A Russian, a Bulgarian, a Servian, a Montenegrin, and a Tchek may meet and talk, each in his own language, and all understand each other. You might as well expect the English north of the Thames not to sympathise with those south of it, in case the latter were under the domination of the Turks, as to try to prevent these Sclavonic races from helping . each other, while groaning under a foreign despotism.
Batak is situated about thirty miles south of Tatar Bazardjik as the crow flies, high up in the spur of the Balkans that here sweeps around to the south from the main range. The road was only a steep mountain path that in places might have tried the agility of a goat. There was a better one, as we learned upon our return, but, with that perversity which distinguishes the Oriental mind, our guide took this one instead. We formed a curious but a somewhat lugubrious procession as we wound up the steep mountain side Guided Istanbul Tours.
Knives and pistols
First there were our two zaptiehs in their picturesque costumes, bristling with knives and pistols, our guide likewise armed to the teeth, then the five persons who composed our party, mounted on mules and horses decked out with nondescript saddles and trappings, followed by a procession of fifty or sixty women and children who had resolved to accompany us to Batak. Many of the women carried a small child, and a heavy burthen besides, comprising the provisions, clothing, cooking utensils, or harvesting implements, they had begged or borrowed in Pestera. Even children—little girls of nine and ten years—were trudging wearily up the steep mountain side under burthens too heavy for them ; and they would be five or six hours in reaching their destination.
After three hours’ climbing by paths so steep that fte were obliged to dismount and walk half the time without then seeming quite safe from rolling down into some abyss, mounting higher and higher until we seemed to have got among the clouds, we at last emerged from a thick wood into a delightful little valley that spread out a rich carpet of verdure before our eyes.
A little stream came murmuring down through it, upon which there was built a miniature saw-mill It appears that the people in Batak did a considerable trade in timber, which they worked up from the forests on the surrounding mountains, for we afterwards observed a great number of these little mills, and were even told there were over two hundred in and about the village.
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