v«SK«»«'**'-'**«iS««W3W*******'Wi^^ -■

LIBRARY

ONIveRSlTY OF CALIFORNIA

SANDIEOO

OUTLINE MAP OF ROUTE.

Across Asia Minor on Foot

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/acrossasiaminoroOOchiliala

u

E <

CO

S o

'g

Across

Asia Minor on Foot

BY

W. J. CHILDS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

William Blackwood and Sons

Edinburgh and London

1917

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE.

The journey described in this volume extended altogether to about 1300 miles on foot, and occupied five months ; and the days spent in actual travel upon the road were fifty-four.

Asia Minor has been traversed from end to end, and sea to sea, by many Europeans in the past ; American missionaries, too, not only men, but un- attended women, go freely about the country as a matter of course, and often cover long distances. There must be, indeed, many worse regions for journeying in than Turkey-in-Asia.

But all these travellers have gone by araba or ridden on horseback, and, when possible, have been glad enough to use train, and bicycle, and even motor-car. None of them, I think, has ever attempted to go in the peasant manner, to follow road or track afoot, to sleep in the poorest khans or wherever shelter could be found, and to mix by day and night with the varied and doubtful pedestrian company of an Eastern highway.

To see something of Asia Minor in this more intimate fashion, accompanied only by a Turk, was the purpose of the journey now to be described. Only in the quality of adventure did realisation fall short of what might have been expected. Brigandage and robbery, fighting between troops and deserters, murder and forcible abductions — affairs of this kind took place before and behind me, but I missed them

VI

PREFACE

ever, sometimes by days, sometimes only by hours, and moved always, it seemed, in the peaceful intervals between storms.

For this reason no bloodshedding, no hair-breadth escapes will be found in the narrative ; instead is a record of lesser excitements, of wayside sights and incidents, and allusions to such scenes of legends, traditions, and historical events as my road brought me to in a land crowded with ancient memories.

To the sustained enjoyment and satisfaction that the journey afforded me, nearly every one I met contributed. No unknown traveller ever had greater good - fortune in this respect, no traveller of note greater opportunities for seeing and learning. Americans of the Missions, Consuls of my own country, and, I may add — for I travelled in days before the war — German officials and missionaries, all received me with exceeding kindness and hospi- tality. To them all I offer my thanks.

Nor did I receive less from the native inhabitants, from whom, perhaps, much less might have been expected. Turks, Circassians, Greeks, Armenians, and Lazis — all except the disappointed few whose commercial instincts had prompted them to recognise me as a Croesus in disguise — showed nothing but courtesy and goodwill.

Of the treatment I received from Turkish officials as a class let these facts speak. It was the time of the Italian war ; vilayets, in which I spent months, were under martial law ; and Italian subjects were being expelled. Yet I went free and almost un- questioned, a mysterious foreigner wandering about the country, visiting disturbed districts where the authorities were then encountering armed resistance, disappearing for a week, and reappearing a hundred miles away, photographing, taking notes, and always examining roads and bridges. To the patriotic official eye, one would think there hardly could have been a more ffitting, inquisitive alien figure, hardly a more

PREFACE vii

likely enemy agent. And yet, except once at the outset of the journey, no official or zaptieh, though I saw many, ever caused me more than a few minutes' delay, and then always apologised handsomely for doing so.

Of course a sufficient reason existed for all this politeness and goodwill and confidence — and that was nothing less than the repute of the English name. The fact of being English was ever the most universal and respected recommendation I could possess. Turk and Greek and Armenian might hate each other to the death, but each regarded England as the friend of his race. I do not think that anywhere, even in the most remote villages, I ever met a peasant to whom the name ''Ingleez" was unfamiliar, or did not stand for a more or less friendly figure, vague and uncertain no doubt, but carrying definite prestige.

"Nothing will ever be well with this country till the English take it," was the remark made, not long since, by a dervish sheikh in Anatolia to an American visitor. Although this opinion must not be thought to indicate any general similar desire of the Moslem population, it illustrates well enough how the English were regarded, and how an inquiring English traveller came to be received with friendly confidence even in time of war.

It may be wondered why so few photographs of Aleppo, and none of Alexandretta and district, are included in the book. I took many, on films pur- chased in the wonderful bazaars of Aleppo ; and though by outward date the films were not over age, yet each gave a blank on being developed.

I cannot conclude without acknowledging the help I found throughout the journey in ' Murray's Hand- book for Travellers in Asia Minor.' No one who has not had occasion to study ' Murray's ' closely can have any idea of how diverse and accurate is the informa- tion it contains upon a country where exact informa- tion is exceedingly difficult to obtain. Within the

viii PREFACE

limits of my experience I found no error in this invaluable book.

With one exception, the photographs which follow were taken by myself. For that one, the view of Kaisariyeh and Mount Argaeus, facing page 198, I have to thank Dr Alden Hoover of the American Hospital at Talas.

W. J. C.

PAns

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

A Black Sea gale — First snow of winter — I seem to have started too late — The Austrian Captain's views — The " Lord Bill " — The glamorous coast of Asia Minor — Alluring mountain-roads — I land at SamsAn for the Bagdad Road .... 1

CHAPTER II. SamsAn — Ottoman Greeks and Hellenic navy — How SamsAn dealt with cholera — Changed plans for the journey — Achmet — An American girl on the Bagdad Road — Country of a famous legend — Shadow of Russia — At the top of the pass — A head in the scrub — Khan at Chakallu — Turkish travelling — Caravan traffic and camps at Chakallu — Common-room at the khan . 10

CHAPTER III. Tipping at Chakallu khan — Goats one of the curses of mankind — A weird beggar — On the great plateau of Asia Minor — Kara Dagh and its robbers — A Roman road — An ancient and modern watering-place — A fashionable khan at Khavsa — Absence of women in Turkish travelling — Ritual of coffee-making — Gorge of the "Flowing Backwards" river — Flour mills — Difficulties with camels — A Greek fisherman — I leave the Bagdad Road — Walnut groves, vineyards, and burying-grounds at Marsovan . 26

CHAPTER IV. Marsovan — Vineyard quarrels — The Tash Khan as a place of refuge — Armenians and Turks — Pistols — Kara Mustapha Pasha : Donkey-driver, Janissary, Grand Vizier — His plot — His defeat at Vienna — His death by bowstring . . . ,38

CHAPTER V. American Mission at Marsovan — The "Gilt-edged Mission" — The old compound — English nurses and hospital garden — An American walled village — "The Parting Tree" — Busy days — The " Business Manager " — Students of Anatolia College — Many nationalities — Ascendancy of Russian students — Armenian students — Revolutionaries and the College — Greek students : their ancient Greek characteristics . . . .49

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI. Marsovan Mission Hospital — Mission doctor and robbers — " Harden EfFendi" — Hospital scenes — A case of self -amputation — Magic of the "actual cautery" — The pensioned smuggler — Hospital shooting season — Hard- worked medical staff — Surgeon and nurses on the run — Running orderly and patient — In the foreign nurses' sitting-room . . . . .58

CHAPTER VII. On Marsovan plain — A conqueror's saying — Achmet a Bulgarian mohadji — Charcoal-burners — A singular ravine — The making of pekmez — An ominous noise — Amasia the most picturesque city in Asia Minor — Its precipices and river — Choosing a meal — Kabob — Moonrise, singing, and drums . . . .65

CHAPTER VIII. Arrested in Amasia — An Armenian oflFers help — In a chemist's shop — " Who is Sir Edward Grey 1 " — Interviewing the Governor — Achmet climbing — The castle — Treasure-trove in Asia Minor — Signalling sunset — Early morning scenes — Punishing a thief — Old buildings of Amasia — The Mirror Tomb — Land of the Amazons — Amazons of the present day — Gardens of Amasia — A German colony ....... 76

