A little further up on the shores of the stream was a group of Kurdish porters, big, athletic fellows, watching a bout of wrestling: two of their companions stripped to the waist, their legs and feet bare, their bodies soaked in oil, engaged in a bout of cat-as-catch-can, while further up some Laze sailors of the Black Sea were dancing their slow rhythmic national dance to the sound of weird flutes and tambourines. We had to go well upstream to find a place where we could enjoy our picnic peacefully and without onlookers. But I must say that we enjoyed it thoroughly, quite as much as the spectacle we had on our way up and down the river. I could not help however realizing how much a few years had changed the general aspect of the Sweet Waters of Asia. Before my departure it used to be the smartest place to go to during the good season on Friday and Sunday afternoons. You would meet all your friends there and the place used to be congested with the most graceful “caiks” and rowboats of the Bosphorus. On Sunday we went to tea at the house of Mahmoud Pasha. It was a big affair, almost an official reception, as are all entertainments given by the family of Mahmoud Pasha. This family is what might be called another great and old Turkish clan. At present it is probably the most socially prominent Turkish family of Constantinople and the reason underlying its social activities is quite well known among the other Turkish families who, while possibly not entirely approving them, hold the family of Mahmoud Pasha in great respect for the utterly unselfish manner in which all its members live up to their convictions. Its social activities are looked upon as having a political reason or significance. In the first place the family was one of the first and bitterest enemies of the Committee of Union and Progress which, after engineering most marvellously the Turkish Revolution, had instituted a most objectionable sort of plural dictatorship conducted by its own members. Mahmoud Pasha's family who, like all the other old Turkish families, did not approve of this dictatorship of the few, became very active in the Liberal Party organized in opposition to the Committee. So far, so good! But with the extreme enthusiasm which is a characteristic of all the family, it carried on its war against the Committee by taking a firm and active stand against any and all of its policies. It fought the Committee on every ground, not so much because it was opposed in principle to this or that other policy but just because this or that other policy emanated from the Committee. For this purpose it joined hands with every party that was formed against the Committee. It kept up this war for years and years and one of its members--a most brilliant specimen of young Turkish manhood--sacrificed his life on the altar of his convictions during this long-drawn feud. It was quite natural that when the Committee embraced a pro-German policy Mahmoud Pasha's family would automatically