Yesterday evening’s downpour has little injured the road between the mehana and Philippopolis, the capital of Eoumelia, and I wheel to the confines of that city in something over two hours.  Philippopolis is most beautifully situated, being built on and around a cluster of several rocky hills; a situation which, together with a plenitude of waving trees, imparts a pleasing and picturesque effect.  With a score of tapering minarets pointing skyward among the green foliage, the scene is thoroughly Oriental; but, like all Eastern cities, “distance lends enchantment to the view.”  All down the Maritza Valley, and in lesser numbers extending southward and eastward over the undulating plains of Adrianople, are many prehistoric mounds, some twenty-five or thirty feet high, and of about the same diameter.  Sometimes in groups, and sometimes singly, these mounds occur so frequently that one can often count a dozen at a time.  In the vicinity of Philippopolis several have been excavated, and human remains discovered reclining beneath large slabs of coarse pottery set up like an inverted V, thus:  A, evidently intended as a water-shed for the preservation of the bodies.  Another feature of the landscape, and one that fails not to strike the observant traveller as a melancholy feature, are the Mohammedan cemeteries.  Outside every town and near every village are broad areas of ground thickly studded with slabs of roughly hewn rock set up on end; cities of the dead vastly more populous than the abodes of life adjacent.  A person can stand on one of the Philippopolis heights and behold the hills and vales all around thickly dotted with these rude reminders of our universal fate.  It is but as yesterday since the Turk occupied these lands, and was in the habit of making it particularly interesting to any “dog of a Christian” who dared desecrate one of these Mussulman cemeteries with his unholy presence; but to-day they are unsurrounded by protecting fence or the moral restrictions of dominant Mussulmans, and the sheep, cows, and goats of the “infidel giaour” graze among them; and oh, shade of Mohammed! hogs also scratch their backs against the tombstones and root around, at their own sweet will, sometimes unearthing skulls and bones, which it is the Turkish custom not to bury at any great depth.  The great number and extent of these cemeteries seem to appeal to the unaccustomed observer in eloquent evidence against a people whose rule find religion have been of the sword.

While obtaining my breakfast of bread and milk in the Philippopolis bazaar an Arab ragamuffin rushes in, and, with anxious gesticulations toward the bicycle, which I have from necessity left outside, and cries of “Monsieur, monsieur,” plainly announces that there is something going wrong in connection with the machine.  Quickly going out I find that, although I left it standing on the narrow apology for a sidewalk, it is in imminent danger of coming to grief at the instance of a broadly laden donkey, which,