Travellers are allowed to enjoy this hospitality for three full days; when these have expired, they must change their hostel. In these places I found, as I have already told you, most convenient lodgings, but they were not to be met with everywhere. Sometimes, if I could not get a house to lodge in, I spent the night in a cattle shed. I used to look out for a large and roomy stable; in one part of it there would be a regular fire-place, while the other part was assigned to the sheep and oxen. It is the fashion, you must know, for the sheep and the shepherd to live under the same roof. My plan was to screen off the part where the fire was with my tent hangings, put my table and bed by the fire side, and there I was as happy as a king. In the other part of the stable my servants took their ease in plenty of good clean straw, while some fell asleep by the bonfire which they were wont to make in an orchard or meadow hard by, for the purpose of cooking our food. By means of the fire they were able to withstand the cold; and, as to keeping it burning, no vestal virgin at Rome was ever more careful than they. I dare say you will wonder how I managed to console my people for their bad lodgings. You will surmise that wine, the usual remedy for bad nights, is not easily found in the heart of Turkey. This is quite true. It is not in every district that you can get wine, and this is especially the case in places where Christians do not live. For ofttimes, getting wearied of Turkish insolence, they leave the neighbourhood of the high road, and take refuge in pathless wilds, where the land is poorer, and they themselves are safer, leaving their conquerors in possession of the more fertile spots. When we drew near to such places, the Turks warned us that we should find no wine there, and we then despatched a caterer the day before under the escort of a Turk, to obtain a supply from the neighbouring Christian districts. So my people did not lack this solace of their hardships. To them wine supplied the place of feather beds and bolsters, and every other comfort that induces sleep. As for myself, I had in my carriage some flasks of excellent wine, which supplied my own private table. I have now told you how I and my people provided ourselves with wine; but we had one hardship almost worse than want of wine, and this was the dreadful way in which our nights were broken. Sometimes, in order to reach a good halting-place betimes, it was necessary to rise very early, while it was still dark. On these occasions it not unfrequently happened that our Turkish guides mistook the moonlight for the approach of dawn, and proceeded to wake us soon after midnight in a most noisy fashion. For the Turks, you must know, have neither hours to mark their time, nor milestones to mark their roads.