The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-04 00:00:00

Ihe Great Fire at Constantinople.

By far the most terrible calamity which has
shocked the public mind of Constantinople for 30
years past happened at Galata on Monday night,
the 20th of February. Shortly after eleven o'clock
on the night in question a fire broke out in one of
the wings of the Roman Catholic convent of St.
Benoit, and, notwithstanding the utter absence of
wind, the flames rapidly spread to the adjoining
apartments, and thence to the thickly-clustering
houses outside the convent enclosure. The fire
quickly spread its own alarm, and within little more
than half an hour after its first appearance nearly
a dozen fire-engines, with a strong muster of toloum-
bajees, a numerous force of police, and a company of
marines from the arsenal were on the spot. Hall
Pasha also arrived promptly from Tophaneh with
half a company of artillerymen, and the foreign
gunboats in the harbour at the same time despatched
each a fire-engine and a strong crew to work it.
The intricate arrangement of the building, however,
coupled with almost entire want of water, for awhile
defied all attempts to reach the rapidly extending
flames, which soon ingulphed the whole north-
eastern angle of the convent, and flinging their fiery
spray across the narrow streets on either side, ignited
the wooden houses along a line of more than a 100
yards. The first efforts of the salvors were directed
to the large stone building in the corner of the quad-
rangle which formed the sleeping-quarters of the
Sisters and the female pupils of the establishment.
These were all safely rescued, but barely with the
clothes they were able to wrap round them in the
moment of escape. While this was being effected
inside the enclosure, the fire was making rapid pro-
' gress among the houses outside. The whole of these
being of wood, and as dry as tinder, the flames
literally licked up house after house till stopped in
their progress, on the oue side, by a pile of stone
buildings down near the Armenian church, and on
the other towards Tophaneh by a wide gap effected
by the demolition of a row of hovels in that direc-
tion. In the meantime, however, the great disaster
of the night had happened. Shortly after midnight
a body of some 60 toloumbajees, with four engines,
had stationed themselves along the outer wall of the
high stone building in the corner of the convent quad-
rangle already mentioned, considering themselves
sheltered by the wall from the flames within, and
being well placed from that point for playing on the
wooden buildings already ignited on the other side.
The apparent safety of the spot had also collected on
and around it several of the policemen and spectators,
of whom, as is usual, a large crowd had by this time
gathered from all parts of Pera and Galata. Sud-
denly, and without even a warning crack, the eastern
and southern walls of this lofty building toppled
outwards, literally cresting over the doomed crowd
below like the curve of a breaking wave, and bury-
ing under their debris all four of the engines men-
tickled, with the whole of their crews, and a large
number of the police and on-looking crowd. Not a
man who had stood within the fatal shadow of the
fallen walls escaped. Almost simultaneously a por-
tion of the western wall fell over on a small, densely
inhabited house outside the convent limits, and
crushing through its roof, killed, it is said, eight of
its inmates, who were engaged in endeavouring to
rescue their effects. For a time this terrible disaster
paralysed all efforts to check the conflagration out-
side the convent, and as the remaining wall threatened
momentarily to give way too, no attempt was made
to reach the mangled and dying, whom the ruins of
the other walls had partly hid from sight. Of these
many were seen to make agonizing but ineffectual
efforts to extricate themselves from the charred
masses of brick and wood which only half-entombed
them, and then gradually to cease the vain struggle
as suffocation or other cause of death did its work.
This part of the scene was harrowing beyond any
power of description. The vigorous play of the
ships' engines from the inside of the convent quad-
rangle, aided by the calmness of the night, had in
the meantime checked the spread of flames to the
western wing of the building ; not, however, before
the small circular dome and roof of the chapel on one
side, and the dormitories of the female pupils and
storerooms on the other had been seriously damaged.
Outside, the fire was virtually unopposed, the disasters
to their fellows under the convent wall having appa-
rently unnerved the other toloumbajees on the ground.
There was, besides, an almost complete want of
water. It was not, therefore, till the flames had
burnt themselves out on all sides to the gaps
made in their path by the pulling down of distant
houses that the conflagration may be said to have
been got under. This was about 7 a.m., by which
time, beside the damage done to the convent, in all
42 houses and four shops had been destroyed. But
for the providential absence of wind, however, this
would have been but a trifling instalment of the
wide-spread devastation that must have occurredt ;
for had the flames spread down on the one s
old
spread eo-
. wards Tophaneh, or on the other crossed theihi
one
• dyke higher up, the fire must have
direction to far beyond the Yenitcharsi,and in the
other from the Toke to the Russian palace. The
total number of victims to this great calamity is
believed to exceed 100. Up till yesterday at 4 p.m
42 had been dug out of the debris, when the work
was. discontinued in consequence of the bricks and
• broken roof timber nearer the base of the fallen
walls being too hot to admit of further exhumations.
Among the killed is Ibrahim Bey, the chief of the
Galata police.—Levant Herald.

THE REPRESENTATION OF PERTHSHIRE.----With
regard to a paragraph which we copied on Wednes-
day from a Crieff paper, stating that Mr. Stirling of Keir
was about to retire from the representation of the county,
we are authorisedto say that the rumour referred to has no
foundation in fact. Mr. Stirling will again offer himself as
a candidate for the representation of the county, and there
on be no doubt of his return.--Eclinkur.94 Courant.