CHAPTER IX. Market-folk at Amasia — Many races — Rock-dwellers — Begging children — A professional beggar — "Wayside shop — A swaggering Kurd — Yeni Bazaar Ehan — Zilleh and Julius Csesar . . 91

CHAPTER X. A caravan track from Yeni Bazaar — French road -surveyors' camp — Bullock-carters defy the law — Turkhal and its flies — Basil and Gregory the Illuminator at Annesoi — Jelat Khan — The Imperial Ottoman Mail — Road of evil name — Precautions — Customs of the road — Doubtful horsemen — Entering Tokat . . 97

CHAPTER XI. Tokat — Dagger- wearing people — A pleasant khan — Armenian soldiers — On yoghourt — Achmet as kitchen-maid — A Greek visitor — Tokat Castle — Osman Pasha — Death of Henry Martyn — Achmet and the sentry — Breaking into a Turkish house — Commercial khans of Tokat — An Armenian pastor — Rumours of massacre on my road . . . . . .110

CHAPTER XII. Morning scenes at Tokat khan — On the southward road — Tobacco smuggling — A smuggling party in the act — A dangerous path- way— Musical bullock-carts— Chiftlik Khan . . .122

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XIII.

An unexpected meeting — Rumours of massacre at Yeni Khan — Crossing Chamli Bel — Villages in hiding — Turkish recruits on Chamli Bel — The affair at Yeni Khan — Prompt measures — The Moslem mood — Circassians and the Evil Eye — Roadside prayer — The corvee in operation — The "Place of Willows Khan " . 131

CHAPTEE XIV.

Entering Sivas — A city of past greatness — An Armenian migration — Seljuk colleges — Sivas and Russian wars — Road and railway centre — The Crooked Bridge — The difficulties of a Vali — Forty banished pashas — British military consuls — American mission — Armenian Monastery of St Nishan — The Armenian Bishop of Sivas — The Bishop's tradition of Timur .... 143

CHAPTER XV.

Selecting another araba- driver — Mehmet — Boisterous Turkish recruits — On the road for Kaisariyeh — Far-off view of Argaeus — Mehmet's peculiarities — A quarrel — Dogs, and more dogs — The coloured hills — Lazis on the road — The ancient road between Sivas and Kaisariyeh . . . . .160

CHAPTER XVI.

In the guest-house at Kara Geul — An Armenian village — The English language in Asia Minor — Another quarrel with Mehmet — Armenians in dread of massacre — The ambitious schoolmaster — A traveller of dignity — The notable kavass — Sultan Khan — Mighty Argaeus — The geomej on Lale Bel — The sunken roads — A carpet- weaving population — A deserted Seljuk college — The wrong road at evening — At the American Mission Hospital, Talas ........ 169

CHAPTER XVII.

In Talas town — The most medieval-looking streets in Asia Minor — Rhodian masons — Mangals — Ali Dagh and Argaeus — King George and Argaeus — A troglodyte chapel — An Armenian monastery — Bones of John the Baptist — Finding a pack-horse and driver — I engage Ighsan ..... 182

CHAPTER XVIII.

Ighsan begins his duties — Fever at the Ma/i— Seeing Kaisariyeh — Salutations — Self-conscious Turkish officers — At the Mosque of Houen — The castle — Dungeons — On the castle tower — The site of Maxaca — St Basil and Caesarea — Buying in the bazaars — " Another Englishman has come " — A dinner-party at the khan — A Jew-hater . . . . . . .191

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTEE XIX.

The start with a pack-horse — Dull road and weather — Benighted — Tired travellers — No room in Injeau Khan — No room in the village — Billeted troops — A barber's shop receives us — The wine of Injesu — The drummer of Injesu — Ottoman drums . . 204

CHAPTEE XX.

I leave Injesu for the land of cave-dwellers — Ighsan disappears and returns — A strange land in sight — Ighsan shows his scars — Urgub of the Holes — Introduction to cave life — A travelling merchant — Rock-hewn houses, monasteries, stables, chapels, and tombs — Door of a stronghold . . . . .213

CHAPTEE XXI.

A fine morning in Cappadocia — A ravine of caves and gardens — The Valley of Gu^reme — Cones standing like tents — A troglo- dyte caf 6 —Bishopric of Matiane — Uch Hissar village and rock — A muster of Moslems — Nevshehr — Another Greek merchant — Nar : a delightful cave-dwellers' village — Rock and village of Orta Hissar . . . . . . .224

CHAPTEE XXII.

Return to Injesu — A native washing-day — The drummer again — The pasha at the khan — An ancient caravanserai — Gypsies — Castles of Asia Minor — ^A murderer in custody at Develi Elara Hissar ........ 242

CHAPTEE XXIII.

The caravan track to the Mediterranean — Heavy snow at last — The guest-room at Enighil — Robbers before us — Circassians at Kavluk Tepe — A Turkish burying-ground — A place of memories for Ighsan — Under Ala Dagh — The guest-house at Bayam Dere — A morning visitor challenged ..... 249

CHAPTEE XXIV.

Southward from Bayam Dere — Pedestrian traffic — At Yelatin Khan — News of robbers — Expecting attack — Zaptiehs in search — Fundukli Khan — Bozanti — The Bagdad Railway — German aims — The store at Ak Keupru — The Cilician Pass — The wine-shop at Tosan Ali ....... 265

CHAPTEE XXV.

Ulu Kishla — "German castles" — On the Great Plain — Rail to Konia — Shepherds — The runners at Karaman — Hotel de la Gare at Konia — Konia a Seljuk capital — Iconium of St Paul — Moslem colleges — Konia as future Ottoman capital — Return to Ulu Kishla — A blizzard — Snowed up . . . . . 279

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTEE XXVI.

Turkish officers at Ulu Kishla — Turkish officers and men — Loulon Castle — " The Bulwark of Tarsus " — The Bagdad Railway again — The wine-shop at Tahkta Keupru — Snowed up once more — "Sportmen" arrive — A struggle — Circassian bilkers — A high- wayman— A night alarm — Arrival at Dubekji Khan . . 287

CHAPTEE XXVII.

Snow-bound at Dubekji Khan — A quarrel with Ighsan — His brigand friends — Brigands of Asia Minor — On the road again — Road blocked by caravans — The Cilician Gates Pass — Castles — Forts — Ibrahim Pasha — British guns — Castle of the Sclavonian Guard — The Gate of the Pass — Descending to the Mediterranean 304

CHAPTEE XXVIII.

Return to the Cilician Gates — A short stage to Yeni Khan — A sacred tree — Yeni Khan — A quarrel with knives — English country — In the myrtle scrub — Oleander and asphodel — Con- scripts on the road — A scrimmage with Arabs — Rain and mud by night on the Tarsus road — Lights of the jingaan — Tarsus . 318

CHAPTEE XXIX.

An old Tarsus khan — Held prisoner by rain — The roof comes down — Song of the first ironworkers — St Paul's American College — Old Tarsus — The Cydnus — The ancient traffic of Tarsus — Gate of Holy War again — The Cypriote drill-sergeant — An athletic Swiss lady — Mersina — The market-place — The Cilician Plain — Cotton — Adana ....... 331

CHAPTEE XXX.

Adana — On a flat roof — The Bagdad Railway again — Armenians of Cilicia — Lesser Armenia — The great Adana massacre — Major Doughty- Wylie — Armenian unwisdom — Killing an Armenian pastor — Hanging of Moslems — Ibrahim, of the British Consulate — I pay off Ighsan — His successor Mustapha — The British Consul goes with me a stage ..... 344

CHAPTEE XXXI.

