in butter, and then the miilazim of zaptiehs takes me under his special protection and shows me around the town.  He shows me where but a few days ago the Nalikhan bazaar, with all its multifarious merchandise, was destroyed by fire, and points out the temporary stalls, among the black ruins, that have been erected by the pasha for the poor merchants who, with heavy hearts and doleful countenance, are trying to recuperate their shattered fortunes.  He calls my attention to two-story wooden houses and other modest structures, which, in the simplicity of his Asiatic soul, he imagines are objects of interest; and then he takes me to the headquarters of his men, and sends out for coffee in order to make me literally his guest.  Here, in his office, he calls my attention to a chromo hanging on the wall, which he says came from Stamboul — Stamboul, where the Asiatic Turk fondly imagines all wonderful things originate.This chromo is certainly a wonderful thing in its way.  It represents an English trooper in the late Soudan expedition kneeling behind the shelter of a dead camel, and with a revolver in each hand keeping at bay a crowd of Arab spearmen.  The soldier is badly wounded, but with smoking revolvers and an evident determination to die hard, he has checked, and is still checking, the advance of somewhere about ten thousand Arab troops.  No wonder the people of Keshtobek thought an Englishman and a revolver quite safe in travelling without zaptiehs; some of them had probably been to Nalikhan and seen this same chromo.

When it grows dark the mulazim takes me to the public coffee-garden, near the burned bazaar, a place which ia really no garden at all only some broad, rude benches encircling a round water-tank or fountain, and which is fenced in with a low, wabbly picket-fence.  Seated crossed-legged on the benches are a score of sober-sided Turks, smoking nargilehs and cigarettes, and sipping coffee; the feeble light dispensed by a lantern on top of a pole in the centre of the tank makes the darkness of the “garden” barely visible; a continuous splashing of water, the result of the overflow from a pipe projecting three feet above the surface, furnishes the only music; the sole auricular indication of the presence of patrons is when some customer orders “kahvay” or “nargileh” in a scarcely audible tone of voice; and this is the Turk’s idea of an evening’s enjoyment.

Returning to the khan, I find it full of happy people looking at the bicycle; commenting on the wonderful marifet (skill) apparent in its mechanism, and the no less marvellous marifet required in riding it.  They ask me if I made it myself and hatch-lira ? (how many liras ?) and then requesting the privilege of looking at my teskeri they find rare amusement in comparing my personal charms with the description of my form and features as interpreted by the passport officer in Galata.  Two men among them have in some manner picked up a sand from the sea-shore of