ung American woman, Dr. Frances
Flood, who, with a single woman companion, Miss Jessup, pluckily
remained at her post throughout the greater part of the war. The
officers who during the war achieved rows of ribbons for having acted as
messenger boys between the War Department and the foreign military
missions in Washington, would feel a trifle embarrassed, I imagine, if
they knew what this little American woman did to win _her_ decorations.

It is in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty miles from Monastir
to Salonika across the Macedonian plain and the road is one of the very
worst in Europe. Deep ruts, into which the car sometimes slipped almost
to its hubs, and frequent gullies made driving, save at the most
moderate speed, impossible, while, as many of the bridges were broken,
and without signs to warn the travelers of their condition, we more than
once barely saved ourselves from plunging through the gaping openings to
disaster. The vast traffic of the fighting armies had ground the roads
into yellow dust which rose in clouds as dense as a London fog, while
the waves of heat from the sun-scorched plains beat against our faces
like the blast from an open furnace door. Despite its abominable
condition, the road was alive with traffic: droves of buffalo, black,
ungainly, broad-horned beasts, their elephant-like hides caked with
yellow mud; woolly waves of sheep and goats driven by wild mountain
herdsmen in high fur caps and gaudy sashes; caravans of camels, swinging
superciliously past on padded feet, laden with supplies for the interior
or salvaged war material for the coast; clumsy carts, painted in strange
designs and screaming colors, with great sharpened stakes which looked
as though they were intended for purposes of torture, but whose real
duty is to keep the top-heavy loads in place.

Though the slopes of the Rhodope and the Pindus are clothed with
splendid forests, it is for the most part a flat and treeless land,
dotted with clusters of filthy hovels made of sun-dried brick and with
patches of discouraged-looking vegetation. As Macedonia (its inhabitants
pronounce it as though the first syllable were _mack_) was once the
granary of the East, I had expected to see illimitable fields of waving
grain, but such fields as we did see were generally small and poor.
Guarding them against the hovering swarms of blackbirds were many
scarecrows, rigged out in the uniforms and topped by the helmets of the
men whos