At first I thought the Constantinople fare the most delightful I had ever encountered anywhere. At the first dinner at which I sat down we were served amongst other things with red mullet, stuffed tomatoes and quail—all excellent of their sort and admirably prepared. Red mullet, tomates farcies and quail appeared again for breakfast and were not to be despised, but red mullet, tomates farcies and quail for luncheon, began to be a trifle tiresome, and when all three appeared again at dinner and at the next day's breakfast and luncheon, there were some of us who began to hunger for a change. We made a little party and we went across to the Valori restaurant. Here we encountered a polyglot major-domo, who spoke all languages of Europe indifferently ill. “What can we have for dinner?” asked our spokesman. “Ret moiled, domades varcies, et qvail!” He smiled ineffably and evidently thought that he was offering us food for the gods. We ate tough beefsteak, fried in oil, and cursed the delicacies of the country. The diners at Valori's made up the first really polyglot assembly I had ever seen. There were Bulgarian notables—caring apparently to speak their own language only—Spanish Jews from Eski Zaghra, Greeks, Turks, Germans, Italians, Armenians, Englishmen, native volunteers for the Polish legion then forming, and a Croat gentleman with bejewelled handles to his private arsenal of lethal weapons, and starched expansive white petticoats. Our major-domo was somehow equal to them all, and when the rush of service was partly over, I found an opportunity to ask him how many languages he spoke. He answered in a tone of apology and regret: “Onily twelluv, ich habe vergessen les autres!”

A day or two later I encountered the official interpreter of the Persian Embassy who spoke English as perfectly as I did and apparently all the languages of the civilised world beside. I asked him seriously how many tongues he professed to have mastered, and his reply was this: “If you ask me in how many languages and dialects I can converse, I suppose I should have to say seventy or eighty, but if you confine me to those in which I can construct a grammar I should have to tell you fifteen at the outside. No man can really say he knows a language until he can construct a grammar for it.”

So much for a special detached faculty which I have found in the possession of people who are otherwise entirely stupid.

The utter lawlessness of the Asiatic troops, by whom Constantinople was supposed to be defended, gave me a fair foretaste of things to come.

It was certainly rather a curious thing that in a country about which I travelled freely, and which was overrun by the most murderous ravage, months passed before I heard a shot fired. It so fell out that I was the discoverer of the fields of massacre in the district of the Rose Gardens. I found twelve hundred unburied dead, all hacked and mutilated, in a vineyard near Kesanlyk. I found Kalofer a smoking wilderness, without a living soul left out of a population of twelve hundred. I found Sopot a howling desolation, where only the village dogs were left alive. Day by day, for weeks, I travelled stealthily in the rear of the roving bands of Bashi-Bazouks and Zeibecks who were laying the country waste and slaughtering its Christian population; but it was more than an Englishman's life was worth to show himself among them, and I never came near enough to see them actually engaged upon their dreadful business, except during one week, when, from one of the lower slopes of the Balkans, I could see the whole horizon red with the flame of burning villages, and could sometimes even hear the shrieks of outraged women.

But in all this time I never heard a shot fired, so far as I can remember, until I came to the Schipka, where a long-drawn artillery duel was dragging on in the pass between the guns of Sulie-man Pasha and General Gourko. Correspondents and doctors lived at that time, for the most part, at a respectful distance from the scene of that monotonous action. We were quartered at Schipka Keui, where we pitched our tents on the edge of a forest of wild plum trees, and spent our idle time as best we could, whilst we waited for developments. Amongst us was the English volunteer on the Turkish side, mentioned in the last chapter, who bore the rank of Colonel, and remembered by his old comrades as Schipka Campbell. He was a man of the most extraordinary and daring valour, and I really believe that he found a keen joy in danger. He was full of a scheme for a night attack upon a position which Gourko had taken up in a height which the Russians called St Nicholas Crag, and he got leave, after a good deal of characteristic procrastination, to go into the forts, and thence to take a sketch of the country he desired to travel in the night-time. I was very eager to see things closer at hand than I had been able to do till then, and it was arranged that I should accompany Campbell on this sketching expedition. By the side of the winding mountain way a sort of covering wall had been built for some hundreds of yards, to shelter passing troops and convoys from the observation of the enemy. It was a rather flimsy structure, and it could have been beaten down by a single gun in an hour or two; but I suppose that the rocks which commanded it from the other side of the pass were inaccessible to artillery. In one place the ground dipped, and formed a cup-like hollow, and, the big guns having brought down a good deal of rain by their constant firing, a pond had gathered here, and had sapped the foundations of the wall. There was left a clear space of rather more than a dozen yards, and this place was thickly strewn with splashed bullets which had struck the face of the overhanging rock. There was probably a good cartload of spoiled lead strewn there, and the dark face of the rock was pitted all over with grey bullet-marks.

