The chief commissary of police with the new coat and the brass buttons--office and uniform modelled on a Russian pattern--had a busy time during our stay. Happily he was by nature an agreeable man; but he was fresh from Constantinople. His poor brain had been crammed with all those irksome regulations which have been spread over the Russian Empire and a great part of Europe, presumably from a Prussian source. An Englishman, it is true, should perhaps endure them with complacency; for does he not owe his wealth and his colonies to the prevalence of this cancer among his neighbours, and to his own complete freedom from the disease? Passports were examined at Mush for the first time since our arrival in Turkey--a country in which the traditionally liberal treatment of travellers is gradually giving place to measures of exclusion. My letters of introduction were read with mingled feelings--disappointment that they rendered necessary very special and delicate treatment, and relief that they clearly placed the responsibility for our visit upon officials in a high place. We were rarely left alone--not even in our own apartment; for we slept and ate in the principal room of the residence allotted us, from which it was impossible to exclude the master of the house and his companions; and the presence of a single visitor was always accompanied by the entrance of the commissary or his adjutant. One of the two was never absent from our side. The anxiety of such a novel charge sat heavily upon both of them; both looked quite worn out by the time we were ready to depart. Early on the morning following our arrival we were quite ready to sally forth; but the lesser official was already astir, and besought us to postpone our walk until he should have apprised his chief. The commissary was not long in coming, his toilette half completed; and no sooner had he saluted us than his sleepy eyes fell on the camera case, and he enquired what it might contain. A camera! had we received an iradeh from the Sultan to take photographs of what we saw? All photography was forbidden unless such a permit were forthcoming. So we abandoned the camera with good grace.