nothing worse than a rent in the leg of my riding trousers.  Finally, after fording several small streams, giving half a dozen threshing-floor exhibitions, and running the gauntlet of no end of warlike canines, I reach the lost Torbali trail, and, find it running parallel with a range of hills, intersecting numberless small streams, across which are sometimes found precarious foot-bridges consisting of a tree-trunk felled across it from bank to bank, the work of some enterprising peasant for his own particular benefit rather than the outcome of public spirit.  Occasionally I bowl merrily along stretches of road which nature and the caravans together have made smooth enough even to justify a spurt; but like a fleeting dream, this favorable locality passes to the rearward, and is followed by another mountain-slope whose steep grade and rough surface reads " trundle only.”

They seem the most timid people hereabout I ever saw.  Few of them but show unmistakable signs of being frightened at my approach, even when I am trundling-the nickel-plate glistening in the sunlight, I think, inspires them with awe even at a distance — and while climbing this hill I am the innocent cause of the ignominious flight of a youth riding a donkey.  While yet two hundred yards away, he reins up and remains transfixed for one transitory moment, as if making sure that his eyes are not deceiving him, or that he is really awake, and then hastily turns tail and bolts across the country, belaboring his long-eared charger into quite a lively gallop in his wild anxiety to escape from my awe-inspiring presence; and as he vanishes across a field, he looks back anxiously to reassure himself that I am not giving chase.  Ere kind friends and thoughtful well-wishers, with all their warnings of danger, are three days’ journey behind, I find myself among people who run away at my approach.  Shortly afterward I observe this bold donkey-rider half a mile to the left, trying to pass me and gain my rear unobserved.  Others whom I meet this forenoon are more courageous; instead of resorting to flight, they keep boldly on their general course, simply edging off to a respectful distance from my road; some even venture to keep the road, taking care to give me a sufficiently large margin over and above my share of the way to insure against any possibility of giving offence; while others will even greet me with a feeble effort to smile, and a timid, hesitating look, as if undecided whether they are not venturing too far.  Sometimes I stop and ask these lion-hearted specimens whether I am on the right road, when they give a hurried reply and immediately take themselves off, as if startled at their own temerity.  These, of course, are lone individuals, with no companions to bolster up their courage or witness their cowardice; the conduct of a party is often quite the reverse.  Sometimes they seem determined not to let me proceed without riding for them, whether rocky ridge, sandy depression,