Campbell informed me, in a casual sort of way, that there were always some hundreds of the enemy's infantry on the lookout for a passenger at this point, and that we were sure to draw a volley. Now, I had no really pressing business to persuade me onward, and I had no special liking for the prospect; but Campbell scoffed at the very thought of danger. Even if the enemy were expecting us, he urged, a man could clear that space in quicker time than a bullet would take to travel from the opposite side of the pass, and it was just as likely as not that by nipping across quickly we might fail to draw Are at all. This had an air of reason about it, but I was not nearly so curious to see the fortifications as I had been. I represented that the two journals for which I was working at that time had no other representative on the ground, that big events were probably imminent, and that it was my duty to preserve a whole skin in the interests of my employers. Upon this Campbell assured me of his belief that I was funking, and I immediately concurred with him. It was a mere matter of fact, and I saw no ground on which I could dispute it. I have never run away from anybody or anything—though I have wanted to do so upon occasion—but I am not fond of unnecessary danger. My guide declined to waste time on me, and, leaving me in the shelter of the wall, he ran swiftly across the open space, and turned crouching on the other side. It has turned me cold a thousand times to think about it since; but I was just in the act of nerving myself for a run when he impetuously waved me back, and a perfect tempest of lead fell shrieking on the face of the rock. Had I obeyed my own impulse, I should have been riddled like any colander. The grey face of the rock seemed to flash white under the impact of the volley. One splashed bullet struck the rock some yards above me, and fell to the ground flattened to something like the form of a five-shilling piece, with irregularly starred edges. I stooped to pick it up, but it was at almost a melting-heat. I dropped it quickly, and then, in answer to Campbell's call, I cleared the open space in safety, and was followed by a belated random shot or two. But, to be quite honest, I had no pleasure in the adventure, and I was careful not to return until the shades of night had fallen.

The gentleman from Chicago, at whose instigation I had gone out to Turkey, had supplied me with a sum of forty pounds, and had undertaken to deposit more to my account at the Ottoman Bank. I called at that establishment daily and found news of no remittance. I was in the meantime vainly moving the Turkish authorities for a teskerai, which would authorise me to go up country. No remittance, no leave to move, the hotel bill growing to really alarming proportions, the outlook was unpleasant; in a while it had grown no less than desperate. I bombarded the Chicago man with cablegrams as long as I could afford it, but no answer came, nor have I, from that day to this, received any explanation of the circumstances which induced him to send me out and then to leave me stranded. I had already made application to the British Consul, Mr Fawcett, afterwards Sir John, to secure for me a passage home, when I was delivered from my embarrassments by as remarkable a chance as ever befell me in my life. After leaving the Consul's office, I strolled into the Valori gardens, which were a dreary waste of small pebbles and coarse gravel, with an oasis here and there consisting of a painted iron table and a few painted iron chairs, where men of all nationalities sat sipping vishnap and limoni, and extinguishing by their Babylonian chatter the strains of a very indifferent band. I was making the circuit of the gardens in tolerably low spirits; I had expended my last piastre, had emptied my cigar-case, had listened to a violent objurgation from the landlord of the Byzance Hotel and was now bound home at the expense of the Consular funds—a failure confessed. Nobody likes to be beaten, and it seemed to me at that moment that I tasted the full flavour of ignominy, and whilst I was floundering in the depths of my despondency I heard a voice speaking in English. “There you are—the Weekly Dispatch—Constantinople in a state of siege. If I could find the man who wrote that article, I should like to commission him to-morrow.” Now it happened that I had written that article and had sent it home within a day or two of my arrival. I had not even known that it had been accepted and the revival of hope ran through me like an electric shock. I claimed the article for my own and in ten minutes I had concluded a bargain with the authorised agent of the Scotsman, had agreed to accept the services of an interpreter, and had arranged, with a taskerai or without one, to take the 7.30 train to Adrianople from the Stamboul station. There followed a hurried interview with the Vice-Consul, Mr Wrench, at which it was arranged that my hotel bill should be defrayed from future earnings, my baggage was released by the Consular influence, and next morning, at the appointed hour, my dragoman and I were being pulled across the waters of the Golden Horn by a pair of sturdy caiquejees, and were bound for the front. With what a rebound of high spirits on my part it is quite impossible to say t I thought I had never seen so beautiful a morning, and indeed the scene, apart from all considerations of mood, was very charming. The receding hill of Galata, with its bowers of green, its mosques and minarets and palaces, lay steeped in the early sunrise, and looked as lovely as a dream.

