Show I GUEEREST fIE DEPARTMENT I Of all the queer things to be found In Constantinople none seems s stupid as the fire engines if they can be called by so big a name The houses In that city are almost all built of wood and i a fire does start it burns fast and fiercely and yet the precautions taken for discovering fires and the methods of extinguishing them are most feeble 1 quarter And then the fire department I comes running down the street I end I I slats of a long barrel carried on the shoulders of half a doe men c htwaro I relieved as fast as they get tired by I other men who run along with them Arrived at the see of the fire there I is tremendous confusion All the frI < j I men get in one anrthers way and per 1 haps in the course of an hour 3 fee THE OLDEST FIRE BRIGADE l THE WORD THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN KNOW PUT OUT A EIRE There is a constant watch kept on the summit of the old Genoese tower In Ga lata a similar watch is kept on the tall tower of the Serakierat in Stamboul and another on a hill behind Candili one of the suburbs From this last place a cannon is fired to give warning of a fire and when this takes place the watchmen of the city knock on the shutters of nil the houses crying There is a fire in such and such a feeble hand pumps are playing gentle streams of water somewhere in the neighborhood of the burning buildings if the fro has not burned itself out bv a i that time How would such a sys era work In New York or Chicago not to j 1 mention smaller cities Yet this Is the I i Constantinople method of not putting S out fires So far there is no case on record of one having been quenched by I this funny brigade |