seven dollars. It requires forty para to make a piaster; a piaster is nearly equal to eighteen pfennige; five pfennige make a shade more than one cent. With this data the mathematician may calculate the exact amount spent in spending eight thousand Turkish para. When I bought a stamp at the German post-office, I handed the clerk a two-hundred-para piece, worth about eighteen cents.

"Do you expect me to change that?" asked the clerk.

Certainly. Why not?"

The clerk saw I was fresh from foreign shores. He condescended to explain.

"Do you not know, to change that would cost me twenty para? Small money is scarce. You must get it changed at a broker's."

Such is the fact. The toll over the Golden Horn bridge is ten para; if you hand the guard a forty-para piece he will return only twenty para. He charges ten para for toll, and ten for changing your money. It need hardly be remarked that this system works a great hardship on the poor, who are paid their wages in a lump, but buy their supplies from time to time in small quantities. They lose from twenty to twentyfive per cent. at the money-changers'.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BLACK SEA.-DIFFICULTY IN LEAVING TURKEY AND ENTERING RUSSIA. THE CZAR'S METHOD OF BUILDING RAILROADS: SIMPLE BUT INCONVENIENT.- PEASANTS AND PEOPLE. .-CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES.

WHEN preparing to leave Constantinople for Russia, I was told that permission from the Russian consul would be necessary. I hurried to that official and presented my card and passport. He scanned both closely as he demanded,

"Who are you?"

I pointed to my card and passport.

"How do I know that is your name or passport? Go to your consul. You must show me that you are yourself."

The American consul knew no more of me than did the Russian; but for the sum of 1500 para (about $1.40) he very obligingly certified that I was whoever I claimed to be, and, armed with the document he gave me, I returned again to the charge. The mighty man looked at the pass carefully, scanned it from every point of view, then demanded why I was going to Russia?

"To see the country."
"For nothing else?"
"Nothing."

"What is your business?"
"Travelling."

"Are you married?" and so forth and so on through a long and severe examination.

When finally his numerous questions had been satisfactorily answered, a huge book was brought forth, and the long columns searched to see if my name was among the list of exiles or "suspects." Apparently it was not, for after a while he

shut his big book again, and with rather a sour look, as if disappointed at not finding me on the list banished to Siberia, told me my application would be granted, and to return the next day for my pass and the visé. I went back the next day, paid the Russian consul four hundred para, and received the necessary papers. Then came another struggle, this time with the Turk; for without the permission of the "Sun and Light of the World," of the Sublime Porte, no one can leave the realms of Turkey. Happily the American and Russian visés were not without an effect, and after only a slight delay the heathen pocketed his fee, scratched something on my pass in Arabic, and intimated that I was free to go. At the harbor there was one last struggle. The customs-officers went through my knapsack to see that nothing was being carried away that should not be carried away; and then I hired a skiff—“caïques” they are called in Turkey-and started for the steamer, which lay at anchor in the Golden Horn a hundred yards from the shore.

One would suppose that after providing all these official documents, and undergoing such an array of formalities, there would be no further trouble in leaving their blessed land. The heathen Turk, however, for "tricks that are dark and ways that are vain," can "see" the heathen Chinee and go him a hundred better. Hardly was the caïque afloat than I was signalled by a small boat in the middle of the stream, which in a few moments pulled up along-side, while a villanous-looking fellow, black as a coal-miner, climbed over into my boat and signed me to unstrap my baggage. He was another customs-officer, and possessed of a wonderful amount of impudence and boorishness. Before touching my sack he said,

"Backsheesh?" (drink-money).

I refused to give anything, whereupon he began a search as if expecting to find stolen diamonds. Everything was dumped out on the bottom of the caïque. He took out my letters, unfolded them, shook the envelopes. Every few seconds he would say, "Backsheesh!" and on my continued refusal he

would renew the examination with still greater vigor. Of course it was a mere attempt to extort money. He even went into my pockets, and required me to show my watch and pocket-book. When at length he had exhausted even his resources for annoying, he climbed back into his boat fairly shaking with rage, while I looked him in the face and laughed. He had worked over the baggage half an hour, and still had extorted no "backsheesh." The thought made him furious.

"Englishman," he muttered, "no give backsheesh. Englishman damn fool!"

On board of the Russian steamer my passport was again examined. Not until the vessel was fully under way did I feel at all certain that I would be allowed to get out of the country.

Leaving Constantinople, it is three hours before the steamer passes out of the Bosporus into the Black Sea. During that time the eye is feasted on both the European and Asiatic shores, with a view of long lines of forts and bristling guns. The spot where Mohammed's big cannon was planted, and the old castle that he erected to the terror and dismay of the feeble Emperor Palæologus, are passed; the towers and minarets of the Eastern capital become dimmer and dimmer in the distance, and at last the steamer emerges in the open sea. Two days and nights pass; then on the morning of the third day the traveller awakes, and knows he is in Russia by the strange faces and uniforms around him. They are there to see that none leave the vessel without authority. And no one is given authority to leave until he has submitted to the doctor's inspection and produced his passport.

It was a motley crew the doctor had to examine that morning. Europeans, Turks, Tartars, Arabs, and specimens of a dozen other people passed before him in single file while he looked at their tongues or punched them in the ribs to ascertain their physical condition. Fortunately, all were in good health, and we were permitted to land as soon as the officers had finished examining the passports.

In entering Russia it is necessary to be circumspect with re

gard to the literature you take with you. Books are examined at seaport and frontier stations, and those advocating freedom or denouncing tyranny are confiscated. As for newspapers, those that do not fill all the requirements of the Russian censorship are run through an inking machine and then ironically returned to the owner. A disagreeable thing about this business is, that often the official does not understand the book or paper he is examining, and, to be on the sure side, condemns it to the daubing-press. In this way it not infrequently happens that the most innocent poems or fairy-tales are returned to their owner only after being daubed with ink and rendered wholly illegible. Byron's works are not permitted in Turkey. His poems are considered too democratic, and calculated to arouse the Greek and reawaken his dreams of liberty.

Odessa presents a very handsome appearance from the sea. The buildings are modern and imposing. There is a magnificent flight of marble stairs a hundred feet wide, leading from the sea to the summit of the bluff on which the city stands, while the streets seem, to one just from the labyrinth of winding, filthy alleys in Stamboul, a collection of the finest and handsomest avenues in Europe. They are broad and well paved, and on each side, flanking the sidewalks, is a double row of shade-trees. This is not the case on one or two streets only, but the great majority are so shaded, adding no little to the general elegance and beauty of the city.

One of the first things that strikes a stranger's attention in Russia is the peculiar appearance of the cabmen, or of the "Iswoschtschik," as they are called in Russian. They wear a long, clumsy dress that touches the ground. In the middle, for a foot above and below the waist, it is plaited and thickly padded with cotton or wool: a very good sort of cushion, but when cabby (iswoschtschik) stands up his great gown protrudes in the middle in a way most suggestive and ridiculous. bushy head is generally surmounted by the tiniest sort of queer-style Derby hat. The cab he drives is almost as absurd. The dash-board, and indeed the whole front part, is made of

His