After leaving the plain the train begins to climb over a watershed, and gradually winds a tortuous way, up, up, up to the snow and the clouds. In a few hours the line is a succession of alternating tunnels and bridges--passages through the mountain-tops and spans across the chasms. At every tunnel’s mouth and at every bridge was a little group of tents and brush huts, from which ragged guards emerged to get the bag of bread the train dropped off. A sea of mountains rolls away on all sides. On the nearer slopes rectangular carpets of yellow corn and red and white poppies spread out at irregular intervals. On the second line the fields are less distinct. Further off the mountains blur out into blue and grey, and finally mix colour with the clouds. Shortly after midday the train threads the eye of a high peak and emerges in sight, across a far valley, of Vodena--Watertown. It does not descend to the plain and climb again, for that, besides being impracticable, is the most direct route to the town. Around the mountain sides the train winds for an hour through more tunnels and over more bridges, but in view, when in the open, of a score of slender silver ribbons trailing down a precipice that falls abruptly from the town’s edge. Passing back of Vodena the track crosses the mountain streams, which tumble through the streets of the town on their way to the fantastic falls. Not the least of the charms on this road to Monastir is Lake Ostrova, a mountain bowl of clear green water. The train does not cross the lake, for again that would be too direct; it circles the shore at the base of the mountains, taking, of course, the longer way round. To bridge a Macedonian lake is like putting a pot-hat on an American Indian. It is a legend in the Caza of Ostrova that the lake rose suddenly from springs about a hundred years ago; and perhaps there is some truth in the record, for at one end, on an island just large enough to hold a mosque, stands a lone minaret--all that remains, it is said, of a once populous village. There is always incentive for wild imagination in Macedonian mountains. Several regiments of Albanians were camped at the village on the shore of the lake, and every man of them gathered at the station to meet our train. A field of white fezzes swept away from the car window in every direction for a hundred yards. When Albanians appear Slav peasants often suspend business. Generally fresh trout, ‘still kicking,’ are to be had at Ostrova station, but this day not a single native ‘dug-out’ was drawn up on the beach. [Illustration: ON A MACEDONIAN LAKE.]