ertain life of daybreak. The recently awakened
sea-gulls were flying in groups over the immense marine bowl. At the
mouth of the Vardar the fresh-water fowls were starting up with noisy
cries, or standing on the edge of the bank immovable upon their long
legs.

Opposite the prow, a city was rising up out of the albuminous waves of
fog. In a bit of the clear, blue sky appeared various minarets, their
peaks sparkling with the fires of Aurora. As the vessel advanced, the
morning clouds vanished, and Salonica became entirely visible from the
cluster of huts at her wharves to the ancient castle topping the
heights, a fortress of ruddy towers, low and strong.

Near the water's edge, the entire length of the harbor, were the
European constructions, commercial houses with gold-lettered signs,
hotels, banks, moving-picture shows, concert halls, and a massive tower
with another smaller one upon it,--the so-called White Tower, a remnant
of the Byzantine fortifications.

In this European conglomerate were dark gaps, open passageways, the
mouths of sloping streets climbing to the hillock above, crossing the
Grecian, Mohammedan and Jewish quarters until they reached a table-land
covered with lofty edifices between dark points of cypress.

The religious diversity of the Oriental Mediterranean made Salonica
bristle with cupolas and towers. The Greek temple threw into prominence
the gilded bulbs of its roof; the Catholic church made the cross
glisten from the peak of its bell-tower; the synagogue of geometrical
forms overflowed in a succession of terraces; the Mohammedan minaret
formed a colonnade, white, sharp and slender. Modern life had added
factory chimneys and the arms of steam-cranes which gave an
anachronistic effect to this decoration of an Oriental harbor. Around
the city and its acropolis was the plain which lost itself in the
horizon,--a plain that Ferragut, on a former voyage, had seen desolate
and monotonous, with few houses and sparsely cultivated, with no other
Vegetation except that in the little oases of the Mohammedan cemetery.
This desert extended to Greece and Servia or to the borders of Bulgaria
and Turkey.

Now the brownish-gray steppes coming out from the fleecy fog of
daybreak were palpitating with new life. Thousands and thousands of men
were encamped around the city, occupying new villages made of canvas,
rectangular streets of tents, cities of wooden cabins, and
constructions as big as churches whose ca