It was on the eve of the Feast of Bairam that we set out, and when we arrived at Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street was filled with joyful crowds. News had arrived to the effect that a pitched battle had been fought between the Russian army and the forces of Raouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have been magnificently victorious. But Adrianople saw another sight next morning when the trains from Yeni Zaghra, where the action had taken place, crawled slowly into the station with their burden of one thousand two hundred wounded. To one who was new to war, the spectacle of this one thousand two hundred was a reminder of its horrors. There was a good deal of talk about the Russians having fired on the white protective flag, but if they had broken the rules of civilised combat in that way they had been but indifferent marksmen, for no one of the long row of carriages was so much as scarred. It was evident, however, that the trains had been unskilfully driven and that there had been checks and shocks upon the road, for the wounded, who had been bestowed along the benches at the beginning of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on the floor when they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train to the rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne to hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but an octagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, filled the air with cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the scene of conflict and there I encountered seventeen officers who, with the exception of the wounded I had seen already, were the sole survivors of Raouf's army of seventeen thousand. One man, an artillerist, who had been educated at Chatham and who spoke English faultlessly, gave me the history of yesterday's battle. The man had looked at doom, and there was doom still in his eyes. “We were beaten by their artillery,” he said, “there was never such a scene of carnage. The Russians had a shell for every man.”

In Philipopolis I was introduced to the Gueschoffs, a Bulgarian mercantile family who had been established there for some generations. The two sons had been educated at Owen's College, Manchester, and might easily have passed anywhere for Englishmen. One of them was Deputy Vice-Consul for Great Britain and the other held a similar office for the United States. I dined with them and spent a very pleasant evening, and I am sure that no visible shadow of mischance was then hanging over the household. But a fortnight later I was amazed to learn that the father and the two sons had alike been arrested on a charge of treason, that they had all three been tried before a military tribunal and condemned to death, whilst the whole of their possessions had been sequestrated by the commandant of the city, Ibrahim Pasha. This was in no special degree an affair of mine, but as soon as I heard the news I hastened back to Philipopolis, and in the course of a hurried interview with Mr Calvert, the British Vice-Consul, the conclusion was arrived at that the official position of the two younger men was of a character to afford them some protection against proceedings of so summary a nature. It became entirely obvious as the result of a mere surface inquiry that the charge against the Gueschoffs had been trumped up by the military authorities simply and purely because they were wealthy people, and the commandant saw his way to a handsome windfall.

Armed with such scanty proofs as I could gather, I set out for Constantinople and, arriving there in the space of two days, I laid my case before Sir Arthur Laird, who was then our Ambassador to the Porte, and the Honourable Horace Maynard, who was Minister for the United States. Sir Arthur was a pronounced Philo-Turk and would not for a moment believe that any such abominable intrigue as I suggested could have occurred to the mind of any Turkish official. He received me with marked coldness and I felt from the first that I could make no headway with him. Mr Horace Maynard met me in another spirit “One of these men,” he told me, “is under the protection of the American flag and in his case I shall insist upon a new trial and in the meantime the execution shall be suspended.” A fortunate chance threw me into communication with Lady Laird, who was less violently prepossessed in favour of the Turkish Government than her husband. She promised me her most cordial assistance, but for three days I hung about Constantinople in a fever of apprehension, waiting for the imperial firman, by virtue of which I trusted to secure an arrest of sentence.

