indicate), I am politely disarmed, and conducted to a guard-room in the police-barracks, and for some twenty minutes am favored with the exclusive society of a uniformed guard and the unhappy reflections of a probable heavy fine, if not imprisonment.  I am inclined to think afterward that in arresting and detaining me the officer was simply showing off his authority a little to his fellow-Hermoulites, clustered about me and the bicycle, for, at the expiration of half an hour, my revolver and passport are handed back to me, and without further inquiries or explanations I am allowed to depart in peace.  As though in wilful aggravation of the case, a village of gypsies have their tents pitched and their donkeys grazing in the last Mohammedan cemetery I see ere passing over the Roumelian border into Turkey proper, where, at the very first village, the general aspect of religious affairs changes, as though its proximity to the border should render rigid distinctions desirable.  Instead of the crumbling walls and tottering minarets, a group of closely veiled women are observed praying outside a well-preserved mosque, and praying sincerely too, since not even my ncver-before-seen presence and the attention-commanding bicycle are sufficient to win their attention for a moment from their devotions, albeit those I meet on the road peer curiously enough from between the folds of their muslin yashmaks.  I am worrying along to-day in the face of a most discouraging head-wind, and the roads, though mostly ridable, are none of the best.  For much of the way there is a macadamized road that, in the palmy days of the Ottoman dominion, was doubtless a splendid highway, but now weeds and thistles, evidences of decaying traffic and of the proximity of the Eoumelian railway, are growing in the centre, and holes and impassable places make cycling a necessarily wide-awake performance.

Mustapha Pasha is the first Turkish town of any importance I come to, and here again my much-required “passaporte” has to be exhibited; but the police-officers of Mustapha Pasha seem to be exceptionally intelligent and quite agreeable fellows.  My revolver is in plain view, in its accustomed place; but they pay no sort of attention to it, neither do they ask me a whole rigmarole of questions about my linguistic accomplishments, whither I am going, whence I came, etc., but simply glance at my passport, as though its examination were a matter of small consequence anyhow, shake hands, and smilingly request me to let them see me ride.  It begins to rain soon after I leave Mustapha Pasha, forcing me to take refuge in a convenient culvert beneath the road.  I have been under this shelter but a few minutes when I am favored with the company of three swarthy Turks, who, riding toward Mustapha Pasha on horseback, have sought the same shelter.  These people straightway express their astonishment at finding rne and the bicycle under the culvert, by first commenting among themselves; then they turn a battery of Turkish