scription. It is in fact nothing but a gigantic chimney, about thirty feet in diameter at the base and narrowing up to a small opening at the height of about one hundred feet, through which the smoke escapes. Some cooking-pots of Homeric proportions, and ladles containing nearly a gallon apiece, appeared to constitute the whole batterie de cuisine. The reverend fathers, it may be remarked, show a painful want of enterprise in the culinary art. During all the time of our visit the fare was invariably the same; hard boiled eggs, a remarkably thin soup, and stewed mutton. If we asked for anything fresh, the same food was brought in on a different dish, this process appearing to realize satisfactorily the monastic idea of variety. A fair red wine is however provided, and occasionally, as a great favour, trout. From the kitchen we proceeded to the church, an edifice of modern construction, built in the form of a Greek cross and adorned with numerous cupolas. The interior is decorated in a rich, though barbarous fashion, but is not very interesting; some highly venerated relics, including the much-prized. hand of a certain St. John of Rilo, were, however, produced for our edification. In striking contrast with the gorgeous decoration of the interior are some rudely drawn frescoes on the outside.

These repre

sent the wicked tormented in the most fantastic and horrifying manner, which, it is to be hoped, produces a lasting effect upon the numerous pilgrims. No Bulgarian atrocity that ever inflamed the eloquence of a British politician could compare for one instant with these representations of celestial retribution. A visit to the library concluded the inspection. This is a very small room with a couple of glazed cases containing some works in Russian and. French, embroidered vestments, and various re

ligious objects. There are also a certain number of manuscripts of doubtful quality. The most valuable document in the possession of the

monastery is the Chrissovoul (firman) of Chichman, which constitutes the charter of the foundation. It is written on parchment, in the Bulgarian language, and dated 1379. This firman confirms the privileges granted by former rulers of Bulgaria, and defines the property of the monastery. The signature is to this effect: "The faithful servant of Christ, John Chichman, King and Autocrat of all the Bulgars and Greeks."

The principal sights were now exhausted, and the abbot, accompanied by his brethren, politely made his excuses and withdrew. He reappeared however in the afternoon in order to watch our ineffectual efforts to catch some of the numerous trout in a pool artificially formed in the stream below the monastery. After gazing on our futile attempts for some time with undisguised contempt, he volunteered to give us a lesson in sport, and sent for a doleful-looking lay-brother, who waded up to his waist into the icy water with a casting-net. Then the abbot, showing the only symptoms of energy he displayed during the whole of our visit, seized a ponderous stone and hurled it in the direction of the fish his humble companions followed the example of their chief: the ever-present gendarmes, anxious also to display their skill, pulled out their carbines and fired into the flying shoal; while Dimitri, still smarting under the disappointment of not having had just one shot at the brigands, consoled himself in a similar manner. Meanwhile the lay-brother, stimulated by the cries and shots, cast his net right and left, capturing a victim at every throw. Altogether the scene was a lively and amusing one.

But the curious visitor will study with most interest the daily occupations of the monks; though occupation is perhaps a word suggested by courtesy rather than truth. They may not unfairly be described as the living embodiments of the famed kef so dear to Orientals; their only apparent duty consists in occasionally attending the

services in the church, while the rest of their time is spent in sleep, or in sitting vacantly on the numerous balconies and seats provided for their accommodation within the courtyard. Formerly far more numerous, they now number about sixty only, and are waited upon by a corps of lay-brothers and novices. The practice of allowing each man to cook and eat where he pleases instead of obliging all to feed together in the refectory encourages slovenly habits, while the discipline and method are, to say the least, not such as one is accustomed to associate with the idea of a monastery. Manual labour is almost entirely performed by the lay-brothers and paid workmen. The latter live outside the monastery in large buildings which have sprung up from time to time: they cut the wood, work on the farm, bake the bread, grow the vegetables, and in fact supply all the necessaries of life required for the religious drones inside. Not a book is to be seen in the place with the exception of those in the library; and they did not seem to be much used, nor was it even clear to me that any one was able to read them.

In the course of a long conversation with the abbot I failed to discover that the monastery fulfilled any useful purpose. It maintains no school, neither does it attempt the humblest technical instruction. In the days of Turkish rule the Russians doubtless utilized it for the purpose of political propaganda, but nowadays the Church exercises next to no influence in Bulgaria, so that even this sphere of activity is denied to the recluses of Rilo. Nor was I much more successful in ascertaining how the establishment was supported; however, I gathered that the monastery owned considerable landed property, mostly forest, and that the monks relied more or less upon what they received from travellers, and upon the alms and offerings of pilgrims. On some of the more important festivals of the Greek Church as many as five thousand pilgrims will

come in to remain for some days. My informant maintained that the revenue was scanty and precarious: the government on the other hand assert that the monastery is very rich, and credit it with an income of about twelve

thousand pounds a year. When I

asked the abbot if he had no fear of being expropriated some day and sharing the fate of his unfortunate brethren in France, he only smiled in a pitying manner: the prospect of a Bulgarian Jules Ferry had evidently no terrors for him as yet. I am afraid it must be said that these good monks, from their abbot downwards, are almost entirely illiterate; but perhaps one of their most striking characteristics is the absence of all curiosity. Although strangers are exceedingly rare, no one ever expressed the slightest wish to know what was going on either in Bulgaria or elsewhere. Even the unwonted and almost unique apparition of a lady habited in the most fashionable of Western costumes failed to raise the smallest flutter of interest in their torpid bosoms.

Meanwhile the affair of the brigands which, in the language of diplomacy, we imagined to be closed, was again brought to our notice. On the morning following the bloodless encounter about a score of Bulgarian militia suddenly put in an appearance under the command of our old friend the Prefect of Dubnitza. Rarely have I witnessed any more picturesque spectacle than the halt of these warriors in the courtyard preparatory to beginning their hunt. Each man wore his ordinary variegated costume, and they appeared to be armed with every variety of rifle from Martinis to weapons, about eight feet in length, of native manufacture. Sandals shod their feet, and they carried nothing but their arms, ammunition, a capote or a carpet, and a bag containing bread. Of all ages and sizes, they ranged from the veteran of sixty to the youth of fourteen. It was impossible not to speculate how they were to be distin

guished from the brigands themselves, and how the regulars, when they arrived, would separate friends from foes. Around this motley crew stood the no less striking inmates of the monastery, showing indeed but a languid interest in the proceedings. Indeed, the general expression of the faces around me seemed to signify that the whole business was a solemn farce; "what on earth," they appeared to be thinking, "is the use of making all this fuss about a few brigands?" The abbot himself had informed me that in the days of the Turks brigands used constantly to visit the monastery; and he added, "though the authorities are perpetually coming here after them, yet they never catch any one." I must own to have secretly sympathized with these views: the men had treated me in a gentlemanlike, even in a handsome manner, and it seemed quite reasonable to let them alone. However the command had gone forth from Sofia that this particular band was to be pursued, and the sacred cause of law and order vindicated; so after a short rest, the military were formed up under the vast porch : "Haide!" shouted the sergeant, and away they started up the valley.

On the morning fixed for the return to Dubnitza, the preparations for the journey reminded me faintly of the Wilds of West Kensington and the

famous coach of "Buffalo Bill." The Prefect, who was indisposed, surrendered his steed and occupied one of our carriages here he sat, a Martini carbine in his lap and cartridges in his hand, a picture of official responsibility. Fifteen mounted gendarmes, of a singularly ferocious aspect, formed an imposing escort, while every one seemed to have suddenly produced an unsuspected store of arms; even the miserable little interpreter, though probably innocent of fire-arms, had girt himself with an enormous belt of cartridges. The lady and myself were apparently the only persons of the party unprovided with weapons of war. It need hardly perhaps be added that Dubnitza and eventually Sofia were reached without a sign of the smallest adventure.

Thus ended an interesting and most amusing expedition, which may be warmly recommended to all who are not too sternly bent on travelling luxuriously. And I must in conclusion add, that what has been written of the monks of Rilo has been set down in no unfriendly spirit. On the contrary, I wish these holy men a long and undisturbed existence; not only for their own sakes, but because they constitute a continual, albeit passive protest against the unwearying activity and ruthless self-improvement of the age.

T. W. LEGH.

I.

THEY were called the Sierra Negra, and deserved the name, for a blacker and more bleak range of hills could hardly be found elsewhere. A spur from the Sierras del Sud in the province of Buenos Ayres, they stretched away in a westerly direction into the dreary plains of salt and sand that are to be found in the interior of that country. On their southern side there was nothing but many weary miles of barren desert until one reached the Rio Colorado; but on the north they sloped down to a fairly wide belt of good pasture-land through which flowed the Arroyo Corto, a stream which, although it had an awkward. habit of running dry in the summer, would make up for its shortcomings in a wet winter by flooding the plain for many a league on either side. Between the Arroyo and the Sierras there were but few families living, but on the north side of the Arroyo a considerable number of sheep-farmers had their stations, and the little town of San José de las Sierras, could not only count some five hundred inhabitants, but also rejoiced in the possession of a church, a municipality, a magistrate, and at least five policemen. That the Commissary of the place had utilized the prison as a stable was merely a sign of the absence of ill-doing in San José, and that, in its turn, no doubt might be attributed to the presence of so many policemen, though they did spend their time in smoking endless cigarettes and sucking maté. Indeed it was a virtuous little town, but a very dull one. The inhabitants, the greater part of whom were of Indian blood, seemed to pass their lives chiefly in eating and sleeping. Once a fortnight, when the diligence arrived from

General Concha, there would be a little excitement among the few officials of the place, who might receive letters or papers from head-quarters, and who would talk to the driver as he took out his horses and perhaps ask him to dinner; but to the general public the arrival was merely a sign that another fortnight had passed and that the day was Wednesday, or not impossibly Thursday, for it sometimes happened that the coach was a day late. Anything more complete than their isolation it would be hard to imagine: thirty leagues of sandy plain lay between them and the town of General Concha, and that town itself was at least twenty leagues distant from the nearest point on a railway. For some ten or twelve years San José had existed, and during that time it had remained absolutely unchanged: there were the same straggling blocks of low-built houses with flat roofs, staring blankly at each other through their unglazed windows across the dusty waste that served as a road: dust everywhere in the hot summer, and in the winter deep holding mud into which the horses would sink kneedeep, splashing the whitewashed fronts of the nearest houses, in spite of the salutary law that no one should be allowed to ride at full gallop in the streets there was the same half-built church, the same shops that sold their goods at one hundred per cent. profit and yet made no profits, the same groups of listless idlers, and the same happy content on the part of every one who lived there. We who lived on the further side of the Arroyo were even more cut off from the outside world. An occasional visit to San José for the purchase of stores or the transaction of business was, as a rule, the limit of our wanderings; and often it would happen in

Why I had chosen such a spot to pitch my tent in I should find it difficult to say. A Frenchman by

birth, I had been sent to Paris as a boy to make my studies with a view to becoming a lawyer, and there I had lived for four or five years the life of a young fool with great pleasure and little profit to myself; so that, when the time arrived for the purchase of a business and my establishment in some country town, the money for that purchase was all gone, expended in the acquirement of a very liberal education. My fortune was expended and so was the patience of my guardian, for I had no family. I went abroad, became a clerk in Algiers, a journalist in Alexandria, an adventurer everywhere; until I drifted out to South America and amassed, as a pioneer and sheep-farmer, quite a respectable little property. Twenty years' absence from my country had so dulled and blunted any former aspirations that I may have had, that I hardly thought of a return. It might happen sometimes that a restless longing would seize me to know what was going on in my old haunts, to pace the boulevards once more and perhaps see once again some half-forgotten face; but a hard day's work, a hearty meal and a good night's sleep would banish my recollections and reconcile me to my surroundings; that is the real secret, work hard, grow hungry and tired, eat and sleep well, and neither wearying thoughts nor dreams shall haunt you. There were few who would have recognized François de Vigne, the fop, in Francisco Devina, as they called me, the bronzed and bearded farmer. But it is not my own story that I wish to tell, but that of my neighbour, Don Miguel Ocampo, the Alcalde of the district.

He was very proud of being our Alcalde, though indeed the distinction

was no great one; but then, Miguel was proud of everything. He was proud of his name, which was a wellknown one in the country: he was proud of his personal strength and power of endurance, which indeed were extraordinary in an old man of sixty-seven; and he was particularly proud of always going his own way. An honest, kindly old fellow, good to look upon, with his stalwart figure and handsome face, vain as a child of the knowledge he possessed and possessing as little knowledge as any other gaucho, as wrong-headed as he was obstinate, and as obstinate as a blind cow. He owned a considerable property in land, though he had not much cattle to stock it with, and a decent house built far too close to the banks of the Arroyo. It was useless to argue with him as to the danger of its position, or to show him how every succeeding flood crumbled the curving banks of the stream and brought its bed nearer and nearer to his door. He had built the house, therefore it was put in the best situation: with his own hands he had helped to make the bricks and raise the walls, and nothing could shake the wall that Miguel Ocampo had made; and moreover I was a gringo, or foreigner, and he was an hijo del pais, a son of the country. A son of the country— that was just what he was; ignorant, simple-minded and vain; quick to wrath and slow to forgive an injury ; rough in his life and speech, but not without a natural courtesy and dignity of his own which many a richer and more civilized man might have envied. We had become great friends, and I owed a good deal of my success in farming to his practical advice and unfailing help whenever I got into difficulties. It was a constant amusement to me to relate to him some episode of my former life and hear his simple comments thereon. For womankind in general he had a great contempt they were a deceitful race, but they had never deceived Miguel Ocampo, he was of opinion that there