Leaving Adana — At Missis Khan — Ruins of Mopsuestia — A cara- vanserai— Ibrahim in difficulties — The Oxford Book of English Verse — A wet day on the road — Yarzuat — Turkish dentist for the Consul — Ibrahim as cook — Travelling in mud — Toprak Kale and Alexander the Great — Mustapha goes off — Benighted in the orchards of Osmanieh — The hotel at Osmanieh — On the road to Baghche — The German official — Baghche tunnel . . 358

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXII. Still at Baghche — His Excellency — His work and methods — Baron Marschall von Bieberstein — Inception of the Bagdad Railway — German diflficulties — A pro -German Turk — Pass over the Giaour Dagh — A zaptieh on patrol — A wayside bui'ial — El Oghlu Khan — Ladder and guests at night — On Marash plain — Arrival at Marash ....... 376

CHAPTEE XXXIII. Marash — Fanatical Moslems — A hair of Mahomet's beard — In- dustrious Armenians — An American school — A German Mission and Hospital — Leo the Isaurian — The Governor of Marash — On the road to ZeitAn — Gorge of the Zeitiin Su — The slippery hills — Fighting expected at Zeit<in — Zeitto town and scenes — The Jerusalem battalion — Zeitfan gunsmiths — Deeds of the Zeitdnlis 388

CHAPTER XXXIV. Marash eastward — A country of nomads — Bazaarluk — The StambAl hamal — Aintab — A native Anglican church — Aintab southward — A rich land and pleasant road — '■'■Khan of the Five Eyes" — Feeding camels — Killis — Disturbance in the market-place — Syrian scenes — The Rock of Azaz — The knife at Gaferuntun Khan 404

CHAPTER XXXV. Road into Aleppo — Hector, a British kavass — Individuality of Aleppo — An ancient eastern city — Its mystery — Old alleys and courts — The Assassins — The bazaars — Old commercial Tchans — The wool-cleaners — The Citadel — Aleppo and its English inter- course— " The Most Worshipful the British Levant Company " — Alexander Drummond — Influence of the passes on Aleppo and Antioch — Aleppo and future railroad construction . .414

CHAPTER XXXVI. A strange Armenian — His story by the Antioch gate — Leaving Aleppo — The posting-house at Termanin — St Simon Stylites — Hammam — The Kentish motto — Lying perdu in a bank of asphodel — Plain of Antioch — Broken soldiers on the road — Scenes at Kirk Khan ...... 432

CHAPTER XXXVII. Morning in Beilan Pass — Mountain horsemen — Overlooking the Gulf of Alexandretta — Alexander the Great at Beilan Pass — English merchant ships at Alexandretta in the eighteenth century — Jacob's Well — Scanderbeg — Alexander Drummond — Alexandretta as a German port — Jonah's Pillars — Battlefield of Issus — The overland route to India — A neglected British opportunity — The eastern end of the Mediterranean and the future — Another British opportunity — On a British steamer . 441

k

ILLUSTEATIONS.

WESTERN PRECIPICES, AND "TOMBS OP' THE KINGS,"

AMASIA. CASTLE ON SKYLINE BAGDAD ROAD ABOVE SAMSt^N ACHMET AND ARABA BEGGAR OP THE BAGDAD ROAD . TRAPPIC ON BAGDAD ROAD, NEAR KHAVSA STREET IN MARSOVAN

IN THE MISSION COMPOUND, MARSOVAN . ROADSIDE TOMB, MARSOVAN PLAIN ENTERING AMASIA ON THE YESHIL IRMAK, AMASIA SELJUKIAN KHAN, AMASIA THE "mirror tomb," AMASIA GORGE VIEW FROM THE MIRROR TOMB, AMASIA CASTLE ROCK, TOKAT TURKISH RECRUITS ON CHAMLI BEL RUINS OP SELJUKIAN MOSQUE, 8IVAS MARKET-PLACE, SIVAS STONE READING-DESK IN CHAPEL, ST NISHAN'S MONASTERY

SIVAS VIEW IN TALA8 .

SELJUKIAN TOMB, NEAR KAISARIYEH A GLEN IN TALA8 A GREEK OP TALAS SUNKEN PATH BEHIND URGUB. "HATTED ROCKS '

BACKGROUND IGH8AN .

IN

, Frontispiece
. Facing	p. 18
II	18
II	28
II	28
II	38
II	38
II	64
II	64
ti	72
II	84
11	86
II	88
II	116
II	116
. II	146
II	148
r, . 11	158
II	182
II	182
II	184
II	188
>i	188
ii	192

XVI

ILLUSTRATIONS

MOUNT ARQAEU8 AND KAI8ARIYEH, FROM THE NORTH Fodng p.

ROCK-HEWN VILLAGE OF URGUB, FROM THE VALLEY

INHABITED CONES IN VALLEY OP GU^REME

UCH HISSAR ROCK, FROM VALLEY

CONES IN VALLEY OF GU^RilMi:, CAPPADOCIA

A ROCK CONE AT MATYAN

STREET FOUNTAIN, NEV8HEHR

VALLEY AND ROCK-HEWN VILLAGE OP NAR

ALA DAGH .....

ORTA HISSAR ROCK AND VILLAGE

TELATIN KHAN. ALA DAGH BEHIND

DUBEKJI KHAN .....

ENTERING CILICIAN GORGE AT AK KEUPRU

BAGDAD RAILWAY WORKS IN THE CILICIAN GORGE

TURKS AT DUBEKJI KHAN

SHEPHERD AND FLOCK, CILICIAN PLAIN .

CILICIAN GATES PASS. THE " GATE " IN THE BACKGROUND

8T Paul's gateway, tarsus

COTTON CARTS, CILICIAN PLAIN . CARRYING COTTON, ADANA OLD BRIDGE OVER THE SIHON, ADANA . WATER-CARRIERS, ADANA

THE CONSUL, IBRAHIM, AND MUSTAPHA . HIS EXCELLENCY AND IBRAHIM CHOWSHE OLD BRIDGE OVER THE JIHON ON ROAD TO ZEIT^N NOMADS' TENTS ON ROAD TO AINTAB GORGE ON ROAD TO ZEITthST

ZElTtN DURING RAIN .... A VIEW IN ZEITtN. "THE BRIDGE" LEFT OF BUILDINGS WHEAT BAZAAR, AINTAB MILL FOR CRUSHING WHEAT, KILLI8 A VIEW IN ALEPPO ....

MEHMET, THE ZAPTIEH FOR ALEXANDRETTA ENTRANCE TO THE CITADEL, ALEPPO

LOCANTA, NEAR HAMMAM : TURKS SEATED, ARABS STANDING .....

OUTLINE MAP OP ROUTE

At beginning

ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT.

CHAPTER I.

A Black Sea gale — First snow of winter — I seem to have started too late — The Austrian Captain's views — The "Lord Bill" — The glamorous coast of Asia Minor — Alluring mouutain-roads — I land at SamsAn for the Bagdad Road.

On an afternoon of mid-October I stood in the lee of a deck-house aboard an Austrian Lloyd mail steamer, and looked over the Black Sea in its stormiest mood.

Since leaving the Bosphorus, two days earlier, we had been driving against a wild north-easterly gale. It came fierce and grey from Russian steppes, bring- ing squalls of hail and rain, and whirling feathers of snow, and an edge of cold that spoke of winter being not far behind. Now and then the low-flying clouds opened to leeward, and showed glimpses of the mountainous Anatolian coast, fringed with spouting surf; above the surf appeared a narrow band of dark mountain-side, and then the glaring whiteness of newly fallen snow, whose lower edge made a level line when revealed in sufficient length. Gale, and hail, and rain might be seasonable enough, but this low-lying snow before its time filled me with mis- givings. For I was on my way to cross Asia Minor

A

2 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

on foot ; through no fault of my own I had started late, and now winter seemed to be upon me.

