With the Serbs in Macedonia

THE NATIVES 193
pulling. They plough and hoe and thresh, and
the farming implements appear to be of exactly
the same pattern as in Biblical days. So, too, is
the chief means of transport, after the donkeys,
the ox-cart. These springless, creaking, clumsy
vehicles, with their quaint, spiked sides, drawn
by either oxen or water-buffaloes were always a
source of much argument among us. Did they
represent the survival of the fittest and cheapest
means of moving heavy loads in a country
where there were practically no roads as we
know them, a country of muddy tracks and
shallow streams; or were they proofs of a
native lack of any instinct of progress or
adaptability ? We never settled it— but they
got in our way a great deal.
During the heat of the day practically everybody
slept, the field-workers casting themselves
face downwards under the shade of a con-
venient tree. Very little shade seemed to
content them, though dotted about the country
there were great, solitary trees, whose obviously
sole purpose was to give shade to sheep and
men. The curious thing about many of these
trees was their hollow trunks. We saw dozens
with openings six to eight feet wide and four to
six feet deep, with absolutely no fronts at all.
It was astonishing that with such a weakness so
huge a trunk with so many big, spreading