GREAT FIRE AND LOSS OF A HUNDRED LIVES AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

Colonist, Volume VIII, Issue 793, 2 June 1865, Page 4

GREAT FIRE AND LOSS OF A HUNDRED LIVES AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

{From the Levant Herald.) By far the most terrible calamity winch has shocked the public mind of Constantinople for thirty years past happened at Galata, on Monday night (20th 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 tolownhqjees, a numerous force of police, and a company of marines from the arsenal were on the spot. Halil Pacha also arrived promptly from Tophaneh with half a company of artillerymen, and the foreign gunboats in the har-, bor at the same time despatched each a fire- \ engine and a strong crew to work it. The intricate arrangement of the buildings, however, coupled with the almost entire want of water, for a while defied all attempts to reach the rapidly extending flames which soon engulphed the whole north-eastern angle of the convent, and, flinging their fiery spray across the narrow streets on each side, ignited the wooden houses along a line of more than a hundred yards. The first effort of the salvors were directed to the large stone building in the corner of the quadrangle, 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. Whilst this was being effected inside the enclosure, the lire was making rapid progress amongst 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 one side by a pile of stone buildings 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 direction.

In the meantime, however, the great disaster of the night had happened. Shortly after midnight a body of some sixty toloumbajees, with four engines, had stationed themselves along the outside wall of the high stone building in the corner of the convent quadrangle 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 G-alata. Suddenly, 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 burying under their debris all four of the engines mentioned with the whole of their crews, and a large number of the police and onlooking crowd. Not a man who had stood within the fatal shadow of the walls escaped. Almost simultaneously a portion 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 endeavoring to rescue their effects. For a time this terrible disaster paralysed all efforts to check the conflagration outside 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 only partly hid from sight. Of these many were seen to make agonising 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 quadrangle, 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 the 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 apparently unnerved the other toloumbajees on the ground. There was, besides, an almost complete want of water. It was not, therefore, till the flames had burned themselves out on all sides to the gaps made in their path by the pulling down of houses, that the conflagration may be said to have been got under. This was about seven a.m., by which time, besides the damage done to the convent, in all forty-two houses and four shops have 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 occurred; for, had the flames spread down on the one side towards Tophaneh, or on the other crossed the old dyke higher up, the conflagration must have spi'ead in the one direction to far beyond the Tenitcharsj, and in the other from the Teke to the Russian Palace.

The total number of victims to this great calamity is believed to exceed a hundred. Up till yesterday, at four p.m. forty-two had been dug out of the debris, when the work was discontinued in consequence of the bricks aud broken roof timber nearer the base of the fallen walls being too hot to permit of further exhumations.