Fortunately for me, trains in Turkey are not very punctual in starting. On arriving at the railway, about ten minutes past seven, I found that I had time to take my ticket to Hadem Kui, a small station an hour and a half from Constantinople. There were two Englishmen in the same carriage as myself, one of them an old friend whose acquaintance I had made some years previous in Madrid. They intended to stop at a swamp a few miles from the city, and spend the day snipe-shooting. Upon my remarking that the railway seemed to take a very circuitous course, my friend smiled. "Yes," he said, "when the line was about to be constructed, the Government agreed to pay so much per mile,—the result has been that, although the country is level, the line is not quite so straight as it might be." "Poor Turks!" said his companion, "they are always being abused by the Christians, and yet the latter make a very good thing out of them. Why, only the other day, a quantity of Krupp guns were brought here. The cost price was 150_l._ per gun, but the Turks had to pay 750_l._" "The Christians are too much for them in a bargain," he added. My fellow-travellers now left the train, which had stopped at the side of a wide marsh, and before our engine was again in motion, the report of a gun made me aware that their sport had already commenced. Half an hour later I arrived at the little station of Hadem Kui. "Is there a horse waiting for me?" I inquired. "No," was the answer of the station-master, a Hungarian. "Can I hire an animal?" "No," was the reply. "How far is it to the village where Colonel H—— is living?" "Seven miles." "What sort of a road?" "No road at all, but deep mud up to the horse's girths." "When does the next train go back to Constantinople?" "Not till seven p.m." I certainly did not bless my friend H——. To kick my heels about for twelve hours in a station destitute of a waiting-room, and with nothing to occupy my time, was not an agreeable prospect. "I tell you what you had better do," said the station-master, "send a boy with a note to your friend. There is probably some misunderstanding about the horse, and the boy will be able to get to the village and back again in a few hours."