A ride across Macedonia affords a wealth of interest. Your escort is a study in Turk; every peasant you meet is a new picture; the mud-brick houses of the Christians and the Mohamedan _chiflics_ are curious and picturesque, and you must stop at times and absorb the scenery. You can sympathise on a journey like this with the small boy who cried because he had so many sweets he could not eat them all. Our route the first day lay through open country, and our escort was therefore quite small. We traversed the length of the Monastir valley and stayed the night at Prelip. It should be a happy, prosperous valley, for Nature smiles on it, but it is desolate and almost deserted. The cornfields hug the towns, and the villages hide themselves in obscure corners of the mountains. The ‘high road,’ a waggon-track, which we followed, skirted one village and passed through another, but they were made up of such huts as brigands would not stoop to enter. A sheep-dog, big framed and thick coated--but a bread-fed, skinny animal, with an uncertain lope and an unsound bark--came at us. One of the Zaptiehs drew his sword and gave it a trial swing at a low bush near his horse’s feet; but a peasant came crying after the dog, and called the brute off before it got within reach of the Turk’s blade. This was a Turk of less religious fervour than his fellows. The Zaptiehs smoked continually as they rode, and rolled cigarettes for us. They gave us lights from their cigarettes, but only the irreligious fellow would accept the same favour from us, for which I asked the reason. ‘They will not take fire from a giaour,’ he said. The insurgents had boasted that the crops would not be harvested this year, but the corn and the tobacco were already on their way to market. We passed Christian caravans which took the fields to give us the road, and Mohamedan carts which made us give them the right of way. The former were unarmed and most meek, doffing their dejected fezzes and standing abject with hands clasped on their stomachs as we passed. The others, down to the half-grown boys, carried pistols and guns, and bore themselves like a ruling race. The Turks, however, appeared to be as poor as the Christians, and once two veiled women, gathering their faded rags about them, even to covering their henna-tipped fingers, came up to our horses to beg. Nevertheless, their husband, riding a dwarfed donkey, carried a revolver.