The postal system is a curiosity to those who are accustomed to free delivery several times a day. It would be supposed that the Turkish post would carry all letters for people in Turkey, since Turkey is a member of the International Postal Union. At all the seaports, however, one finds foreign post offices, which do a large business in receiving and forwarding mail by all the steamers. To points in the interior they cannot deliver mail. In Tripoli we had the French, and later the Austrian service. In 1890 cholera appeared in Tripoli and all steamers stopped calling at the port, to avoid quarantine. We were confined to the use of the Turkish mail. Two messengers brought the mail by land from Beirut each week. It was Tripoli which was infected with cholera, and yet the incoming mail was stopped outside the city and drenched with carbolic acid, while the outgoing mail was not touched. The mail distributor in Tripoli could not read any language, not even Arabic, and so he used to bring the bag directly to our house and empty it on the floor, in order to get my help in assorting the letters for him. We were glad to have the first pick of the mail, as it assured our receiving all our own mail, and that promptly. At the last conference of the International Postal Union there was a general reduction of postage and an increase in the unit of weight. Turkey has given her adherence to this international arrangement, but maintains her old internal rates so that we have the present absurd condition, that a piaster stamp will carry twenty grams to any place abroad, while it will carry only fifteen grams from one town to its next neighbor. Additional weight abroad requires three quarters of a piaster for each additional twenty grams, while for internal use every additional fifteen grams requires a full piaster. Thus a letter weighing sixty grams will go from an interior town like Homs to San Francisco for two piasters and a half, while the same letter, if sent from Homs to Tripoli, would cost four piasters.