Presently the captain joined me in my place of shelter. He was a veteran in the Black Sea trade, whose opinion as to the weather likely to follow would be worth having. But I would not ask him for it, he being a genial old man, likely to say the thing acceptable to his passenger ; so I left him un- prompted and hoped to hear his honest views. He began by turning up the collar of his uniform overcoat, and settling it about his head. Then he glanced around, and his eyes rested professionally on a big white Turkish steamer — in lighter trim now than when she carried bananas between Jamaica and Avon- mouth — that had hung close astern of us all day. As she rose to the steep-sided surges she showed twenty feet of keel ; as she plunged it was in a smother of spray that went over her funnels.

"The winter of the Black Sea," said the captain, while he looked — " it is terrible."

"Winter!" I cried. "Do you call this winter? Why, three days ago it was scorching summer in Constantinople. There's a whole hot autumn to come," I declared vigorously. The captain shook his head slowly.

" There is now no more of summer or of autumn ; it is the winter," he said with conviction. And then he continued cheerfully : " But I care nothing. In one other year I sail no more on any sea, and live always in the beautiful city Trieste." His interest next turned to myself, as the only English passenger on board.

"You go to Trebizond," he inquired, "for the new harbour that the English make ? " I said that Samson was my destination.

" Ah ! I know. They make the new harbour of Samson too. They make the harbours, then they say: 'It is mine!' like the gold-fields of South Africa." He illustrated his meaning more completely by a forcible two-handed grab.

I

THE AUSTRIAN CAPTAIN'S VIEWS 3

When I explained that from Samslin I proposed to walk to the Mediterranean, perhaps as far as Beirtit, he forgot his charge of national greed. An avowal of lunacy had been made to him by a pas- senger, and he took it as a matter requiring imme- diate attention. I knew by his sudden fixity of stare that for a moment or two he felt himself in the company of one who might be dangerous. He even drew off a little. But then a satisfactory ex- planation struck him, and he said —

" You are English. You will say you go for the pleasure ? " When I told him I expected to find much pleasure in the journey, he answered with a deep " So ! " and recalled another journey which he thought similar to mine.

There was an Englishman, he said, by name the " Lord Bill," who not long before had come riding alone from Persia into Trebizond. There the ** Lord Bill" took steamer to Constantinople, and thence went on riding till he came to Calais. And all this long lonely riding the captain understood was done for pleasure.

" And you — you are to walk for the same pleasure? Where is it, my friend ? I require to understand this pleasure," he cried. But it was a thing not to be explained, where those who differ think in different terms ; and after hearing me out he said —

** Paris, and Berlin, and Vienna are for pleasure ; but not this country," and he waved his arm towards the coast. "There you find not pleasure; but much of mountains, and much of snow, and much of wolves and banditti, and you will be seen never in Beiriit." And there we left the matter.

To him the 2000 miles of coast-line between Beirtit and Trebizond represented only so much exacting navigation. The region behind the coast he filled with savage, little-known people ; and saw it from the sea as a fastness where anything might happen ; a territory from which his calling, happily, kept him well removed. His notions of the interior

4 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

were vague and fearful, like those held of it by old- time Greeks.

But for one who likes to connect scene with event ; who in spirit can get himself into the past ; who delights in the sun and wind and open sky upon unknown roads of adventure, this ancient Eastern land holds pleasure beyond most.

Consider for a moment its seaboard alone, and what comes to the eye and imagination in passing. At Beirut you are upon the coast of Phoenicia, and have in view the site of Sidon, and look southward to the hills of Palestine. At Trebizond you may count yourself not only in Meshech, but also on the coast of Colchis, with its legends of Argonauts, and Golden Fleece, and the witcheries of Medea. And between these two extremities of coast are enchant- ing islands and mainland, and narrow waters that comprise much of the ancient Greek world ; that hold the scenes of Homer and holy Paul ; that saw the vast and gorgeous Byzantine pageant ; saw, too, the rise and culmination of Ottoman power, and are see- ing now its closing struggles. Consider, also, that during twenty-five centuries every great empire of the world, from the Persian to the British, has appeared on this coast in war ; and that of great conquerors and soldiers it has seen nearly all.

Little wonder there is scarce a mile of shore that has not looked upon some event chronicled in im- mortal story — from the legendary combats of Troy to yesterday's authentic Landing on the Beaches of Gallipoli. True, many of these old sites are not easy to identify as you go. You stumble upon them as it were ; and sometimes they are passed unrecognised, for Turkish place-names give little clue as a rule ; but good fortune in this respect generally attends the traveller. For example, you may go ashore at Ordu, a small town on the Black Sea, not far from Trebizond, and by the accident of meeting with a communicative Greek are shown the remains of a little ancient port. It is a port like many others on the coast ; but here

SCENES OF CENTURIES AGO 5

the Ten Thousand embarked for Byzantium after their march from Mesopotamia. Or your steamer may turn out of her direct course some morning and anchor in an obscure Mediterranean roadstead. Perhaps you are vaguely conscious of having heard the name of the place before, but certainly do not connect it with anything. The purpose of the call, you are told, is to take on board a few thousand cases of oranges, it being the time of orange-gathering at Dort Yol, better oranges than which are to be found nowhere. The name is Turkish for "Four E-oads" — The Crossways, as one might say — and quite unenlightening histor- ically. But that narrow strip of plain lying nearly abreast of you between mountains and sea, and covered with filmy morning vapour, as the sun comes up over the high ridge of Amanus, is no other than Alexander's battlefield of Issus.

Besides these places of fame which crowd the littoral, there are unexpected survivals reproducing scenes of twenty centuries ago. A sight of this kind I watched one summer evening on the coast of the Black Sea, when a long-boat, whose bow was shaped like a swan's breast, put off from the shore. Her stem projected above the hull, and was curved into a form resembling roughly the head and neck of a bird preparing to strike. Upon the mast, hanging from a horizontal yard, was set a single, broad square- sail, and under its arching foot could be seen the black heads of rowers, five or six men on either side, and a bare-legged steersman placed high above them in the stern. The sun was going down behind the mountains of Sinope as this boat, her sides and beak painted vermilion and blue, came lifting easily over the swell on her way to the night-fishing. Her sail was white and rounding, her oars rose and dipped regularly, and their wet blades flashed red in the dying sunlight. By some slight alteration of course her appearance suddenly changed, and she became just such a craft as is represented on one of the old Greek coins. And then the song of her crew came fitfully across

6 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

the water. The whole scene was a resurrection of the past that vouched for its own accuracy, and carried conviction. I knew beyond doubting that just such boats, with bare-legged steersmen in easy postures, and crews singing as they rowed, had put out to the fishing on warm summer nights like this, 2000 years ago, when the coast was dotted with flourishing Greek cities. The cities had gone, some even to the name ; but the blood remained, and with it traditions of boat-building and rigging, and custom of the sea, and the lore of old-time fishermen.

And further, as an outward characteristic of this wonderful coast is a curious quality of mystery. For much the greater part of its length it is a coast of mountains which rise steeply from the sea. Lebanon and Amanus and the long snow- topped wall of Taurus — so they come in order, bearing familiar names — then Mountains of Caria, and Ionia, and Ida that saw ancient Troy, and next the Mysian Olympus, whose snow is seen across Marmora all the way to Con- stantinople. And along the Black Sea are Mountains of Bithynia, and Paphlagonia, and Pontus, growing ever more lofty as you pass eastward. Those ranges which confront the Mediterranean appear more often as violet mountains sleeping in sunlight above a sea of amethyst ; but those of the north are blue, are generally clothed with forest, and have a skyline bristling with pine-trees ; and the sea before them knows winter as well as summer, and is more changeful in colour.

