The Express. — 1856-10-29 (London, England)

TURKEY.  COWIE ova OIVX lam not sure what your postal commue.— nay be with Rhodes; bat imagine you will have heard of the earthquake of last Sunday morning, which was there attended with such fearful loss of life and such lamentable destruction of property, and which appears to have been felt more or less severely throughout the Levant. It was felt here, and though not attended with any serious consequences! beyond a comparatively trifling damage to various buildings, created, from the length of time the shock' Bete& the most intense anxiety and apprehension. aim shocks are frequently felt here at the close of the dry season, but generally speaking they list only from five to ten seconds at the outside, and the motion in almost every instance is horizontel and tremulous. The sheet of Sunday morning commenced with vertical palpitations, which continued about half a minute, sad then changed to slow, long, horizontal oscillations from south to north, the whole shock lasting fully two minutes. The past season has been sensually dry, and as experience shows that the most severe earthquakes have always occurred after a very dry season, the general fear was that this shock was the precursor of some terrible convul.ion. With the recent fate of Brava and the standing records of more remote catastrophes here before our eyes, you may comely° that the fear and anxiety crowded into those two minutes was terrible. The effect of the present critical sate of money affairs in Europe into restrict the commercial transactions of this place to a mere nothiog compared wi'h other seasons, and some of the largest exporting houses have entirely suspended purchases for the English markets; our exchanges have gone up at a great rate, but the rapid rise is in a great measure attributable to the promoters of the Benue Nationale at Constantinople, who among others have sent in a tender to the Porte for the loan required to retire the Caimd and base coin. They are principally Greek bankers—very influential and very rich. Their idea is to force the exchange, and then hold the consequent drain of gold in terrorens over the govern.' meat to facilitate negotiations. There is a happy combination of Turkish and Levantine morals in this manoeuvre. Our trade is consequently very fiat-all holding back but the Turks, who are ready to borrow any amount of money Comore ci rordinaire. The Levantines have a very horrible way of murdering each other. Two days sines a boatman took &lodise by the sem, swung him round, and chopped him to pieces with a hatchet. This was in the epee street. There were plenty of bystanders, but having no personal interest in the tranuotioo, they did not interfere. It does not appear to have occurred to the police authorities that this was a case in which they might have come forward with advantage. If the family of the viral= take the matter up, the perpetrator will have to pay blood money. If they do sot, he will be at large till it salts his convenience to shop up somebody else. N.B.—There are 2,000 police here. Her Majesty's steam frigate Curacao, Commander the Hon. G. B. Hastings, arrived this morning vs rot& to Constantinople.  BMYANA, Oct. 18.