I was assured at the Varna office that I must be on board by ten, as the steamer was under contract to leave the moment that the mails were delivered. Going down to the pier I met the mail-cart returning empty. I saw, however, there was no cause for hurry, as the steamer was still surrounded by lighters shipping freight for Bourgas. The weather was bright, the sun hot, but it was blowing a north-easter, and my boat took nearly ten minutes hard rowing to get over the distance of some two hundred yards at which the steamer lay from the shore. An hour and a half more were spent in transferring two hundred sacks of flour from the lighters to the steamer.

In each barge there was only a single sailor, who had to lift the sacks, every one of which must have weighed a hundredweight, place five of them one on top of the other, bind the rope round them, and then hitch the rope to the steam-crane, which hoisted the sacks from the lighter into the steamboat's hold. Half a dozen boatmen could have done the work in a quarter of an hour, but time is of no great value in this country; and it is contrary to Bulgarian ideas of economy to pay six men, when one man can be got to do the work, even if he takes six times longer in doing it

However, everything in this world comes to an end, even the loading of a Bulgarian freight steamer. When the work was finished, the hold was full to overflowing, the deck was covered with a miscellaneous cargo, piled up in utter disregard of the regulations which have been introduced into the loading of English vessels by the action of Mr. Plimsoll.

Twenty paces

Upon the deck there were huge crates which hailed from Liverpool, a cottage piano from Vienna, large stacks of firewood, poultry coops, rows of wooden chairs, coils of rope, and any number of bundles, sacks, bags, mattresses, and pillows. In order to make your way from the stern to the bows—though the way was a very short one, twenty paces at most—you had to pick your path through a winding maze of chests and trunks and boxes. Very few of the latter bore traces of Western manufacture. They were, for the most part, home-made, studded with brass nails, painted with many colours, fastened with quaint locks and innumerable cords, and possessed of more corners than seemed possibly con-sistent with their size and shape.

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