Whether mountains of north or south, however, all have an aspect of being the jealous exterior guardians of mystery and romance. Seen day after day rising out of the sea ahead, and sinking into the sea astern, they produce this impression to a degree which is surprising. On the coasts of Greece and Italy and Norway, or of any other mountainous land, the moun- tains themselves seem to be the interior. But you voyage round three sides of the great peninsula of Asia Minor and feel that the interior is always walled in ;

SEABOARD OF ASIA MINOR 7

you never get a satisfying glimpse into it ; never come in contact with it ; and are soon convinced that it is a region which may contain anything, and certainly must contain romance and adventure for the seeking.

Of such sort, briefly, is the ancient, glamorous sea- board of* Asia Minor ; and to it from the unknown interior come roads that are in keeping. They are the proof of mysteries beyond. They make alluring promises on behalf of the invisible interior. Climate and atmosphere have everything to do with such impressions, but generally magic itself seems to dwell on the white main roads of Asia Minor that come winding down the mountains to the ports. Seen afar they cry persistently of all you have ever read or heard or thought of the romance of roads. They recapture for you the atmosphere of childhood, when a road crossing a not very distant hill repre- sented first the only path into fairyland, and, a little later, the highway to the sea and cities and wonders of the world. And they have something more than the imaginary behind them. Hear the names of cities and countries from which these white roads actually come, and you feel that you are in the presence of the ancient world, with the immemorial East to be explored by merely stepping out.

One of these white roads crosses the Amanus mountains by Beilan Pass, and descends into the port of Alexandretta on the Mediterranean. It is visible from the steamer, and you hear that it is the highway to Aleppo and Mesopotamia. If your steamer anchors in just the right spot you may see another such road coming down through the forest behind Ineboli on the Black Sea. It is from Kastamouni, a place of no particular interest or importance ; but the road, seen hiding and revealing itself among trees, has a charm and suggestion of its own. Another road also, one that saw much traffic in old days, comes over the mountains into Sinope. For Sinope, though now an insignificant place, was once the chief Greek city on

8 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

the Black Sea, and later became the capital of Pontus, and seat of Mithridates' Court ; and in spite of being cut off from the interior by exceedingly difficult mountains, was the great port of northern Asia Minor. Into beautiful old Trebizond, too, a city that saw the Ten Thousand, and, long afterwards, the Empire of Trebizond, comes another of these im- memorial highways. By this road you may go to Erzeriim and Persia and the Farther East.

And yet another road is that which comes winding down the mountain-sides into Samsiin, 400 miles east of Constantinople — a road that had for me especial interest. When proposing to walk from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and considering my route, this road had made an irresistible appeal. I had seen it before, in the hot days of summer ; had caught sight of it jBrst as it came over the saddle of the coast range at least a dozen miles away, and 3000 feet above the town. It came curving in and out around the spurs, disappearing and reappearing be- tween fields of maize and tobacco, and smoking with the dust of traffic. At last it entered the olive groves; and when I saw it again I was on shore, and there found it descending steeply into the hot, cobbled, tree-lined main street of Samson, and bring- ing in the strangest medley of Eastern traffic.

It is called the busiest highway in Asia Minor, and certainly has the most alluring name. For it ia the Bagdad Road which from SamsAn goes for 1000 miles through Sivas, and Malatia, and Diarbekr, and Mosul, and at last to Bagdad, where Haroun el Rashid was Khalif, and Sinbad the Sailor one of the citizens.

During a pleasant year spent in Anatolia I had passed several times along the northern fifty miles of this road. I had watched its caravans break camp at dawn, and heard the camel- bells across its valleys. It had shown me tracks twisting on far-off mountain-sides; the smoke of charcoal-burners' fires rising above blue wooded spurs by day ; and the glow of those same fires on warm velvety nights. I

IN SAMStJN ROADS 9

had seen upon it the highway Ufe of a wide eastern country devoid of railways — strange wheeled vehicles, caravans, peasants, beggars, gipsies, smugglers, soldiers, dervishes, prisoners in chains. I had slept in its way- side khans. All that I heard and saw made me wish to go farther, — to go southward across the mountains till at last 1 should come down to Syria and the Mediterranean.

After spending twenty-four hours in Samsun Roads, waiting for the sea to abate, the passengers were put ashore through the surf Our boat could not make the usual landing-place, and had to go where the run of the waves served best ; and customs officials, police, and spectators came hurrying along the beach to intercept us. We landed a mile east of the site of Amisus ; an old Greek city — in its day successor to Sinope — which the Romans took after a long siege when Lucullus fought the last Mithridatic War, and drove that king out of Pontus. Nothing is left of Amisus now except fragments of its port, and a little broken masonry on the bare hillside, — even the name is almost forgotten locally. But the geo- graphical factors which enabled Amisus to supplant Sinope operate still, and here is now a busy town, in value of exports and imports the chief Black Sea port of Asia Minor, a town with a great future before it.

10

CHAPTER 11.

SamsAn — Ottoman Greeks and Hellenic navy — How SamsAn dealt with cholera — Changed plans for the journey — Achmet — An American girl on the Bagdad Road — Country of a famous legend — Shadow of Russia— At the top of the pass — A head in the scrub — Khan at Chakallu — Turkish travelling — Caravan traffic and camps at Chakallu — Common-room at the khan.

Samsun stretches alon^ a beach of dull yellow sand for a couple of miles, and its suburbs go up the slopes of foot-hills behind in a scatter of white buildings. There is no esplanade or Marina facing the sea ; offices, warehouses, and cafes push their backs down the shore as far as the surf of heavy weather permits, and have their fronts on streets and alleys running parallel with the waterside. For the town is strictly commercial in its interests and aspirations, and has no wish to think of amenities. It is proud of its prosperity in a land where prosperity is the excep- tion, and is ambitious of doing better still, but has neither harbour nor railway — though both are pro- jected, and the railway is even begun — and until these vital works are constructed appearances count for nothing.

It is now a growing town of some 40,000 souls, in spite of Turkish neglect. While its possible rivals, Sinope and Trebizond, have no extensive fertile regions behind them, and are cut off from the in- terior by high passes and trying roads, Samson is the accessible port of a rich area great as England, containing corn-lands unexcelled in the world, the

SAMSUN 11

most valuable tobacco country in Asia Minor, and large deposits of coal as well. The country's physical features, too, look kindly upon Samsun as a port. The general trend of the great valleys, gorges like gates fortunately placed, passes which are low, all make for comparatively easy routes between port and back- country. With the construction of a harbour and adequate railways Samslin will become, in the in- evitable hands of Russia, the southern Odessa of the Black Sea.

Meanwhile the town has been brought to its present degree of prosperity mainly by the Bagdad Koad. Upon this chaussee, the longest and most important metalled road in Turkey -in -Asia, comes and goes all the trade between port and interior. But the traffic is that of an Eastern highway, slow, cumbersome, and wonderfully picturesque, and at the height of the export season creates scenes in Samsiin hardly to be equalled elsewhere. Bullock- carts and waggons, camels, pack-horses, and donkeys, begin to arrive about eleven, for they have come a fixed stage and started early. After midday vehicles in hundreds and animals in thousands choke the streets and open spaces. Some are seeking the warehouses, others are unloading or awaiting their turn ; early comers are going off empty to the khans, or the animals lie at rest in the shade of trees beside the road. Among them move camel-men in dusty white, and donkey-men, and horse-drivers, and peasants on foot from the hill villages and the coast, and riders gorgeous in blue and scarlet with gold embroidery, and men of the town — they represent every race within three hundred miles, and wear garments of every colour and style. There are shouts and cries ; the dull bruising thud of heavy sticks upon donkeys' hindquarters ; the ceaseless tinkling of donkey-bells ; the deep slow clanging of camel-bells ; the groaning and wailing of ox-cart wheels. All this mass moves and stands and reposes under a fierce sun ; and the odours of camels and sweating men

12 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

and beasts, of cook-shops and tobacco and garlic and the sea, combine in the narrow streets into a smell that might go up to heaven. In this way arrive wheat and barley and flour, boxes of eggs for Trieste and Marseilles, bales of mohair, wool, and tobacco, crates of live poultry for Constantinople, and walnuts by the ton.

