vely in America. He says he
has tried convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success. He
says the convicts work well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed
that he employs nearly ten thousand of them now.

This appeared to be another call on my resources. I was equal to the
emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the
railways in America--all of them under sentence of death for murder in
the first degree. That closed him out.

We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during the
siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of
unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne luncheon
was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and
jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking
the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our
hospitable reception, and one by the Governor-General in reply, in which
he returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in exhausting
marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in caiques, we
steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and the
Dardanelles, and steered for a new land--a new one to us, at least--Asia.
We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it, through
pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about.

We passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as we had seen Elba
and the Balearic Isles--mere bulky shapes, with the softening mists of
distance upon them--whales in a fog, as it were. Then we held our course
southward, and began to "read up" celebrated Smyrna.

At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused
themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The
opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:

"We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial
state--and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting
ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our
grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good
and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land
we love so well."

The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin bas