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The mehana is crowded by a wildly gesticulating and loudly commenting and arguing crowd of Turks and Christians all the evening.
Of all places invented in the world to disgust a hungry, expectant wayfarer, the Bulgarian mehana is the most abominable. A storm is observed brewing in the mountains I have lately traversed, and, having swallowed my unpalatable lunch, I hasten to mount, and betake myself off toward Sofia, distant thirty kilometres.
The pasha is very likely possessed of more intelligence than I have been giving him credit for; anyhow he has in ten minutes proved himself equal to the situation, which the mulazim and several prominent Eski Babans have puzzled their collective brains over for an hour in vain, and, after he has inspected the bicycle, and resumed his cross-legged position on the carpet, I doff my helmet to him and those about him, and return to the mehana, well satisfied with the turn affairs have taken.
Once during the afternoon I attempt to write, but I might as well attempt to fly, for the mehana is crowded with people who plainly have not the slightest conception of the proprieties.
A smart rain-storm drives me into an uninviting mehana near the Roumelian frontier, for two unhappy hours, at noon a mehana where the edible accommodations would wring an "Ugh" from an American Indian and the sole occupants are a blear-eyed Bulgarian, in twenty-year-old sheep-skin clothes, whose appearance plainly indicates an over-fondness for mastic, and an unhappy- looking black kitten.
The population is delighted. Solid old Turks pat me on the back approvingly, and the proprietor of the mehana fairly hauls me and the bicycle into his establishment.
Once well out of the city the road is quite good for several kilometres, and I am favored with a unanimous outburst of approval from a rough crowd at a suburban mehana, because of outdistancing a horseman who rides out from among them to overtake me.
This person is quite befuddled with mastic, which makes him inclined to be tyrannical and officious; and several times within the hour, while I wait for the never-failing thunder-shower to subside, he peremptorily dismisses both civilians and military out of the mehana yard; but the crowd always filters back again in less than two minutes.
Yesterday evening's downpour has little injured the road between the mehana and Philippopolis, the capital of Eoumelia, and I wheel to the confines of that city in something over two hours. Philippopolis is most beautifully situated, being built on and around a cluster of several rocky hills; a situation which, together with a plenitude of waving trees, imparts a pleasing and picturesque effect.
Several showers occur during the afternoon, and the distance travelled has been short and unsatisfactory, when just before dark I arrive at Eski Baba, where I am agreeably surprised to find a mehana, the proprietor of which is a reasonably mannered individual.
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