On one occasion we stood for thirty-five minutes in an icy wind listening to the roar of the Drin, invisible in the black gulf 500 feet below. Horses slipped and fell at every instant, and every now and then one would go crashing into the gulf below. It was 10 o'clock when, tired, hungry and half frozen, we reached bivouac at Spas. Here we found that though dinner had been ready since 3 o'clock it could not be served because all the plates and spoons were on the pack animals, which remained in the village below. Neither had the tents arrived, and as Spas contains only five or six peasant houses accommodation was at a premium. Colonel Mitrovitz, head of the mess, told me I would find room in a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. The house really was two hours distant, over fields deep in snow. When I got there at midnight I discovered that there were already nearly a score of occupants; but at least I was able to sleep in some straw near the fireside, instead of in the snow outside. Next morning I set out at 6 to get ahead of the main body of the headquarters staff. The day was magnificent and we slowly climbed foot by foot to the cloud-capped summits of the mountains. Up and up we went, thousands and thousands of feet. Every few hundred yards we came on bodies of men frozen or starved to death. At one point there were four in a heap. They were convicts from Prisrend penitentiary, who had been sent in chains across the mountains. They had been shot either for insubordination or because they were unable to proceed. Two other nearly naked bodies were evidently those of Serbian soldiers murdered by Albanians. VII--"I OVERTOOK KING PETER" Soon after midday I overtook King Peter and his staff. Despite his seventy-six years, he marched on foot with vigor younger men might have envied. During all the four hours I marched with the royal staff he never once mounted his horse, which a soldier was leading behind him. When we stopped for the night at Bredeti King Peter had a ten hours' march to his credit. It was at this point I came across the first of Essad Pacha's gendarmes. They had been sent out by that heavy-handed ruler to protect the King and his staff. They were a picturesque lot, many of them barefooted, but there was no doubt about the first class quality of their rifles and revolvers. They wore the Serbian gendarme's uniform--that is, they wore any uniform--of which the Nish government had some months before made them a present of several thousand. The attitude of the population could not be described as friendly to the Serbians, but at the same time there were no outward signs of hostility. They rarely saluted and showed no desire whatever to offer hospitality. In the case of the royal household and headquarters staff Essad Pacha had requisitioned accommodations, but any one not belonging to one of these units had every chance of faring badly. All they had to depend on were wayside caravanserai.