The execution of the three Bulgarian merchants was fixed for eight o'clock on the morning of the ensuing Saturday, and late on Wednesday night the longed-for document came into my hands. I attempted at once to telegraph the news to Philipopolis, but the wires had been cut in a score of places and communication was impossible. The next train up country started at seven o'clock in the morning and it seemed as if I had ample time before me, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of Adrianople a culvert had been blown up by the Bulgarian insurgents and we were brought to a decisive standstill. There was nothing for it but to complete the journey on horseback and here I was heavily handicapped by the fact that I had mastered but a scattered phrase or two of the language, and had the greatest difficulty in making my wants known. At length, by good hap, I encountered a Bulgarian who spoke a little French and by his aid I contrived to get a mount The moon was almost at the full and it was absolutely impossible to miss the road. I set out upon my journey with a better heart than I should have had if I had known what I learned afterwards. The whole district between Adrianople and Philipopolis had been suddenly overrun by the Irregulars, who were carrying everything before them with fire and sword. Luckily for me they shunned the high road and devoted their attentions to the outlying villages. Anything at once more dreary and more exasperating than that ride I cannot recall. I was badly mounted at the first and at each succeeding stage, when after an infinitude of difficulty and misunderstanding I had secured an exchange, it seemed to be always for the worse. Some two months before at Kara Bounar, I had been affected by a touch of dysentery and this assailing me anew when my journey was only half through, made progress dreadfully difficult. But in the failing light of Friday evening the great rock on which Philipopolis is built came into sight and I could afford to make the last stage of my journey at a foot pace, with the certainty that I held a good nine hours in hand. I rode to the Roumelia Khan, the hostel at which I had left my interpreter, and thence after a hurried meal, he and I set out in search of the commandant who, with his staff, had taken possession of the mansion of some Bulgarian notable. I produced the firman, duly signed and sealed, and demanded that, in accordance with its provisions, the prisoners should be removed, under safe escort, for re-trial at the port of Varna. The Pasha—a little man with a close-cropped beard, which looked like black varnished wire—glanced at the document and angrily pronounced it an impudent forgery. I have not often seen a man so inspired by rage; the hand in which he held the official document was apparently as steady as a rock, but all the while he talked to us, the stiff paper rustled noisily. He declared that the execution should proceed and he threatened to hang me with the others. It was not at all impossible in the existing condition of the country that he might have ventured on that course, but I saw fit to remind him that I was for the moment the authorized representative of Great Britain and the United States, and that if he did violence to me in that capacity Turkey would be wiped off the map of Europe in a fortnight. The little commandant spoke French, and he surprised me greatly when I spoke of “Les Etats Unis,” by interjecting in a tone of incredulous scorn: “Les Etats Unis! oÙ sont les Etats Unis?” My interpreter broke in volubly with the statement that Les Etats Unis were twenty times the size and had twice the power of Great Britain, and he and the little Pasha were both shouting together when, as Providence would have it, Mr Fawcett, the British Consul-General, was announced. His presence calmed the storm at once and he sternly bade Ibrahim to obey the “firman,” on peril of his own head.

