With a morbidity of imagination to which I am unhappily subject, I followed up at length one fantastic and gloomy image, until I began to believe myself in a state of semi-existence, habiting with the dead; but the delusion was brief, for I was soon as disagreeably convinced that my affair was at present altogether with the living. I had been warned that Broussa was as celebrated for its bugs as for its baths, but I had never contemplated such martyrdom at Moudania! I sprang from the sofa, shook my habit with all my strength, and then, folding my fur pelisse for a pillow, I stretched myself on the carpet, and left the luxuries of the cushioned divan to my father; who, fortunately for him, proved to be a sounder sleeper than myself. At five o’clock, the horses came to the door; and after partaking sparingly of the provisions which we had brought with us, we drank a cup of excellent coffee, prepared by our hostess, and descended to the street; where my European saddle, by no means a common sight at Moudania, had collected a crowd of idlers. Had Cruikshank been by when we started, we should assuredly not have escaped his pungent pencil. My father led the van, mounted on a high-peaked country saddle, with a saddle-cloth of tarnished embroidery, and a pair of shovel stirrups; I followed, perched above a coarse woollen blanket, with my habit tucked up to preserve it from the stream of filth that was sluggishly making its way through the street; after me came our Greek servant, sitting upon a pile of cloaks and great coats, holding his pipe in one hand, and his umbrella in the other; and he was succeeded in his turn by the serudjhe who had charge of our luggage, and who rode between the portmanteaux, balancing the provision basket before him, dressed in a huge black turban, ample drawers of white cotton, and a vest of Broussa silk. The procession was completed by three attendants on foot, the owners of the horses; and thus we defiled through the narrow and dirty streets of Moudania, on our way to the ancient capital of the Ottoman Empire. For a time the mists were so dense that, although we had the sea-sand beneath the hoofs of our horses, we could not distinguish the water; and, as we turned suddenly to the right, and traversed a vineyard all alive with labourers, the vapours were rolling off the sides of the hills immediately in front of us. Feathered even to their summits with trees, they appeared to rest against the thick folds of heavy white mist in which they had been enveloped during the night, and presented the most fantastic shapes. I never traversed a more lovely country; vineyards were succeeded by mulberry plantations and olive groves, gardens of cucumber plants, beet-root, and melons, stretches of rich corn land, and immense plains, hemmed in by gigantic mountains, of which the unredeemed portions were a perfect garden.