CONSTANTINOPLE PROPHECY.

Mataura Ensign, 15 December 1911, Page 3

CONSTANTINOPLE PROPHECY.

One of the first "reforms" undertaken by the new regime in Turkey was the clearance of the streets of oil the legions of dogs which from time immemorial acted as scavengers and lent a local color of their own to Constantinople. The manner of their destruction was an almost unexampled method of heartless cruelty.

The Turks are usually kind to animals, and when this atrocity became known an old Hoja went through tlie streets of Stambul prophesying that the murdered dogs would avenge themselves on the City of the Many Hills. A war would break out which would carry fire and sword through the empire and dismember it and "put out the light of Mecca." Furthermore, the "hand of the Bulgur would strike its heavy blow" at the call of the dogs. For more than two years no Turk has ever landed at Oxia, and the fishermen give a wide berth to the tomb of the dogs, whilst those who remember the words of the Hoia are in terror lest the Hulgar army should come in at the breach in tho wall of Yedi Ivuleh, which served as the death pit for the last of tho Constantinople scavengers.