please; and they never worry themselves about the tribute, simply putting it down on the slate whenever it comes due.  The Turks might just as well wipe out the account now as at any time, for they will eventually have to whistle for the whole indebtedness.  A smart rain-storm drives me into an uninviting mehana near the Roumelian frontier, for two unhappy hours, at noon — a mehana where the edible accommodations would wring an “Ugh” from an American Indian — and the sole occupants are a blear-eyed Bulgarian, in twenty-year-old sheep-skin clothes, whose appearance plainly indicates an over-fondness for mastic, and an unhappy-looking black kitten.  Fearful lest something, perchance, might occur to compel me to spend the night here, I don my gossamers as soon as the rain slacks up a little, and splurge ahead through the mud toward Ichtiman, which, my map informs me, is just on this side of the Kodja Balkans, which rise up in dark wooded ridges at no great distance ahead, to the southward.  The mud and rain combine to make things as disagreeable as possible, but before three o’clock I reach Ichtiman, to find that I am in the province of Eoumelia, and am again required to produce my passport.

I am now getting well down into territory that quite recently was completely under the dominion of the “unspeakable Turk " — unspeakable, by the way, to the writer in more senses than one — and is partly so even now, but have as yet seen very little of the “mysterious veiled lady.”  The Bulgarians are Christian when they are anything, though the great majority of them are nothing religiously.  A comparatively comfortable mehana is found here at Ichtiman, and the proprietor, being able to talk German, readily comprehends the meaning of hune-hen fabrica; but I have to dispense with cherries.

Mud is the principal element of the road leading out of Ichtiman and over the Kodja Balkans this morning.  The curious crowd of Ichtimanites that follow me through the mud-holes and filth of their native streets, to see what is going to happen when I get clear of them, are rewarded but poorly for their trouble; the best I can possibly do being to make a spasmodic run of a hundred yards through the mud, which I do purely out of consideration for their inquisitiveness, since it seems rather disagreeable to disappoint a crowd of villagers who are expectantly following and watching one’s every movement, wondering, in their ignorance, why you don’t ride instead of walk.  It is a long, wearisome trundle up the muddy slopes of the Kodja Balkans, but, after the descent into the Maritza Valley begins, some little ridable surface is encountered, though many loose stones are lying about, and pitch-holes innumerable, make riding somewhat risky, considering that the road frequently leads immediately alongside precipices.  Pack-donkeys are met on these mountain-roads, sometimes filling the way, and corning doggedly and indifferently forward, even in places where I have little choice between scrambling