In those coming days another feature of Constantinopolitan life will
also have disappeared, which is now one of the most curious of her
curiosities--the dogs. And, as this is a subject which really merits
attention, I am going to devote some little space to it. Constantinople
is one huge dog-kennel; every one can see this for himself as soon as
he gets there. The dogs constitute a second population in the city,
and, while they are less numerous than the first, they are hardly less
interesting as a study. Every one knows how the Turks love and protect
them, but just why they do so is not so easy to decide. I could not,
for my own part, make out whether it is because the Koran recommends
all men to be merciful to animals, or because they are supposed, like
certain birds, to bring good luck, or because the Prophet loved them,
or because they figure in their sacred books, or because, as some
insist, when Muhammad the Conqueror made his victorious entry into the
city through the breach in the gate of St. Romanus he was accompanied
by a following composed principally of dogs. Be this as it may, the
fact remains that many Turks leave considerable sums at their death for
their maintenance, and when Sultan Abdul-Mejid had them all transported
to the island of Marmora the people murmured, so that they were brought
back amid public rejoicings, and the government has not attempted to
interfere with them since. At the same time, the dog, having been
pronounced by the Koran to be an unclean animal, not one out of all the
innumerable hordes which infest Constantinople has an owner; any Turk
harboring one would consider his house defiled. They are associated
together in a great republic of freebooters, without collars or masters
or kennels or homes or laws. Their entire lives are passed in the
streets. There, scratching out little dens for themselves, they sleep
and eat, are born, nourish their young, and die; and no one, at least
in Stambul, interferes in the smallest degree with their occupations or
their repose. They are the masters of the road. With us it is customary
for the dogs to withdraw to allow horses and people to pass by. There
it is quite different, people, camels, horses, donkeys, and vehicles
making sometimes quite a considerable circuit in order not to disturb
the dogs: sometimes in one of the most crowded quarters of Stambul
four or five of them, curled up fast asleep directly in the middle of
the street, will make the entire population turn out for half a day.
And in Pera and Galata it is nearly as bad, only there it is done
less out of respect for the dogs themselves than for their numbers.
Were you to attempt to clear the road, you would have to keep up an
uninterrupted series of blows and kicks from the moment you set out
until your return. The utmost they will do voluntarily is, when they
see a carriage and four coming like the wind down some level street,
at the last moment, when there is no possible hope of its turning
out and the horses’ hoofs are fairly grazing their backs, they will
slowly and unwillingly drag themselves a couple of feet to one side,
nicely calculating the least possible distance necessary to save
their precious necks. Laziness is the distinguishing quality of the
Constantinople dogs. They lie down in the middle of the street, five or
six or a dozen of them in a row or group, curled up in such a manner as
to look much more like heaps of refuse than living animals, and there
they will sleep away the entire day, undisturbed by the din and clamor
going on about them, and not rain or sun, wind or cold, has the least
power to affect them. When it snows, they sleep under the snow; when it
rains, they stay on until they are so completely covered with mud that
when they finally get up they look like unfinished clay models of dogs,
with nothing to indicate eyes, ears, or mouth.
The conditions of society, however, in Pera and Galata are not quite
so favorable to the contemplative life as in Stambul, owing to the
greater difficulty in obtaining food: in the latter place they live
_en pension_, while in the former they eat _à la carte_. They take the
place of scavengers, falling with joy upon refuse which hogs would
decline as food, willing, in fact, to eat pretty much everything short
of stones. No sooner have they swallowed sufficient to sustain life
than they compose themselves to slumber, and continue to sleep until
aroused again by the pangs of hunger. And they almost always sleep
in the same spot. The canine population of Constantinople is divided
into settlements and quarters, just as the human population is. Every
street and neighborhood is inhabited, or rather held possession of, by
a certain number of dogs, the relatives and friends of one family, who
never leave it themselves or allow strangers to come in. They have a
sort of police force, with outposts and sentries, who go the rounds
and act as scouts. Woe to that dog who, emboldened by hunger, dares to
adventure his person across the boundaries of his neighbors’ territory!
A crowd of infuriated curs give chase the instant his presence is
discovered; if he is caught, they make short work of him; otherwise he
is pursued as far as the confines of their own quarter, but no farther,
as the enemy’s country is nearly always both feared and respected.
