ass carriages are more
or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with
bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent
northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from
Russia, as it were Russian unhappiness it was blowing down.

You arrive at Sofia at midnight in torrents of rain. You take a cab
and visit every hotel, large or small, in the Bulgarian capital, and
are refused. People are already sleeping three or four in a room,
sleeping in outhouses and bath-rooms, refugee Bulgars from the lost
Bulgar territories, refugee Turks, refugee Russians. You return to the
station and it is closed for the night, and you have a wordy discussion
with the eternal cabman as to whether you shall pay a hundred or two
hundred francs--Bulgarian francs or levas which are, however, worth a
bare three-farthings each to-day. You find shelter in a wayside cafe
which is half cafe, half guard-house for the town patrol. Soldiers are
stretched out snoring on the floor. Five levas to sit up, ten to lie
down! By that time of night you are fain to lie down.

A dreary journey on to Philippopolis and Svilengrad, with the wind
lashing the train, lashing it all the way to the Chataldja lines and
the zone of Allied control. Eight passport examinations, eight
examinations of your baggage, plentiful two, three, and four-hour
stops, a land of ruined railway stations and bare hills, and only late
on the second evening after Sofia do you creep into the imperial city.

It is Stamboul at night, agleam with lights, running with mud, flocking
with dense crowds. You change some money to piastres at a small booth,
and your pocket is at once picked--a common experience. The Pera tram
is so crowded that you escape being asked for a fare, which is
fortunate, seeing that you have no Turkish money. So across the
wonderful bridge on which all the nations of the world are seen
walking, up to the so-called pleasant heights of Pera and its hotels
and palaces. Here for a dirty little room one pays more than in a
first-class hotel in New York. You are fortunate if you find even that
soon. A Greek-owned hotel. You scan the names of the occupants--they
are of all nationalities of Europe. Russians and Armenians seem most
to abound. There appears to be a Scotsman among them, a Mr. Fraser,
but he is a Scot resident in Smyrna and smokes a narghile every evening
after supper. The lounge of the hotel loo