satisfaction that
it has now almost disappeared, and thet it has quite lost its
viralence. Fortun.*-'~ th very day of my arrival a north
wind set in, and breaght w.lh it the snows and frosts of the
Black Sea, against which the pestilence could not exist.
Had I arrived a week earlier, the weather was as mild as
summer. That would have given me a better opportunity
of seeing the country, bu’ not with the same security from
the plague as at present. As I entered the harbour of Constantinople,
 the country was free from snow, and therefore I
aw the view t¢ pre.'y good advantage considering that it
was the winter-time. It is too fine, too magical, for descrip-Sion,
 and all the sw ,.unts that you read of it do not do
justice to it.”
Smyrna, Feb, 24... 1037.—“ After I wrote to you from
Constantinople, I made an excursion up the Bosphorus to see
the scenery which all concur in praising as the most beantiful
in Europe. I wisu i had seen it before I landed in Turkey ;
~—the misery, the dirt, the plague, and all the other disagreeables
 of Constantinople, haunted me even in the quiet and
solitude of natural beauntios which, apart from soch associations,
 are certainly enouch to excite the romantic fervour

1887.
Tr. 38.