With the Serbs in Macedonia

INCH BY INCH 131
mares, he must have dreamed of some such
road as this was. It ran across the plain from
Salonica in a series of stretches of mud and
rocks and sand and marsh. Such bridges as
existed were either unsafe or too narrow, but
most had merely been allowed to cave in.
Beside it were alternative tracks cut through
the fields by ox-carts when the surface became
too bad even for them. It climbed into the
a dozen or so streams in
hills by Vodena, taking
its stride, heedless of gradients, mixing itself
up among the trees of that charming and wellwooded
district, and taking its bends at an
angle which was good enough for a slow-moving
ox-cart but impossible for a motor vehicle.
Then it fell down the hills on the other side
somehow, anyhow, with rocky
ruts over a foot
deep, and its surface always an inclined plane,
till it lost itself in the infamous Ostrovo sands.
From the other side it climbed again up the
Gomichevo Pass, through gorgeous scenery,
but without the slightest consideration for
tyres or engines.
In places the Pass was almost twelve feet
wide, with terrific drops on either side or both,
and there two lines of traffic were comparatively
comfortable. But in many other places it was
only from six to eight feet wide—and the
vehicles coming down couldn't stop because it