Three fresh languages assailed our ears in Widdin, and we plunged without preparation from the tangled maze of Roumanian and Servian into the quagmires of Bulgarian, Turkish, and modern Greek. We expected to hear two new languages here, but were surprised when we took our luncheon in a restaurant to find the bill of fare written in Greek, and to hear the waiters shouting orders in this lisping speech. We were now well across the line that separates the Orient from the Occident, and within touch of Constantinople and Athens. The markets gave us abundant evidences that we had reached a milder climate. Grapes were delicious, plentiful, and cheap, the best varieties costing less than two cents a pound. Tomatoes, egg-plant, and sweet-peppers were larger and better than we had seen before, and melons and green corn were almost out of season. Fresh meat was about five cents a pound, and caviar, for which delicacy Widdin is celebrated, was readily obtained, but at a price very little lower than in any other market. Knowing that we had a rather desolate part of the river before us, we laid in a good supply of stores of all kinds, except wine, which, we learned, was easily to be obtained at any village, and when the town had gone to sleep at noon, sought our passports at the police headquarters; but the official in charge of this department had gone home for his dinner and siesta, and we were obliged to kick our heels in idleness and impatience until he returned, an hour and a half later. Just below Widdin, at the Bulgarian town of Arčer Palanka, the general course of the Danube changes from the south to the east; and to the town of Cernavoda, in the Dobrudscha, about 300 miles below, the river keeps the latter direction with few and slight deviations. The long, straight reaches were here enlivened by many sailing-vessels of the fifteenth-century type, with high ornate sterns, and single mast set midway between the bow and stern. Sometimes [Illustration: TURKISH QUARTER, WIDDIN] [Illustration: TURKISH VESSELS]