The Days of a Man [^1914 



officers not affected by wine occupied the running 

 boards as far as Kula. 

 7he This Uttle burned hamlet lies on the north side of 



istritza ^^ Bistritza — *' Clear-River" — which forms the 

 present artificial boundary between Greek and 

 Bulgarian Macedonia. There we witnessed the joint 

 iniquity of the tyranny of the frontier and a cutthroat 

 tariff. This concerned the "Turkish tobacco" pro- 

 duced around Strumitza, a considerable town in the 

 rich upper reaches of the Strumica, which flows into 

 the Struma from the west near Petritch. That prod- 

 uct was formerly shipped to Salonica by train from 

 Strumitza Station,^ a few miles west of the town 

 across a low divide in what had now become the 

 Serbian frontier. But after the unnatural division of 

 Macedonia among her three neighbors, no persons 

 from the valley of Strumitza were allowed to cross the 

 line to reach their own railway station. Produce had 

 therefore to be taken on camels or in carts drawn by 

 buffalo — occasionally by horses — down to the 

 Bistritza bridge. ^ 

 Tyranny On the day of our arrival some hundreds from "the 

 ojthe^ little Dead Sea of Commerce," as Markham phrased 



JTOtltt^T 



it, were encamped at Kula with their loads of tobacco. 

 Two Greek buyers, the only persons allowed to cross 

 the bridge, made all the purchases, thus maintaining 

 a complete monopoly. At the same time a frontier 

 tariff of 33 1/3 per cent was levied by Greece. On the 

 south side of the bridge the tobacco was reloaded on 

 camels or in wagons drawn by the unsympathetic 



^ On the Belgrade-Nish-Salonica line. 



2 By the Treaty of Neuilly, Strumitza (though almost entirely Bulgarian) 

 wastransferred to Serbia by the Supreme Council, on the ground that the change 

 removed the frontier of Bulgaria farther away from the railway line. 



t: 592 3 



