On the other side of the street two women, each of whom looks to be little less than a hundred years of age, are spreading aprons on the dust-covered sidewalk and arranging thereon their baskets and bundles. They will sell you the finest, most delicious cherries you have ever closed your teeth upon for forty centimes a litre; and strawberries!—well, you just can’t wait to buy a basket of such strawberries at the same price as the cherries. They are large and luscious but a litre really does not weigh enough to get a great number of fruit, for each one is worth at least two bites. I am not stretching the tape a hair’s breadth when I say that I have measured Bulgarian strawberries four and one-half inches in circumference.
Down the street now comes a parade of bullock carts, laden with wool. The clumsy animals lumber lazily along, while the drivers, one of whom walks in front of each team, tap deftly with their long poles first one beast and then the other between the horns, to remind them to stay awake until they arrive at the market. The carts are heavy affairs and look for all the world like some sort of ancient chariots. And I may state here that the bullock, a prototype of the water-buffalo of the Far East, is a domestic animal commonly found in Bulgaria, and for what reason it was originally imported to the country I have often wondered. Nevertheless, it seems thoroughly acclimated, and is used as a beast of burden by the peasants and farmers, not only on the plains but in the mountains as well, where, you might imagine, its awkwardness and weight would be to its disadvantage in negotiating the rocky roads.
In the slender shadow of the mosque tower another heavily-clothed peasant and his wife are engaged in selling live stock. The woman fondles a suckling pig under her left arm, while, with her free hand, she holds another, head downward, by the hind feet. Each of these pigs may be purchased for two francs, and for three, a live lamb from the husband. A pair of spring chickens brings the same ridiculous price as a suckling pig.
A GROUP POSED FOR THE CAMERA AT THE FRIDAY MARKET, SOPHIA.
In wedging your way through the crowd, which by this time surges over the entire square and overflows into the adjacent streets, you stumble over an old Turkish woman, in baggy, yellow bloomers and curved-toed slippers, who has deliberately spread her array of embroideries in the very centre of the sidewalk.
At the noon hour, when the Muezzin again calls the faithful to prayer, the market is at its height. From a distance, the monotonous drone of the street-cries sounds like the hum of a myriad insects, the swelling cadenzas of which, as they float out upon the soporific atmosphere, may be heard in any part of the city.
At last the peasants, after a profitable holiday in town, prepare to start on their homeward journey. By the middle of the afternoon the last solitary vender has departed with his pack-animals or his bullock cart, his fur coat and his woollen stockings. Then the street cleaners and street sprinklers take the square in hand. They sprinkle the dust and scrub the pavement and in half an hour you would not have believed that that same square was the place from which emanated, but a short time before, the Babelonic hum-drum of hundreds of perspiring market-people.
It may be the fashion, but it is altogether exasperating, to be called at five-thirty in the morning, in order to take a train which leaves at eight-fifteen. “But when in Rome—” at all events, we arrived at the depot exactly one hour before the time set for the departure of the “Orient Express,” which was to carry us back to Belgrade. But we felt in no wise lonesome, for many others who wished to take the same train had come to the depot even before us. The proprietor himself accompanied us from the hotel and consumed the time taken to drive the distance by asking us repeatedly to “make a recommend” in America for his hostelry, and which we gladly consented to do. When the train arrived he bade us good-bye with tears in his eyes, and graciously kissed the hands of the ladies of the party.