without the cities; but the shallowness of the graves contributes to
render these vast accumulations of animal dust, at certain seasons more
especially, a source of pestilential miasmata. The cemeteries near Scutari
are immense, owing to the predilection which the Turks of Europe preserve
for being buried in Asia--that quarter of the world in which are situated
the holy cities, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The author of
Anastasius gives the following vivid description of this extraordinary
spot:--

"A dense and motionless cloud of stagnant vapours ever shrouds these
dreary realms. From afar, a chilling sensation informs the traveller that
he approaches their dark and dismal precincts; and as he enters them, an
icy blast, rising from their inmost bosom, rushes forth to meet his breath,
suddenly strikes his chest, and seems to oppose his progress. His very
horse snuffs up the deadly effluvia with signs of manifest terror, and,
exhaling a cold and clammy sweat, advances reluctantly over a hollow
ground, which shakes as he treads it, and loudly re-echoes his slow and
fearful step. So long and so busily has time been at work to fill this
chosen spot--so repeatedly has Constantinople poured into this ultimate
receptacle almost its whole contents--that the capital of the living,
spite of its immense population, scarcely counts a single breathing
inhabitant for every ten silent inmates of this city of the dead. Already
do its fields of blooming sepulchres stretch far away on every side,
across the brow of the hills and the bend of the valleys; already are the
avenues which cross each other at every step in this domain of death, so
lengthened, that the weary stranger, from whatever point he comes, still
finds before him many a dreary mile of road between marshalled tombs and
mournful cypresses, ere he reaches his journey's seemingly receding end;
and yet, every year does this common patrimony of all the heirs to decay,
still exhibit a rapidly increasing size, a fresh and wider line of