the seat of the Pacha, the Military Governor, and the barracks of the military, the residence of all the employés, ecclesiastical, civil and military, the court of justice, and here may also be seen the splendid mosque, with its glittering dome and minarets, shining in the sun like burnished silver.

The Varosh, or low town, is inhabited by the merchants and artizans; it is surrounded by a deep ditch and palisades, with gates, which are carefully closed at night; along the centre of the street runs a deep gutter, none of the cleanest, and the houses on each side, for so we will call them by courtesy, have the appearance of temporary huts belonging to a colony of Nomades, so little is there of art or solidity in their construction. To the outside of each house, attached by strong hinges, is a broad wooden shutter, which serves, when let down at night, to protect the house from pilferers, and by day, when supported by long poles, for a verandah. If the house is a shop, under this is placed a platform, about two feet high, appropriated partly to the display of such tempting wares as the shopkeeper may have to sell, and partly to the purposes of a divan, on which, whether Greek, Armenian, Slavon, Turk or Jew, he reclines in all the dignity of Oriental laziness, enjoying the fragrant tchibouque, or the gurgling narghile, grave as a judge, and apparently indifferent whether he sells or not.

On entering one of these houses, we pass through what is in reality the shop, which leads to a square court-yard, where we find the ménage, the harem, and

all the appendages of an Oriental house. If the family or tribe is numerous, and the occupiers wealthy, there may be an upper story surrounded by a verandah, and not unfrequently we see a murmuring fountain bubbling in the centre of the court-yard.

In the shops we usually find tobacco of every description and price, and different sorts of confectionary in glass vessels; tchibouques and narghiles of all shapes and sizes, fruit, vegetables, salt, weapons, saddles, saddle-bags, new and second-hand clothes, &c. Intermingled with the shops are coffee-houses and restaurants, filled with the gay and idle, eating, drinking, smoking, or playing chess in an atmosphere dense from the tobacco smoke as a London fog in November.

Every trade is carried on in the open shop, armourers and tinkers, saddlers and tchibouque makers, shoemakers and tailors, bakers and cooks, the whole art and process exposed to the observation of the lounger. The covered bazaar always included in the Varosh, is the receptacle of merchandize of a more costly description; here are the rich silks, velvets and satins from the looms of Broussa; the calicoes of Manchester, manufactured at Vienna! the toys and bijouterie of Paris, also fabricated at Vienna! beautiful carpets and splendid embroidery, all arranged to attract the attention of a customer. This is generally the promenade of the officers of the Nizam, the civil employé, with a host of Osmanli, Armenian, Greek and Jew merchants, in their loose flowing robes and many-coloured turbans,

with here and there a dame enveloped in her yashmak, whether hour or fury, who shall say, gliding silently along like a being of another world.

The Palankin, which may be termed the faubourg, is also enclosed by a palisade, usually formed of the trunks of trees, driven into the ground, and bound together. Here is the home of the poorer class of Rayahs; like the other class, they have also their hans, their coffee-houses and restaurants, where the traveller may find amusement in seeing every trade and calling carried on by the inhabitants. A large space of ground usually encircles the towns, devoted exclusively to the burial of the dead, termed by this poetic people, the City of their Ancestors. In addition to its use as a cemetery, it serves as a place for the encampment of some tribe of nomades, generally gipsies; here also we see the carcases of dead animals left for food to support the vulture, and the hordes of half-wild dogs that everywhere roam in these provinces without a home or owner; it is also used as a place for the

execution of criminals.

Towns constructed in the manner we have described, cannot, of course, be healthy; enclosed within walls, surrounded with embankments, they are contracted into the smallest possible space, hence the streets are narrow and badly ventilated; and when we remember the entire absence of sewers, the filth accumulating in the streets, where every disgusting offal is thrown, the dog and the vulture being the only scavenger, the frequent mortality of the inhabitants must be regarded

as a natural result. They are never free from fever; and when an epidemic finds its way into one of these hot-beds of disease, the loss of life is awful, especially among a people too often weakened and emaciated by sensual indulgences.

The fountains, erected by some pious Mussulman to increase the health and comfort of his fellow-men, unhappily prove the means of generating disease and death, the stream of water running from them through streets badly paved and full of holes, finds a resting place, grows stagnant, and during the heat of summer exhales mephitic vapours, as fatal to the inhabitant as the plague. Poor, simple people, they become wan and ill without dreaming of the cause; if you point out this and the remedy, the reply will be probably a vacant stare; and if they do answer, you will be told it is not their business to make a sewer, and what is not their business is nobody's business, consequently the evil is perpetuated.

The covered bazaar, though well adapted for the sale of merchandize, yet from the want of ventilation and the negligent habits of the people, becomes also the nest of disease. In vain the rich Mussulman, the wealthy Jew, and Rayah merchant have recourse to the bath, and frequent ablutions, in vain they surround themselves with all the luxuries of life-the soft, rich carpet, velvet hangings and downy pillow; the destroyer is still at the door, and finds an entrance; the features become pallid; loss of appetite soon follows. If they escape the heat of summer, the cold, bracing air of

winter again renovates them, and enables them to contend another campaign with their insidious enemy. A robust nature may for a time ward off the blow; but eventually the constitution gives way, long before the usual time allotted to frail mortality.

Suffering from heat during a long summer's day, the Osmanli, after swallowing successive goblets of sherbet and repeated cups of coffee, has recourse to the tchibouque to dissipate the langour of idleness; and having no occupation to impart vigour to his debilitated frame, as the sun declines in the west, he musters sufficient courage and resolution to rise from his carpet, and by way of exercise slowly waddles to what he is pleased to term the "City of his Ancestors." Here he gravely contemplates the stone turbans, moralizes on the shortness of human life, inhales a sufficient quantity of the deadly gas around him, heaves a sigh to the mutability of human greatness, and waddles home again exhausted by fatigue, when he wearies the patience of all the women in his harem to devise remedies for the headache his long promenade has produced.

In a country so pregnant with danger, so exposed to the occasional incursions of roving bands of predatory Haiducs or Arnouts, the wealthy Osmanli naturally seeks a fortified town as his place of residence, however unfavourable to health; but that the climate is not insalubrious may be inferred from the fact, that the Rayah who makes his home in the villages, occupying himself with the healthful employments of husbandry, lives to a great age; even the Palankin inhabited by this class, which it