The conveyance of imports does not make the same display ; one might, indeed, spend a month in Samson and never see it. It goes on in the same way, however, but for the journey inland all get off early. The waggons and groaning carts, the asses and camels hung with bells, all file away in the darkness of early dawn, and are high on the mountain-side when the day begins for SamsAn. They carry bundles of shovels, and iron rods and bars and pipe ; and boxes of sewing-machines, and bales of cloth and Manchester yarn, and countless tins of paraffin. One may even see roofing-tiles from Marseilles, and steel girders, and lengths of cast-iron water mains, being dragged slowly inland across the mountains on bullock- carts.

In addition to being a busy port, Samstin is also a tobacco town like few. A strip of seaward slopes and valleys and deltaic plain hereabouts, sixty or seventy miles in length altogether, contains the famous tobacco lands of Baffra and SamsAn, equalled in value only by those of Kavalla on the JEgean. Some delicate combination of sun and soil and moist sea air gives SamsAn tobacco — which is regarded as even finer than that of Bafira — a quality and char- acter not found outside a narrow favoured district. Attempts have been made to produce this tobacco in other places — in America for one, even to the length of sending over quantities of SamsAn soil in which to start the plants, — but leaf, possessing the original nature, has never been obtained away from these few hundred square miles of Anatolian coast.

And so this choice tobacco has become the dis- trict's chief product ; and the annual value of the

OUTBREAK OF CHOLERA 13

BafFra and Samstin crop now runs to millions sterling. At buyers' warehouses in the town peasant growers may receive gold for leaf across the counter at any time. The office of the combined British and Amer- ican buyers alone often disburses, as one side of its immense purchases, £5000 a day in glittering yellow liras in this ready fashion ; there, also, the larger cultivators may draw advances in gold against their growing crops. To the infinite profit and satisfaction of peasant farmers, leaf and gold are almost as easily exchangeable as current coin.

One never goes far in a Turkish town — or in any Turkish territory for the matter of that — without meeting evidence of the hopeless racial differences which beset the Ottoman Empire. So it happened to me here as I sat in a cafe a few hours after coming ashore. A boy came towards me carrying a collecting- box ; he came smiling and diffident, yet with the manner of having a cause that well might bespeak support, and asked for a contribution in aid of the Hellenic navy.

** No, monsieur," he added with Greek adroitness, finding me without hostility, " for the navy of all the Hellenic peoples."

Samstin cannot claim direct descent from old Greek Amisus, but its people are largely Ottoman Greeks, and much of the trade and wealth of the town is in their hands. And like all foreign Greeks, they look to Greece and contribute money in her aid, especially to her navy, with open-handed gener- osity, hoping dimly for the reconstitution of the Greek Empire with Constantinople for its capital. A year or so earlier they had subscribed £12,000 for the naval service, and now were preparing another contribution.

During the earlier part of the summer cholera had visited Samsiin. It came with great suddenness ; with men dropping in the streets in agony as if shot, and not knowing at the time what had overtaken them. The epidemic grew in violence ; traffic ceased

14 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

on the Bagdad Road, being cut off by a quarantine barrier behind the pass ; steamers avoided the port ; and there was no getting away, for those inhabitants who fled to mountain villages were driven out by villagers with firearms. Samstin, like other places, these peasants said, must endure its own cholera.

In these circumstances of extremity and ruined trade the business community of Samsun — in other words, foreigners, Greeks, and Armenians — were driven to fiofhtino: the disease. Christians of this land dread cholera vastly more than do the Moslems. But whereas the one will do what he can against it, the other will do nothing, relying on the Will of Allah and the sanitation of Mahomet. So the com- mercial folk of Samstin obtained sanction of the authorities and promise of armed support — that being necessary against fanatical rioting by the populace — for any measures they might take to save the town. They undertook also to bear the cost of their pro- ceedings, and subscribed a large sum for the purpose. These preliminaries huiTiedly arranged, the Committee set to work, and fired each house in which the disease appeared, together with the clothing and effects of occupants. Compensation for property so destroyed was paid from the subscribed fund. With these and other measures the disease was soon stamped out, and Samstin suffered less than any town in the affected districts. Yet this shining example was followed by no other town. How the disease ran in other places — with their filthy narrow alleys and doubtful water — may be gathered from the instance of Chorum, a town much smaller than Samsun, and with a population not only almost entirely Moslem, but Moslems of the fanatical sort. When cholera came the people received it with resignation as the Will of Allah ; they washed their victims and laid them out with rites, and mourned them with family gatherings round the corpse. In a short time there were more than a thousand dead, and the scourge ceased only when it had exhausted itself.

CHANGED PLANS 15

It had been my intention all along to walk from Samson accompanied only by a Turkish servant with a pack-horse to carry the baggage. I had reared all sorts of pleasant fancies and hopes upon this mode of travelling. So I should join in the procession of the Bagdad Road — the beggars, and ox-carts, and drovers, and caravans, stay at the khans, and drink at the roadside fountains. And so also I should be able to turn off the road when the wish took me. For I desired to follow mountain -tracks as well — those beckoning tracks which may be seen in the distance slanting across almost every hillside and spur in Asia Minor. In this way I saw myself going into deep gorges ; reaching villages otherwise inaccessible ; striking across country to look at any castle that might show itself on a distant ridge ; and perhaps ascending a mountain or two by the way. In a word, I saw myself as unfettered in choice of route and immediate destination as any dervish who wanders free with collecting - bowl and battle - axe. These were my hopes, and my fancies had something in keeping. To be in the fashion of the land, and also to gratify some liking for a picturesque super- stition, my horse was to have blue beads plaited into his mane and tail as protection against the Evil Eye, and wear two or three jingling bells beneath his neck to give us marching music.

But now when my plans came to execution I found that they had to be changed. With the season so far advanced, and winter, as it seemed, already beginning, my chief hope lay in getting beyond the region of im- passable snow before snow of that kind should come. To do so it was plain that I must travel faster than possible for a pack-horse loaded with three hundred pounds of baggage. And further, there was difficulty about a man. The stout young Turk who might have gone with me had slipped away, during the time of cholera, to his home among the mountains by Shabin Karahissar ; and I did not think with confidence of any substitute picked up by chance in the khans or

16 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

bazaars of Samstin. So to carry my gear for the present I decided on an araba, a covered spring waggon drawn by two horses whose pace could ex- ceed my own. The pack-horse I hoped for later, when the country of deep snow should be behind me.

