Boat sprawled upon the deck

I noticed three Italian masons, who were going to Bourgas to look out for work on the breakwater; a German clerk, who was being sent to Bourgas to learn Bulgarian in a German firm which does business there; and a Russian Jew, who was apparently in the old-clothes line, and who carried that part of his stock-in-trade, for which he could not find a purchaser at any price, upon his own person. But I should think that of the some hundred passengers stowed away in our little cockle-shell of a steamer, fully ninety were Bulgarians. We had half a dozen or so native soldiers in uniform. Even when under drill and at attention, the Bulgarian soldier, brave as he undoubtedly is, has not much of a military air.

When he is off duty and out of sight of his officers, he looks just like what he is in reality, a sturdy, clumsily built ploughboy, stuck into an ill-fitting uniform, which he has never yet acquired the art of wearing. The soldiers on our boat sprawled upon the deck—their huge, high-booted legs seemed to stretch in every direction ; they were eating apples and onions all day long, but they were quite sober, very quiet, and extremely good-natured. There were any number of Bulgarian peasants clad in sheepskins, and a good many clerks and shopmen and their wives and children, all of them untidy, all shabby, and all looking as if they had not of late been addicted to washing.

The passengers lay in layers on the wet deck; the women bare-headed, except for a soiled handkerchief tied round their foreheads, and most of them with bonnet-boxes under their arms. Men, women, and children alike were all victims to sea-sickness. Basins were unknown—when the sufferers could manage it, they staggered to the ship’s side ; when their strength was not equal to the task of moving, they were simply sick on the ground where they lay. But what struck me most was the perfect quiet and good nature of the crowd, even amidst their personal discomfort.