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PREFACE.

THE political events of the day have drawn
so much of public attention to the regions
which I have lately visited, that a sketch of
their actual condition as I saw them in the
autumn of last year, may not prove unaccept-
able at the present moment. I have not
written in order to plead either this cause or
that one.
I am not a Philo-Turk, nor am I
a Phil-Hellenic, or a Philo-Wallach, or a Philo-
Albanian, or a Philo-Bulgarian; but I believe
that a great change is at hand in the south-
eastern peninsula of Europe, in which these
rising nationalities have each its part to play.
The old Ottoman empire-the Mussulman the-

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ocracy is doomed, on this side of the Bosphorus at least. Whether its name and the shadow its power be still allowed to endure, or whether the "bag and baggage" policy be carried out to the bitter end, a new order of things is in process of evolution. If my jottings by the way can help the reader to a clearer apprehension of the grave events which must sooner or later remodel the map of Southeastern Europe, my journey will not have been undertaken in vain.

Some of the notes embodied in the following pages have already appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' in the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and in the 'Fortnightly Review;' and I am indebted to Mr J. Morley for his kind permission to make use of the last.

M. VALENTINE CHIROL.

CONSTANTINOPLE, April 8, 1881.

NOTE.-The Sketch on the Cover of the book

represents the remarkable aerial Monasteries of Meteora.

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