With the Serbs in Macedonia

THE SIMPLE LIFE 209
fact that in the days of Turkish rule nobody
dared to make much show of wealth for fear of
extra exactions. But this is not true of the
peasantry, and all the houses we saw were
practically the same.
His house was nothing more than a roughly
built big shed divided into two. Withies were
laced in and out of the uprights and plastered
on both sides with a mixture of mud and lime
and short straw. The roof is either tiled or
thatched— in this case it was thatched.
Everybody
lived in this one room with its
earth floor. Furniture there was none. Clothes
were not even hung up in this home, though
they were in others. They lay in stacks round
the walls. There were no beds. Filthy rugs and
coloured quilts were spread on the floor at night.
There was an open fireplace of the crudest and
smokiest variety. On the verandah, where meals
were mostly eaten, there were two or three very
dirty cushions and two small, rough tables a
few inches high. The cooking was as primitive
as everything else. The maize bread, the principal
article of diet, was baked in a round copper
pan, whichi was buried, lid and all, in hot wood
ashes. Whenever there was any meat to be
roasted this was done gipsy fashion— a long
pole was run through the joint and supported at
the ends, and an ash fire made underneath.