It would be impossible to convey any just idea of the skirmishes and
pitched battles which arise over a disputed bone, a reigning belle, or
an infringement of territorial rights. Two dogs encounter one another;
a dispute follows, and instantly reinforcements pour in from every
street, lane, and alley; nothing can be seen but a confused, moving
mass enveloped in clouds of dust, out of which there issues such a
deafening hurlyburly of howls, yelps, and snarls as would crack the
ear-drums even of a deaf man. At last the group breaks up again, and,
as the dust subsides, the bodies of the fallen may be seen extended
on the ground. Love-passages, jealousies, duels, bloodshed, broken
limbs, and lacerated skins are the affairs of every hour. Occasionally
they assemble in such noisy troops in front of some shop that the
owner and his assistants are obliged, in the interests of trade,
to arm themselves with stools and bars and sally forth in approved
military style, taking the enemy by storm; and then there follows a
pandemonium of howls, yells, and lamentations mingling with the sound
of cracked heads and ribs, enough to fairly make the welkin ring. In
Pera and Galata especially these wretched beasts are so ill treated, so
accustomed to expect a blow whenever they see a stick, that at the mere
sound of a cane or umbrella on the sidewalk they make preparations for
flight: even when they seem to be fast asleep they frequently have the
corner of one eye, just the point of a pupil, open, with which to watch
attentively, for a quarter of an hour at a time, the slightest movement
of some distant object bearing a resemblance, no matter how slight, to
a stick. So unused are they to humane treatment that if you pat the
head of one of them in passing, a dozen others come running up, fawning
and gambolling and wagging their tails, to receive a like caress, and
accompany the generous patron all the way to the end of the street,
their eyes shining with joy and gratitude.
[Illustration: Group of Dogs.]
The condition of a dog in Pera and Galata is worse, all said, than that
of a spider in Holland, and their’s is usually admitted to be the most
persecuted race in all the animal kingdom. When one sees the existence
led by these miserable dogs, it is impossible not to think that there
must be for them, as well, some compensation in another world. Like
everything else in Constantinople, the sight of them recalled an
historical reminiscence, but in their case it seemed like the
bitterest irony to picture the life of Bayezid’s famous hunting-pack,
who ran about the imperial forests of Olympia wearing purple trappings
and collars set with pearls. What a contrast of social conditions!
Their unfortunate state has no doubt a great deal to do with their
hideous appearance, but, apart from that, they are almost all of the
mastiff breed or wolf-dogs, bearing some resemblance to both foxes and
wolves, or rather they do not bear a resemblance to anything, but are
a horrible race of mongrels, spotted over with strange colors--about
as large as the so-called butcher’s dog, and so thin that each rib
can be counted twenty feet off. Most of them, moreover, have become
so reduced in the course of a life of incessant warfare that if you
did not see them moving about you would be apt to take them for the
mutilated remains of dogs. You find them with their tails cut off,
ears torn, with skinned backs, sides laid open, blind in one eye, lame
in two legs, covered with wounds, devoured by flies, reduced to the
last possible stages to which a living dog can be brought--veritable
types of war, famine, and pestilence. The tail may be spoken of, in
connection with them, as an article of luxury: rare is it, indeed, for
a Constantinople dog to enjoy the possession of one for more than a
couple of months, at most, of public life. Poor creatures! they would
move a heart of stone to pity, and yet at times they are so grotesquely
maimed and altered, you see them going along with such a singular
gait, such odd, ungainly movements, that it is almost impossible not
to laugh outright. And, after all, neither hunger nor blows, nor even
warfare, constitutes their most serious trial, but a cruel custom which
has prevailed for some time in Pera and Galata. Sometimes in the middle
of the night the peaceful inhabitants of a quarter are aroused from
their slumbers by a diabolical uproar: rushing to their windows, they
behold a crowd of dogs leaping and dancing about in agony, bounding
high in the air, striking their heads against the walls, or rolling
over and over in the dust: presently the uproar subsides, and in the
morning, by the early light, the street is seen all strewn with dead
bodies. It is the doctor or apothecary of the quarter, who, being in
the habit of studying at night, has distributed a handful of pills in
order to obtain a fortnight’s quiet. Through these and other means it
happens that there is some slight decrease in the number of dogs in
Pera and Galata; but what does this avail, since at Stambul they are
so rapidly on the increase that it is merely a question of time when
the supply of food there will prove insufficient for their support, and
colonists will be sent over to the other shore to supply the places
of those families which have been exterminated and fill up all blanks
caused by war, famine, or poison.