When these matters were decided I went out to find an araba and Moslem driver to my liking ; for on a journey of this kind I would travel with no Greek or Armenian. But on the steps of the hotel I was stopped by a tall, powerfully-made man. His head and neck were wrapped in a hashluk, the picturesque supplementary cloth head-gear, at once a cap and long-tailed muffler, that is used in these parts as a protection against cold, and also — following some strange theory — against extremes of heat. He was middle-aged and brown- bearded, and had an honest face that gave an impression of good-humour and determination. His first words might be exactly translated by the old-time London cabman's inquiry of " Cab, sir ? " and were uttered in just the same alert and persuasive manner. Seen among a dozen araha- drivers at a khan, I should have approached this man first of all. .His qualifications were soon stated and revealed. He was a Moslem, Achmet by name, who knew all roads ; his horses were good — his araba likewise ; he would go anywhere ; he would start to- morrow ; and when snow was mentioned he remarked, *' Let us see it," in a spirit of " Let 'em all come," that was entirely satisfactory. And the fare he asked was reasonable, even low ; there was nothing of the barefaced attempt at robbery which so often infuriates the traveller who has dealings with Greek and Ar- menian drivers and Man-keepers. I engaged Achmet forthwith to accompany me to Marsovan, three days' journey on foot, telling him that if he pleased me he should go farther. To this he piously replied, " Inshallah " (may it be God's will) !

The next morning Achmet called for me before seven, and a few minutes later the araba, drawn by two cream-coloured, well -conditioned ponies, was

AN UNEXPECTED COMPANION 17

bumping noisily over the cobbles towards the foot of the mountain-road. Rain had ceased, but the morn- ing was cold and gloomy and clouds were hanging low. In a short while we reached the olive groves, now encroached upon by the town, and said to be only a remnant of what they once had been, even in recent years. Ancient, and gnarled, and twisted, the trees seemed to stoop wearily like aged forlorn men without part in the times to which they had survived. Some of these old grey trees must have seen the decline and obliteration of Greek Amisus.

As events befell I did not set out along the Bagdad Road alone. A party of Americans, on their way to join the American Mission at Marsovan, had come with me from Constantinople ; and they and I left Samstin together. We made a rather ill-assorted company of travellers, for five were all for haste, and I, the sixth, was all for lingering. But on the long climb to the pass a pedestrian could go faster than the arabas, so now and then I walked beside a most pleasant and entertaining American girl. Here was an unexpected sort of companion indeed to find on the Bagdad Road. She was not long from college (Wellesley I think) ; had rowed in the college eight, and tramped and camped throughout the summer in New England pine-woods. From these scenes she had passed in six weeks to a mountain-road in Asia filled with Oriental traffic, and throbbing with the sound of bells ; and the road was the Bagdad Road, with Bagdad somewhere at the other end ; and by a turning off it, as she remarked, might be reached Jerusalem, and the Sea of Galilee, and the river Jordan. She found thrills at every turn. Now a long string of sneering betasselled camels with small bells under their necks and great bells hanging like stirrups. Now a party of fierce-looking gaily-dressed men on foot, their faces burnt to blackness by the sun on long journeying, their legs plastered with mud. Next were two men at the roadside, their arms soaked in blood to the elbows, absorbed in the work of flaying

B

18 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

a dead camel. And then it was a little group coming down the slope which caught her eye. She looked at it with extreme curiosity that presently passed into something else and led me to look more closely myself. I saw a portly able-bodied Turk riding com- fortably on a donkey and smoking, while his wife, carrying two young children, trudged heavily in the mud behind, and now and then managed to get in a blow at the animal by way of driving it. As an American girl my companion thought she would never see a more astonishing sight anywhere.

In going up to the pass the road seldom hid itself in hollows ; it therefore commanded wide views. On the eastern horizon a thin blue line, dotted with blue blocks like silhouetted buildings, rose gradually out of the sea ; and beyond the extremity of the line were similar blocks which appeared to be floating. It looked like a mirage, but was, in fact, the delta of two con- fluent rivers known in early times as the Iris and Lycus. During ages the delta has pushed itself out some fifteen miles from the mountains and formed a little triangular plain, dotted now with isolated clumps of trees. Looking on this low land we beheld, indeed, the home of a famous legend. For on the farther side of the plain a small river, now called the Termeh Su, crosses it after coming from the mountains and falls into the sea. And the Termeh Su was of old the Thermodon, from the mountains of Amazonia, and the country around it the land of Amazons.

For miles our road climbed steadily, overhanging the great ravine of the Merd Su ; a ravine so deep, and whose slopes converge so steeply, that in dull light the river below looked more distant than the opposite slope. That bold scarp went up to a massive rounded summit, and there showed a cap of forest high above the spur on which we travelled. But its lower slopes were formless and naked and brown, except for wandering patches of brushwood and here and there a thin waterfall hanging like a long wisp of lace down the surface of rock.

Bagdad Road above Sam sun.

Achmet and ^raba.

THE SHADOW OF RUSSIA 19

At the pass the air was clear enough for a yet wider view of land and sea. It went for seventy or eighty miles along the coast from the delta of the Iris to the delta of the Halys, and covered much of the Turkish province of Djannik, in which are the rich tobacco- lands of Baffra and Samsun. It is a province of fertile coast-plains and inland valleys, and especially of fertile mountain-sides. In the time of ripening crops the far-off slopes — often so steep that ploughing seems impossible — are dotted closely with haphazard yellow squares and oblongs looking like carelessly affixed postage stamps. But now, except for distant snow and breadths of oak scrub and pine forest, these swelling mountains of the coast, like enormous steep- sided downs tumbled in confusion and broken here and there by deep valleys and ravines, were all dressed in russet. Under the leaden sky scarcely could a few low -roofed villages be distinguished against the drab background.

Over this Turkish Black Sea coast and a deep hinterland pertaining to it Russia holds treaty rights of no little importance. Without her approval no concession for railway or harbour construction, mining, oil-fields, and the like, may be granted by the Otto- man Government to any foreigner other than Russian. The territory shows few Russian subjects and little Russian commerce ; but all the same upon it rests the shadow of that Power which has already taken Caucasian provinces and the northern shores of the Black Sea from the Ottoman, and whose advance is like inexorable destiny. The Moslem population of Anatolia recognises no national enemy but Russia, and looks for further Russian aggression as a matter of course. Indeed all the varied inhabitants of Northern Anatolia live in expectancy of Russian annexation, an event which each race sees from a different point of view. Moslems contemplate it gloomily with the fatalism of their creed, Arme- nians with hope, as bringing deliverance, and Greeks with feelings drawing them both ways ; for

20 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

although Greeks of these regions know well enough that they would benefit by Russian dominion, yet many have reservations prompted by dreams of a Greek Empire. They remember that this coast was part of the ancient Hellenic world, and that both coast and interior belonged to the medieval Greek Empire which fell to the Turk, and Russia therefore becomes to them merely a second interloper succeeding to the first.

It is curious how this strained anticipation of political change displays itself even in times of peace. Without a cloud being on the political horizon rumours arise along the coast and go flying upon all roads, multiplying and acquiring strange details as they go. So it is that far inland one may hear of the Russian fleet seen making for Trebizond ; of crowded Russian transports discovered hovering at night or in fog off" Samsun or Sinope ; of Russian armies gathering in this place or that on the Caucasian border. One may even hear, as I have heard twice, that a Russian force has actually seized Samslin.

Nor do these stories seem so very far-fetched after all, except as to their details, if you have spent any time in Anatolia, and voyaged on the Black Sea and considered what that sea is to Russia. So doing the conviction is forced on you that sooner or later Russia will hold the Straits and the Coveted City, or be kept out only by some Power altogether more mighty in arms. German policy in the Near East would have created that compelling Power, but with the failure of German ambitions Russia's road lies open and inevitable. She will possess the Straits, and will not, in the long-run, be satisfied with a detached fragment of territory containing them. She will re- quire continuous territory, and because that corridor cannot well be obtained in Europe she will secure it amply in Asia, and run her trains upon her own soil from the Caucasus to the Bosphorus.

