498 
WITH THE TURKS. 
Return to 
Pharsala. 
Hospital at 
Pharsala. 
Pharsala to 
Yolo. 
examined apparently in German; I was also witness of tlie spectacle 
of an unfortunate little pig running tlie gauntlet under fire from some 
hundreds of Turkish soldiers on the hillside opposite, about 300 yards 
off, for the moment successfully; no doubt he met his fate soon after I 
left. 
Taking leave of my Swiss friends with sincere regret, I started on 
my return journey, accompanied by one of our cavalry escort. 
As I rode down the hill a dropping fire of stray shots could be heard 
in all directions, it was impossible to say at what, probably at pigs and 
other unclean animals. Shots could also be heard from time to 
time about the cornfields and villages as I rode across the plain to 
Pharsala and one or two bullets whizzed overhead, due probably to the 
exuberant joy of the Bashi Bazouks over their victory. 
I reached Pharsala at about 7 p.m. in company with the French 
military attache, Captain Dupont, and the correspondent of the Journal 
des Debats , who had overtaken me on the road; my unfortunate steed 
had now subsisted for two whole days on a few mouthfuls of grass and 
green corn and it was as much as 1 could do to keep him on his legs. 
I was thankful to get off his back in front of our old home at Pharsala, 
where I found that our dragomans, notwithstanding the protection of 
two Turkish soldiers, had thought it advisable to barricade themselves 
in ; my own dragoman, Mr. Bycovitch, however, scoffed at these pre¬ 
cautions and attributed them to the terrors of the Syrian Habib, who 
accompanied the Swiss Mission. 
The streets of Pharsala were blocked with strings of mules and 
ponies carrying the wounded, many of whom lay outside the hospitals 
waiting for treatment. 
Mr. Sandison of the Ottoman Bank Ambulance told me that the two 
surgeons with him had attended to 150 wounded men, including three 
amputations during the day. His own brother, who had enlisted as a 
volunteer under the name of Rustam Bey two days before, had been one 
of the first to return with a bullet wound, fortunately not a dangerous 
one, in his arm. 
The preparations made by the ambulances, of the Turkish Medical 
Service, of the Russian Red Cross (lately arrived from Yolo) and of 
the Ottoman Bank, together probably did not provide more than 200 
beds and, as wounded continued to pour in, Mr. Sandison had taken 
the responsibility, for which I hope he got proper credit, of largely 
extending his arrangements. 
Meanwhile my dragoman had been fortunate enough to find a carriage 
to convey us to Yolo next day and at 7 a.m. on the 19th we were again 
en route. 
The drive to Yolo through Yelestino is an uninteresting one; only 
a very few posts of Turkish soldiers existed between those places and 
it occurred to me that had the Greeks possessed the means and the 
enterprise for such an undertaking, they might have made a very 
effective diversion by landing a few thousand troops at Yolo to threaten 
the Turkish line of communications after the departure of Hakki Pasha 
from Yelestino on the 17th. 
