On landing, they were shipped West and farther West. They travelled by polluted rivers, and over mountains stripped of their verdure and robbed of the wealth of their veins. They saw the refuse of the mines left like broken trappings of war on the battle-field. They saw the glare of a thousand flaming ovens where coal was being baked into coke, and in their shadows they saw besmirched and bedraggled towns, now clustering, now trailing along, now losing themselves in the darkness, and now glowing again in the lurid light of giant flames pouring from huge furnaces. They saw day turned into night by smoke, and night turned into day by unquenched fires, and they knew not whether it was day or night, or heaven or hell to which they had come. At the end of the journey they were led into a deep ravine through which an inky river struggled, and over which hung a cloud as immovable as if the released elements were forming again into solids. Twelve men were counted by some one who led them, or drove them, or pushed them into a hut which had once been painted some dingy colour, but now was part of the gloom around it. Other twelve men were made to enter another hut, and so on, until all were disposed of. By signs they were given to understand that this was home; so they spread out their woolen coats and went to sleep. When morning came, after a breakfast of cheap whiskey and poor bread, they were marched into the mill of a certain corporation. It would do no good to mention the name of this corporation, and it would do no harm. No one would be offended; for there is no one to offend. I have very dear friends who own stock in that company, but they just draw dividends--they do not control the mill. The man and the men who run it produce the dividends; they do not own the stock, certainly not all of it. I cannot single out that corporation; it is not the only sinner nor the chief one, and that would be its only consolation, were it looking for anything so unpractical. My Bulgarians saw boiling pots of metal and red-hot ingots of metal and men of metal, who shouted at them in an unknown tongue, and the louder they shouted the less the men understood. Little by little, however, they grew accustomed to the tumult, and learned to walk skillfully on the inch plank which alone separated them from death and destruction. They found consolation in the bulging envelope full of money which came to them at the end of the week; for it was much money, exchanged into their currency, more money than three months' labour brought them among the roses, the poppies and the maize.