Down the street now comes a parade of bullock carts, laden with wool. The clumsy animals lumber lazily along, while the drivers, one of whom walks in front of each team, tap deftly with their long poles first one beast and then the other between the horns, to remind them to stay awake until they arrive at the market. The carts are heavy affairs and look for all the world like some sort of ancient chariots. And I may state here that the bullock, a prototype of the water-buffalo of the Far East, is a domestic animal commonly found in Bulgaria, and for what reason it was originally imported to the country I have often wondered. Nevertheless, it seems thoroughly acclimated, and is used as a beast of burden by the peasants and farmers, not only on the plains but in the mountains as well, where, you might imagine, its awkwardness and weight would be to its disadvantage in negotiating the rocky roads. In the slender shadow of the mosque tower another heavily-clothed peasant and his wife are engaged in selling live stock. The woman fondles a suckling pig under her left arm, while, with her free hand, she holds another, head downward, by the hind feet. Each of these pigs may be purchased for two _francs_, and for three, a live lamb from the husband. A pair of spring chickens brings the same ridiculous price as a suckling pig. [Illustration: A GROUP POSED FOR THE CAMERA AT THE FRIDAY MARKET, SOPHIA.] In wedging your way through the crowd, which by this time surges over the entire square and overflows into the adjacent streets, you stumble over an old Turkish woman, in baggy, yellow bloomers and curved-toed slippers, who has deliberately spread her array of embroideries in the very centre of the sidewalk. At the noon hour, when the Muezzin again calls the faithful to prayer, the market is at its height. From a distance, the monotonous drone of the street-cries sounds like the hum of a myriad insects, the swelling cadenzas of which, as they float out upon the soporific atmosphere, may be heard in any part of the city. At last the peasants, after a profitable holiday in town, prepare to start on their homeward journey. By the middle of the afternoon the last solitary vender has departed with his pack-animals or his bullock cart, his fur coat and his woollen stockings. Then the street cleaners and street sprinklers take the square in hand. They sprinkle the dust and scrub the pavement and in half an hour you would not have believed that that same square was the place from which emanated, but a short time before, the Babelonic hum-drum of hundreds of perspiring market-people. * * * * *