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 saunter along on a summer's day; and draw your curtains for a night in the open; but even the straw, the mattress, and many rugs cannot transform the yaili to a train de luxe in winter.

To catch "the express" at Bilidjik we have to drive in two and a half hours a distance that requires a much longer time. So, with good horses and a fearless driver, we rattle away, up hill and down, over bumps and stones. The luggage is thrown out, my thermos is shaken to pieces, and we are flung violently against the roof! Bruised and bleeding, we hold on in grim silence; since time, too, flies.

The Yaili, or Native Carriage, with Drawn Curtains.

Even at this pace we cannot escape the oppression of desolation. On every side lie smashed engines, burnt railway carriages, and villages in cinders. As dusk falls, only a fatalist, in a country of fatalists, could venture the rush down sharp descents cut through a precipice of 800 feet!

Fate, indeed, preserved us, only to prove its irony; for when we reached the once prosperous Bilidjik,