The Gueschoffs were duly deported, were retried and acquitted, and were allowed, I believe, to retire to Odessa until the close of the campaign. After that they returned to Philipopolis and, according to the latest news I had of them, were prospering exceedingly. I had many other things to see to for months to come, but it surprised me somewhat to find that no communication reached me from them after they were known to be in safety. I had a notion that the salvation of three lives at some personal risk and trouble and expense was worth at least a “thank you,” but years went on and the whole thing had almost faded out of mind when it was brought back suddenly by my encounter with another Bulgarian merchant, Melikoffby name, whom I met one fine summer's day at the Strand end of Waterloo Bridge. I had met him at the Gueschoffs' table and I asked for news of them. Such intelligence as he had to give was wholly favourable; they were all well and prosperous. I suggested to him that I thought it at least a little odd that no one of them had ever thought it worth while to send me a line. “Well,” he answered, in some embarrassment, “they found it impossible to recover a very large part of their property when they got back to Philipopolis, and for some time I can assure you that they were in considerable straits.” I answered that they could scarcely have been in such straits as not to be able to buy a postage stamp, but the upshot of the matter was simply this: At the time at which I had been able to be of service to them I was the representative of the Scotsman and the Times, and was supposed to be something of a personage. It was impossible at the time for them to have offered what they thought would be a fitting recognition of my services, and on the whole: it seems that they had thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie and to say nothing at all about the matter. I might, it appeared, have made some kind of claim against them which, though I could not have enforced it legally, they would have been bound in honour to recognise. I told him that this did not quite accord, with British ideas of gratitude, but he appeared to think that he had offered a perfectly satisfactory explanation. It was quite obviously beyond him to conceive that I could have extracted any satisfaction from a mere acknowledgment of service rendered, or that such an acknowledgment would not have been used as the foundation for some more substantial claim.

As Edmund Burke said years ago, “It is impossible to indict a nation,” but my experience does not lead me to believe that the Bulgarians are a grateful people. In Kalofer, for example, I was introduced under circumstances of dramatic secrecy to a refugee who was hiding for his life and who had been concealed for days in a dark cupboard with a sliding panel. I shall never forget the face of the haggard and fear-stricken wretch who crawled out of that hiding-place into the light of a solitary candle, or the enthusiastic protestations of gratitude on the part of his wife when I proposed that he should disguise himself as a farm labourer and should take a place amongst the men who were driving down for me a set of empty arabas to Philipopolis. The simple plan succeeded and the fugitive got over the frontier. The wife was very eager to show how much she felt beholden to me. Her husband had been a rose-grower and she had for sale a quantity of the precious attar which she was willing to dispose of to me, and to me only, for a mere song. She would have given it gladly but she had to join her husband and some small amount of ready money was essential to her purpose. I bought from her five very small phials each containing perhaps a spoonful and a half of the liquid. She assured me that the essence was absolutely pure and that I could hardly have secured its like for love or money elsewhere. I was not the best pleased man in the world when I discovered that she had palmed off on me a perfumed olive oil, which, by the time I examined it in Constantinople, had turned rancid.

When I was engaged in the administration of the Turkish Benevolent Fund., the raising of which was mainly due to the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the fact that I was bound upon an errand of mercy, and that I was instructed not to spare relief by any consideration of religion or race, enabled me to penetrate into parts of the disturbed districts into which I should not otherwise have dared to venture. In the course of my journey I came to Kalofer, where I found a singularly intelligent and attractive little Bulgarian boy whom I resolved to rescue from the almost certain starvation which lay before him. His father had been the Vakeel of the place and the child of course had been decently reared. He was pinched and pallid with hunger, and he had but a single garment, a pair of the baggy knickerbockers worn by the peasants of the district, which enveloped him from heel to shoulder. I got him decently attired, and in a while managed to place him in the care of a colleague in Constantinople, and when I left the country my brother-in-law, Captain William Thompson, who was engaged in the Levantine shipping trade, gave him a free passage to Liverpool, where for the space of some months he lived with my sisters, the younger of whom turned schoolmistress for his advantage, and began to teach him English. Mr Crummies used to wonder how things got into the papers, though perhaps he was under some slight suspicion of having contributed to their circulation. How the news of the young Bulgarian's arrival in England got there I do not know, but there was a considerable journalistic fuss about him, and the result was that a wealthy Bulgarian family, resident in Manchester, made overtures to my sister, and with my free consent, formally adopted the child. Before this happened he paid them a preliminary visit during which he was presented with a pony, and a male domestic was told off specially to his service. When his adoption was finally decided upon he went back to my sister's house in Liverpool to gather up his belongings and to say good-bye. The little ingrate refused to say one word of farewell to either of them. “I not English any longer,” he declared, “I Bulgar again,” and Bulgar through and through he was, to my thinking, sure enough. It is quite true that you can't indict a nation, but I shall need some persuasion before I go out of my way again to be of use to any member of that particular section of the human family.