During the time of the Russo-Turkish War in 1879, I remember witnessing the wholesale flight of thousands of them to Constantinople. Many arrived in ox-drawn waggons laden with their families, their goods and chattels, and driving before them their cattle, which they disposed of for a mere song in the market. Others were conveyed in railway-trucks, packed close like sheep in a pen, and seemed as bewildered. A peculiar sight was a truck-load of children packed among sacks and bedding, from which they emerged on the arrival of the train, like ants issuing from an ant-hill. The city swarmed with these immigrants, the courts of the mosques were converted into refuge houses, and the utmost misery prevailed until Government had quartered them in different villages in Asiatic Turkey. There they still may be found, and their location recognized by their wretched wooden shanties and their squalor. But in many cases change of environment has not occasioned change of disposition, and I am assured that during the time of the Armenian massacres (1896) Pomaks quartered in Brusa sharpened their knives and armed themselves to a man to kill and plunder the Christians, and they were only prevented from carrying out this nefarious deed by the armed interposition of the humane Turkish Governor. In dress Pomaks differ but little from the ordinary Turk; in habits they are perhaps more industrious, and it may be put down to their credit that they introduced into Constantinople and elsewhere a new and light form of carriage which is now extensively used for picnics and excursions into the country. In addition to the half-caste Tartars of Macedonia there are the pure Tartars who for several centuries past have inhabited the highlands of Asia Minor, and who are credited with great trustworthiness. This quality, in addition to their capacity for long and rapid riding, has obtained for them the practical monopoly of the postal service in the interior of Turkey, and the word _tartar_ has come to be synonymous with postillion, or mounted postman. There are relays of horses at stated intervals, but the same rider travels over the whole distance. His saddle is capacious, with broad stirrups in the form of an open shoe. The saddle has, moreover, a hump on which the rider can support his arms, and an arrangement for fixing a short rod, with a crescent-shaped top or cushion, on which the rider rests his chin and sleeps during night travelling. Letters and parcels are placed in saddle-bags, which are thrown astride the saddle in the same way as paniers are with us. They are made of leather, of carpet, or camel's-hair, and the opening is closed through a series of loops running into each other. There is usually great excitement at the arrival of the Tartar, and the letters, where no post office exists, are strewn on the floor of a room of the _conak_, or Governor's house, and applicants asked to pick out any addressed to them.