threshed by the flail of continuous gusts, grew rougher and rougher, and the waves broke with crests like ocean billows. At the spot where we landed was moored a rude fishing-boat, and two young Bulgarian fishermen sat under the trees on the bank above busily weaving rough baskets out of unpeeled willow twigs. Their camp was a bed of boughs under the gnarled, crooked trunk of a tree; their outfit [Illustration: BULGARIAN FISHERMAN BASKET-MAKING] consisted of a small kettle, a dish, and two wooden spoons, and, stowed away in the shade of a convenient stump, a small stock of green corn, a few watermelons, and a fish or two wrapped up in leaves comprised their whole stock of provisions. In this simple bivouac they cooked and ate and slept all summer long, fishing by day and by night, and selling their catch at Kalafat or Widdin. A cloak of thick rough woollen cloth, like the mantle of the ancient Dacian, was their covering by night, and their chief protection against the weather. As simple in their tastes as the Indians of the plains, and with no better appliances for use and comfort than may be found in the wigwam of the savage, they live a happy and contented life, their only enemy the mosquito, their only society the solemn herons that wade along the shore in the very smoke of the camp-fire. They had watched our struggle with the storm, and welcomed us ashore with hearty good-will. Out of their rustic larder they chose the best melons, and insisted on our eating them, and for our supper they selected the freshest and best fish. They firmly refused the money we hesitatingly tendered them as we launched the canoes after the violence of the gale had abated; and when we left them at twilight, they shook hands, and wished us “godspeed” as heartily as if we had camped with them for a season. Some distance below their bivouac, and in full sight of the glimmering lights of both Kalafat and Widdin, we passed the night among the wild-flowers and tangled grasses of a dry bank in a sheltered spot quite enclosed by a dense growth of trees and underbrush, with no more unpleasant intruders than startled water-fowl and drowsy, unambitious mosquitoes.