Sultan generally wore red trousers. Mr. Bobster
immediately said it pained him to contradict his
respected friend Miss Bendy, but that very morning
he had met the Sultan going to mosque in
white, the colour he always wore. So, when Mr.
Bobster helped me to some Smyrna figs, he assured
me that it was a well-known fact, he had heard it
from half the Franks in Galata, that every dog in
Constantinople had its own district or parish,
beyond which, if he dared to encroach, he was
at once fallen upon. Every dog had his beat, his
range of property, his domain, his small kingdom,
beyond which lay war, bitings, and perhaps
death. It was the same in Pera, and the same in
Scutari; indeed I must not understand and
imagine the pariah dogs of Constantinople
anything very miraculous or special, for every
Eastern city had them, more or less, and they
probably originated in the great increase of
animals, encouraged by the kindness and charity
of Mohammedanism to our dumb fellow-creatures,
from the insignificant yet pertinacious flea to
the lordly and sagacious elephant. Charity to
them was enjoined in the Koran; cruelty to them
was thought irreligious: hence Constantinople
had become the paradise of dogs. So far Mr. B.

It was only the day after this dinner
conversation, that I was roaming about the old
palace of the Blachernæ, the quarter where the
families of the higher Greeks reside, looking at
I scarce know what —perhaps, for instance, at a
Greek girl, of singular dirt and beauty, hanging
out clothes on the battlements of the old palace
—when a tremendous wild pelting race of dogs
down the narrow street, drove me to more
practical thoughts of personal safety; so, mounting
a giant dust-heap, I saw advancing a complete
band of street dogs, tumbling, and tearing,
and biting, and worrying a poor mud-covered
Snarlyow, whose wobegone face streamed with
blood.

The victim, evidently a stray intruder from
another parish, was a little in front of the
persecuting mob, and beyond an occasional
melancholy snap, looked an unhappy and unresisting
object of popular hatred. No old pauper, driven
from parish to parish by guardians objecting
to his claims of settlement, could ever appear
more sad and heart-broken.

Here, thought I, the selfish sentimentalist who
fed French donkeys with maccaroons might
have squeezed out his theatrical tear to
some purpose. Right and left looked the
wretch, pitied by none, but saw nowhere
shelter; every moment, in a business-like way,
from under doorway, or hole in the ground, or
from rubbish heaps, appeared fresh persecutors,
going as regularly to work to join the hue and
cry, as soldiers when the bugle sounds for
falling in, and the "advance." No members of any
dependent or independent denomination could
have been more unanimous in intolerance, than
these dogs.

Away again they broke, with all the pertinacity
and sense of enjoyment that you see in fox-hounds
in the first ten minutes of half an hour's burst.
Away they went, with yelps and screams, and
howls, and snaps, and barks, "a rather terrible
sight to behold," that bright cheerful morning
of September, in the street of Stamboul that
leads to the old palace of the Blachernæ.

It must have been full half an hour later, that
I was strolling on, nearly a mile further towards
the Monastery of Job—not the man of Uz—but
a leader of Mahmoud's army, who, after
performing utterly improbable feats of valour at
the siege of Constantinople, was buried outside
the walls, and a mosque reared over his wonder-
working grave. This is now a place of special
sanctity with Mohammedan fanatics; and it is the
shrine where the Sultan, on his accession, is
invested with his royal sabre, "never to be
drawn but for truth, never to be sheathed but
with honour," as the Toledo legend runs. It is
a mosque, moreover, where, under no pretence,
can a Christian gain admittance—no, not even
with the royal firman.

I was peering about the gateway of this
dangerous and anti-Christian place, wondering how
much I could see without having my head
cut off, when the fury of that wild huntsman
chase sounded again in my astonished ears, and
again the rush of dogs swept past me, mimicking
human war and persecution; before them,
still in the unpleasant position of leader,
ran the outcast dog, looking now a mere
shapeless lump of bloody clay. But, the sight of
me full in front of the race, this time drove him
to desperation. Suddenly making a charge at
the open mouth of a black sewer, he flew
in, and vanished from my eyes, leaving the
yelping pack as astonished and disappointed as a
young terrier is on his first day's shooting,
when the rabbit he is pursuing suddenly exits
down a hole.

This abrupt and brusque proceeding left
me in doubt as to whether some of these dogs
might not live in the sewers; which are certainly
as cool in the summer as any dog of an unbeliever's
villa on the Bosphorus, and would be equally
sheltered in the winter frosts. In all seasons
the dwelling-place would be rent-free. As to
smells, people differ. Some like lavender; others
onions. As to rats, they would be rather an
advantage. Any port in a storm, said the Greek
philosopher; and, summing all up, there is much
to be said for a sewer residence. A sociable,
clubbable dog might, it is true, lack society;
but, on the other hand, a hermit dog would
find retirement cheaply.

Had it not been a good two miles away, and
across the water, I should (by mere force of
association) have at once set it down as the same dog,
when I saw a dog three days afterwards, stiff and
dead, with tongue out and eyes staring, victim
of a violent and cruel death, stretched on a
heap of refuse, waiting for the scavenger in the
Pilgrim-street, some two or three turnings to the
left from Misseri's. It was pitiful to see even
a dog's body left in such a pitiless way, but it
shocked nobody, and, as it had not yet begun to
decompose, it angered nobody. Indeed, the Turks
are a hard, unreflective people, and do not stop
to sentimentalise much over death, so long as