land, and, if he produces anything above his own wants, he hauls it to market in an ox-wagon with roughly hewn wheels without tires, and whose creaking can plainly bo heard a mile away.  At present the Servian tills his little freehold with the clumsiest of implements, some his own rude handiwork, and the best imperfectly fashioned and forged on native anvils.  His plow is chiefly the forked limb of a tree, pointed with iron sufficiently to enable him to root around in the surface soil.  One would think the country might offer a promising field for some enterprising manufacturer of such implements as hoes, scythes, hay-forks, small, strong plows, cultivators, etc.

These people are industrious, especially the women.  I have entry met a Servian peasant woman returning homeward in the evening from her labor in the fields, carrying a fat, heavy baby, a clumsy hoe not much lighter than the youngster, and an earthenware water-pitcher, and, at the same time, industriously spinning wool with a small hand-spindle.  And yet some people argue about the impossibility of doing two things at once.  Whether these poor women have been hoeing potatoes, carrying the infant, and spinning wool at the same time all day I am unable to say, not having been an eye-witness, though I really should not be much astonished if they had.

CHAPTER VIII.

BULGARIA, ROUMELIA, AND INTO TURKEY.

The road leading into Bulgaria from the Zaribrod custom-house is fairly good for several kilometres, when mountainous and rough ways are encountered; it is a country of goats and goat-herds.  A rain-storm is hovering threateningly over the mountains immediately ahead, but it does not reach the vicinity I am traversing:  it passes to the southward, and makes the roads for a number of miles wellnigh impassable.  Up in the mountains I meet more than one " Bulgarian national express " — pony pack-trains, carrying merchandise to and fro between Sofia and Nisch.  Most of these animals are too heavily laden to think of objecting to the appearance of anything on the road, but some of the outfits are returning from Sofia in “ballast” only; and one of these, doubtless overjoyed beyond measure at their unaccustomed lissomeness, breaks through all restraint at my approach, and goes stampeding over the rolling hills, the wild-looking teamsters in full tear after them.  Whatever of this nature happens in this part of the world the people seem to regard with commendable complacence:  instead of wasting time in trying to quarrel about it, they set about gathering up the scattered train, as though a stampede were the most natural thing going.  Bulgaria — at least by the route I am crossing it — is a land of mountains and elevated plateaus, and the inhabitants I should call the “ranchers of the Orient,” in their general appearance and demeanor bearing the same relation to the plodding corn-hoer and scythe-swinger of the Morava Valley as