All pretence of road-making seems to have been abandoned; or, what is more probable, has never been seriously attempted, the visible roadways from village to village being mere ox-wagon and pack-donkey tracks, crossing the wheat-fields and uncultivated tracts in any direction.  The soil is a loose, black loam, which the rain converts into mud, through which I have to trundle, wooden scraper in hand; and I not infrequently have to carry the bicycle through the worst places.  The morning is sultry, requiring good roads and a breeze-creating pace for agreeable going.  Harvesting and threshing are going forward briskly, but the busy hum of the self-binder and the threshing-machine is not heard; the reaping is done with rude hooks, and the threshing by dragging round and round, with horses or oxen, sleigh-runner shaped, broad boards, roughed with flints or iron points, making the surface resemble a huge rasp.  Large gangs of rough-looking Armenians, Arabs, and Africans are harvesting the broad acres of land-owning pashas, the gangs sometimes counting not less than fifty men.  Several donkeys are always observed picketed near them, taken, wherever they go, for the purpose of carrying provisions and water.  Whenever I happen anywhere near one of these gangs they all come charging across the field, reaping-hooks in hand, racing with each other and good-naturedly howling defiance to competitors.  A band of Zulus charging down on a fellow, and brandishing their assegais, could scarcely present a more ferocious front.  Many of them wear no covering of any kind on the upper part of the body, no hat, no foot-gear, nothing but a pair of loose, baggy trousers, while the tidiest man among them would be immediately arrested on general principles in either England or America.  Rough though they are, they appear, for the most part, to be good-natured fellows, and although they sometimes emphasize their importunities of “bin! bin!” by flourishing their reaping-hooks threateningly over my head, and one gang actually confiscates the bicycle, which they lay up on a shock of wheat, and with much flourishing of reaping-hooks as they return to their labors, warn me not to take it away, these are simply good-natured pranks, such as large gangs of laborers are wont to occasionally indulge in the world over.

Streams have to be forded to-day for the first time in Europe, several small creeks during the afternoon; and near sundown I find my pathway into a village where I propose stopping for the night, obstructed by a creek swollen bank-full by a heavy thunder-shower in the hills.  A couple of lads on the opposite bank volunteer much information concerning the depth of the creek at different points; no doubt their evident mystification at not being understood is equalled only by the amazement at my answers.  Four peasants come down to the creek, and one of them kindly wades in and shows that it is only waist deep.  Without more ado I ford it, with the bicycle on my shoulder,