Possibly, under the harem system, there may have been a large intermixture of foreign blood in the families of the Bulgarians who turned Mahommedans. But be the cause what it may, the Tomaks are as different from the ordinary Bulgarian in features, figure, gait, and aspect, as the Arab of Egypt is from the fellah. Tall, spare, and active, with clear-cut features, upright gait, and heads well placed on massive shoulders, they form a strange contrast to the sheepskin-clad peasants south of the Balkans. Their dress, the turban with many folds, the linen shirt of variegated colours, bound tightly round the waist with a broad red sash, seems to fit the wearer as a costume ought to do, not to be huddled on as a mere covering against the cold.

They walk instead of slouching ; they look you boldly in the face, which the Bulgarian peasant is not wont to do. They possess the indescribable air of people who belong, or deem themselves to belong, to a master race. I am not in the least disposed to underrate the extraordinary power which the creed of Islam exercises upon its adherents. But the fact of the Tomaks having for several generations regarded Mecca, and not Jerusalem, as the sacred shrine of their faith cannot, it seems to me, have altered their stature, their build, their features, their complexion, and their gait The Tomaks may be Bulgarians by race as well as birth, but I question greatly their being Slavs.

Visited the tomb of the Prophet

At all the stations at which the train made halt, nine-tenths at least of the people who crowded the platforms and lounged about the approaches were Moslems. There were dervishes with the green turbans which only holy men who have visited the tomb of the Prophet are entitled to wear ; there were women, bundles of black clothing, with henna-stained eyes, looking out from between the folds of white linen which concealed their faces, and waddling, as only Turkish women can waddle.

There were any number of squat, square- built, clean-skinned Turkish children, looking like baby Pashas. The crowd were chattering, laughing, and calling to each other, instead of maintaining a stolid silence, as a gathering of Bulgarian peasants is apt to do.

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