"Sleep, sir! No! They are running up my legs like coach 'osses. Hosman's skin is like an ironclad, but they give him no peace; they worry awful, that they do. I have been trying to smoke them off me, but 'bacca is nothing to these fleas. We shall be eaten alive if we stay here much longer—I know we shall!" Having come to much the same conclusion, I ordered him to saddle the horses, and, to the astonishment of the proprietor of the hovel, we left our quarters three hours before daybreak. Presently the country became more mountainous. It reminded me a good deal of the Saxon Switzerland, the scenery being very picturesque as our path wound round some wooded slopes. We were in a country abounding with pine forests. The telegraph-wire to Sivas was stretched not far from our track. Many saw-mills, turned by the mountain streams, showed where the telegraph-posts had been made; they had then been dragged by oxen to their destination. Our road ran through a pleasant valley, and by the side of a mountain stream known as the Gogderi Soo. In a few hours we arrived at a river, called the Tchekar Ermak. It is crossed by a weak stone bridge, the stream being about thirty yards wide by four deep. We halted for the night at the village of Tchirklik, a two days' march, or thirteen hours from Kulhurdook. I was accommodated in a house which actually possessed two rooms. They were not constructed in the side of a hill, as the other dwellings in the neighbourhood, but of wood—one room being reserved for the proprietor's cattle, sheep, and camels, the other for himself and harem. I was permitted to sleep in the stable. Osman, with Radford and our horses, were lodged in a hovel at the other end of the village. In the middle of the night I awoke with a feeling of suffocation, my throat was dry and parched, my eyes began to smart; a crackling noise overhead could be heard. It gradually dawned upon me that the house was on fire. I now discovered that the flames from the fireplace had ignited some boards in the chimney: they, in their turn, had set fire to the roof. If the proprietor, who was sleeping in the next room, were not immediately aroused, his house would in all probability be destroyed. The building was surrounded by a courtyard with high mud walls. The space outside the dwelling was infested by dogs. They at once came smelling around me. Shutting the door, to prevent the flames from bursting out inside, I went to the harem. The entrance was barred from within. The proprietor and his wives were fast asleep, they paid no attention to the noise which I made at the door.