The Adrianople plains are a dreary expanse of undulating grazing-land, traversed by small sloughs and their adjacent cultivated areas. Along this route it is without trees, and the villages one comes to at intervals of eight or ten miles are shapeless clusters of mud, straw-thatched huts, out of the midst of which, perchance, rises the tapering minaret of a small mosque, this minaret being, of course, the first indication of a village in the distance. Between Adrianople and Eski Baba, the town I reach for the night, are three villages, in one of which I approach a Turkish private house for a drink of water, and surprise the women with faces unveiled. Upon seeing my countenance peering in the doorway they one and all give utterance to little screams of dismay, and dart like frightened fawns into an adjoining room.

When the men appear, to see what is up, they show no signs of resentment at my abrupt intrusion, but one of them follows the women into the room, and loud, angry words seem to indicate that they are being soundly berated for allowing themselves to be thus caught. This does not prevent the women from reappearing the next minute, however, with their faces veiled behind the orthodox yashmak, and through its one permissible opening satisfying their feminine curiosity by critically surveying me and my strange vehicle.

Four men follow me on horseback out of this village, presumably to see what use I make of the machine; at least I cannot otherwise account for the honor of their unpleasantly close attentions - close, inasmuch as they keep their horses' noses almost against my back, in spite of sundry subterfuges to shake them off. When I stop they do likewise, and when I start again they deliberately follow, altogether too near to be comfortable. They are, all four, rough-looking peasants, and their object is quite unaccountable, unless they are doing it for "pure cussedness," or perhaps with some vague idea of provoking me into doing something that would offer them the excuse of attacking and robbing me. The road is sufficiently lonely to invite some such attention. If they are only following me to see what I do with the bicycle, they return but little enlightened, since they see nothing but trundling and an occasional scraping off of mud.

At the end of about two miles, whatever their object, they give it up. Several showers occur during the afternoon, and the distance travelled has been short and unsatisfactory, when just before dark I arrive at Eski Baba, where I am agreeably surprised to find a mehana, the proprietor of which is a reasonably mannered individual. Since getting into Turkey proper, reasonably mannered people have seemed wonderfully scarce, the majority seeming to be most boisterous and headstrong. Next to the bicycle the Turks of these interior villages seem to exercise their minds the most concerning whether I have a passport; as I enter Eski Baba; a gendarme standing at the police-barrack gates shouts after me to halt and produce "passaporte." Exhibiting my passport at almost every village is getting monotonous, and, as I am going to remain here at least overnight, I ignore the gendarme's challenge and wheel on to the mehana. Two gendarmes are soon on the spot, inquiring if I have a "passaporte;" but, upon learning that I am going no farther to-day, they do not take the trouble to examine it, the average Turkish official religiously believing in never doing anything to-day that can be put off till to-morrow.

The natives of a Turkish interior village are not over-intimate with newspapers, and are in consequence profoundly ignorant, having little conception of anything, save what they have been familiar with and surrounded by all their lives, and the appearance of the bicycle is indeed a strange visitation, something entirely beyond their comprehension. The mehana is crowded by a wildly gesticulating and loudly commenting and arguing crowd of Turks and Christians all the evening. Although there seems to be quite a large proportion of native unbelievers in Eski Baba there is not a single female visible on the streets this evening; and from observations next day I judge it to be a conservative Mussulman village, where the Turkish women, besides keeping themselves veiled with orthodox strictness, seldom go abroad, and the women who are not Mohammedan, imbibing something of the retiring spirit of the dominant race, also keep themselves well in the background.

A round score of dogs, great and small, and in all possible conditions of miserableness, congregate in the main street of Eski Baba at eventide, waiting with hungry-eyed expectancy for any morsel of food or offal that may peradventure find its way within their reach. The Turks, to their credit be it said, never abuse dogs; but every male "Christian" in Eski Baba seems to consider himself in duty bound to kick or throw a stone at one, and scarcely a minute passes during the whole evening without the yelp of some unfortunate cur. These people seem to enjoy a dog's sufferings; and one soulless peasant, who in the course of the evening kicks a half-starved cur so savagely that the poor animal goes into a fit, and, after staggering and rolling all over the street, falls down as though really dead, is the hero of admiring comments from the crowd, who watch the creature's sufferings with delight.

Seeing who can get the most telling kicks at the dogs seems to be the regular evening's pastime among the male population of Eski Baba unbelievers, and everybody seems interested and delighted when some unfortunate animal comes in for an unusually severe visitation. A rush mat on the floor of the stable is my bed to-night, with a dozen unlikely looking natives, to avoid the close companionship of whom I take up my position in dangerous proximity to a donkey's hind legs, and not six feet from where the same animal's progeny is stretched out with all the abandon of extreme youth. Precious little sleep is obtained, for fleas innumerable take liberties with my person. A flourishing colony of swallows inhabiting the roof keeps up an incessant twittering, and toward daylight two muezzins, one on the minaret of each of the two mosques near by, begin calling the faithful to prayer, and howling "Allah. Allah!" with the voices of men bent on conscientiously doing their duty by making themselves heard by every Mussulman for at least a mile around, robbing me of even the short hour of repose that usually follows a sleepless night.

It is raining heavily again on Sunday morning - in fact, the last week has been about the rainiest that I ever saw outside of England - and considering the state of the roads south of Eski Baba, the prospects look favorable for a Sunday's experience in an interior Turkish village. Men are solemnly squatting around the benches of the mehana, smoking nargilehs and sipping tiny cups of thick black coffee, and they look on in wonder while I devour a substantial breakfast; but whether it is the novelty of seeing a 'cycler feed, or the novelty of seeing anybody eat as I am doing, thus early in the morning, I am unable to say; for no one else seems to partake of much solid food until about noontide.

All the morning long, people swarming around are importuning me with, " Bin, bin, bin, monsieur." The bicycle is locked up in a rear chamber, and thrice I accommodatingly fetch it out and endeavor to appease their curiosity by riding along a hundred-yard stretch of smooth road in the rear of the mehana; but their importunities never for a moment cease. Finally the annoyance becomes so unbearable that the proprietor takes pity on my harassed head, and, after talking quite angrily to the crowd, locks me up in the same room with the bicycle. Iron bars guard the rear windows of the houses at Eski Baba, and ere I am fairly stretched out on my mat several swarthy faces appear at the bars, and several voices simultaneously join in the dread chorus of, " Bin, bin, bin, monsieur! bin, bin." compelling me to close, in the middle of a hot day-the rain having ceased about ten o'clock-the one small avenue of ventilation in the stuffy little room. A moment's privacy is entirely out of the question, for, even with the window closed, faces are constantly peering in, eager to catch even the smallest glimpse of either me or the bicycle.

Fate is also against me to-day, plainly enough, for ere I have been imprisoned in the room an hour the door is unlocked to admit the mulazim (lieutenant of gendarmes), and two of his subordinates, with long cavalry swords dangling about their legs, after the manner of the Turkish police.

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Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle