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up to the town—the water squirting freely from rents and seams in the leather. It is on this primitive method of supply that the entire town of some 10,000 inhabitants depends, for the wells attached to private houses have become deservedly suspect. The water of the Peneus is said to be wholesome; but when, as we saw it, it is swollen with winter floods and as yellow as the Tiber, it was a comfort to reflect that Larissa has store of sound, if not particularly palatable, wine. Moreover, it is hardly encouraging to observe that a gigantic muck-heap, where all the refuse of the town is cast—the happy hunting-ground of innumerable dogs, poultry, magpies, and pert little Eastern jackdaws—occupies about an acre and a half of the river-bank immediately above where the water-skins are filled.

Pursue we then our way up the principal street, past the bazaar and Turkish café, where dozens of wide-breeched, be-fezzed, and be-slippered citizens are drinking coffee, bolting sweetmeats, and sucking away at huge hubble-bubbles. Once into the Turkish quarter and you are back in the middle ages. No wheeled carriage may venture on that fearsome pavement, for Turks always go on horseback; and though the roadway suffices for their quick-footed barbs, you, on foot, must hop from promontory to island, and from island to isthmus in the ocean of filth. Still you will be tempted to linger here and there; for although the house-walls facing the street are, after oriental fashion, mostly without windows, here and there an open door gives a glimpse into a sunny court, where ripe oranges and lemons gleam among their rich verdure, and palm-fronds cast flickering shadows across paved garden-paths, and you pass on, wondering what manner of life the men, and most of all, the rarely seen women, pass in these old-world abodes.

Entrance to the mosques is rarely refused to Christians, except on festivals, and it is to the top of the highest minaret in the town that we are bound. The narrow spiral staircase affords no more than head-and-shoulder room; the steps are foul with summer-blown dust, with bones brought in by owls and kites, besides other venerable rubbish; and, after what seems interminable gyration, we emerge upon the airy gallery which encircles the top of the slender tower. It is a crazy perch, for the whole structure sways sensibly in the strong wind, and it seems as if a moderate kick would send the frail parapet clattering down on the tile-roof far below; but, if your head is steady, the view well repays the labour of the ascent. Beneath your feet cluster the flat-roofed houses; here and there a chimney rises, crowned with an immense stork's nest, making one wonder how the domestic economy of the bipeds within the house can be reconciled with that of the bipeds without. From the dusky labyrinth of streets spring twenty-six minarets, like silvery bodkins, besides the one to which we are clinging. Then let your eye travel over the splendid prospect lying beyond the town. Full forty miles the fat plain is spread east and west, and five-and-twenty north and south, with hardly a tree to break the level, save where the peasants' cots cluster round the fortified granges of the landowners. The northern horizon is closed by the massive rampart of mountains which marks the latest shrinkage of Ottoman rule. It is a magnificent barrier, though it