After going some distance along the level road at the top of the pass, I was able to look inland and

KHAN AT CHAKALLU 21

judge my prospects for travelling. No snow was visible except upon the higher ranges, and on those it lay thinly. The mountains of the coast had in- tercepted the fall, and before me extended, under the clouds, a sun-baked country of brown slopes and valleys, and pine -clad ridges, and great breadths of oak and beech scrub. It even seemed to have had but little rain.

Somewhere hereabouts a dark face enveloped in a hashluk rose cautiously in the low close scrub upon my left, and peered up and down the road as we passed. No sooner did I see it than it dropped ■out of sight again. There was nothing sinister in the incident ; but it gave a sense of mystery and possible adventure to the spot, as a place where some one lurked who had his reasons for wishing to remain unseen.

Twenty miles from Samsun the village of Chakallu (Place of Jackals) lies in the deep valley behind the <;oast range. Here I halted for the night ; but the Americans went on, to use the remaining daylight for a long stage, and so reach Marsovan the following afternoon. What with pleasant company and the prospect of dry travelling ahead, even of a Little Summer yet to come, my first day on the Bagdad Road had gone better than I could have hoped.

A khan on the great highway bears some resem- blance in arrangement to an old English coaching inn. The building is of two floors and lies against the road, and has an archway through it large enough for vehicles to reach the courtyard and stabling be- hind. Beside the entrance is a common-room, where drivers sleep and eat and smoke, and a stall for the sale of coffee. From the courtyard a rough external staircase ascends to a balcony, off which the upper rooms open. Such a khan was the one I entered at Chakallu.

Nor is the building the only resemblance between a khan and an old-time inn. To meet me came the i;^n-keeper, in manner very much the attentive and

22 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

welcoming host, and yet one who stood upon a certain dignity. He would have nothing to do with handling baggage. That was the work of underlings — perhaps his sons — who would look for tips when I left, and whose opportunities of earning them were not to be diminished by the master's interference. Meanwhile another underling, with the unmistakably horsey air of an ostler despite his enormously baggy breeches and beslippered feet, helped Achmet to unharness. He was called Ali, was thin-featured and dark, and a glance showed him to be a man of distinctive personality and master of his calling. As if entirely for his own information, he ran a quick hand down the fore-leg of one pony. Then he threw each long trailing tail into a loose knot, gave each beast a friendly punch in the ribs to start it from the shaft, and led the pair to the stable with an accompaniment of soft whistling that doubtless meant something to- himself and them. In the stable, Achmet, as care- ful owner, rubbed down the ponies, and gave them barley ; but Ali returned to the yard, and pushed the araha about, getting it into position for the time when the whole space would be packed with vehicles. As a last duty he unshipped the pole and placed it on the ground between the wheels. He then was free to resume his stool beside the entrance, and roll another cigarette, and drink another small cup of black coffee.

While these scenes went on below, and the luggage was being carried upstairs, a tall young odabashiy or room attendant, took me to a room. He pro- duced a bunch of big keys, unlocked the door, and flung it open with a flourish ; for it was " the best room in the inn," one, moreover, in the position or chief honour, being above the entrance archway. Floor, walls, and ceiling were of unpainted boards. For blinds the windows were screened by lengths of dirty white cotton nailed along the top. Dust lay thick on the floor and rickety table, the only article in the room except a red earthenware pitcher. Oa

MY TRAVELLING OUTFIT 23

the walls were smears of blood, where gorged and lethargic tahkta hitis — horrifying insect to British housewives — had perished under the hand or slipper of enraged owners of the blood. But there were also projecting nails, upon which articles might be hung, and that, in my experience, was not a bad test of a khan.

A Turkish khan provides nothing but the room, light, and water, with fire as an extra ; everything else the traveller carries with him. For this reason a good deal of baggage is necessary when journeying in Asia Minor, even for natives. As for me, although a pedestrian, and therefore one who might be supposed to go light, I was accompanied by gear that, when spread out, looked enough for a harem. Nor could I reduce it, though I had often tried. My folding bed, mattress that rolled up, blankets, sleeping-bag and pillow, did not amount to much, and packed into a single canvas bag. It was the food I carried, and appliances for cooking — a sort of glittering travelling kitchen — that made such a bewildering display, and required so much time to unpack and assemble and pack up again at each halting-place. Cholera was still in the land, and precautions against it were necessary. Therefore I set out with the fixed resolve to cook every- thing myself; to drink nothing without first boiling it or seeing it boiled ; to scorch each slice of bread I ate ; and do my own washing-up. For these pur- poses I had two stoves, one burning paraffin vapour, the other methylated spirit. And to contain food and stores in daily use and keep them from contamination was a whole battery of aluminium screw-stoppered canisters and boxes of various sizes, besides cooking utensils, plates, cups, and the like, and also a lamp. With precautions and this outfit I hoped to escape not only cholera, but typhoid — the plague of Asia Minor, which every one is said to get, sooner or later, who travels much in the interior.

Notwithstanding these domestic appliances, the problem of food was not altogether a simple one.

24 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

For bread, eggs, potatoes, fruit, and yoghourt I looked to the country ; the rest I carried, and that, as several weeks' supply, came to a good deal. Some like to travel and eat native foods, thinking they give added pleasure to a journey. Not so ran my tastes. There was to be no beginning the day stayed only on coffee and bread or coffee without bread ; I intended to have good honest English breakfasts the whole way. So I had a supply of bacon, Cambridge sausages, beef, soups, jams, butter, milk, and cheese all in tin, also cocoa and tea. Of English tobacco, too, I had provided three pounds. The knowledge that always ready to hand were stores for several weeks, and that I could cook and eat when and where I felt inclined, conferred a feeling of in- dependence beside which the trouble involved counted for nothing. To complete the outfit, and make it suitable for all circumstances, were a powerful Brown- ing with two hundred rounds, and a heavy steel-pointed stick for use against dogs. So equipped, I thought myself competent to go anywhere, and looked forward to mountain roads and paths, and wild places, with confidence and anticipation.

Perhaps Chakallu is the most crowded place of halt to be found on the Bagdad Road. Excepting fast arabas, nearly everything going out of or into Samstin passes the first or last night of the journey in this small village. As afternoon draws on caravans and vehicles making for the various khans and camping- grounds pour in from both directions, to the sound of jingling bells, and complaining animals, and groaning wheels ; and they come with colour of every sort, and either in deep dust or mud. During these hours the stone bridge which crosses the brawling Merd Su becomes a spot of seeing and hearing that belongs to the East of tradition, and also to the Middle Ages.

And then after dark the scene has changed so completely that the place no longer seems the same. The road is white and vacant, and dies away in

COMMON-ROOM AT THE KHAN 25

gloom on either hand ; dozens of camp fires glow- around you ; the smell of wood smoke is in the air ; and for sound is heard a level murmur of unseen men and animals, broken now and then by the clink of chain hobbles, or a jackal howling on the mountain, or may be by a shot.

During the evening I looked into the common- room used by drivers, an apartment whose diverse inmates are of unending interest in all khans. It was a mass of swarthy figures dimly seen through clouds of tobacco-smoke by the light of a single lamp. Already some were lying down, pillowed on harness as their most valued possession, and wrapped in hairy black cloaks ; but many more were seated cross-legged exchanging news. For in a land without a Press these evening gathering-places of men who have come long distances are the true homes of rumour which passes for news. And such rumours they are too ! Not as news, indeed, but as lurid and picturesquely embroidered stories reflecting conditions of life, and the hopes and fears and hatreds of many races, the amazing fantasies of such wayside common-rooms are a delight. Old travellers say that with experience it becomes possible to treat these fabulous tales of a simple folk as ill-coded messages, and extract from them some element of truth.

26

CHAPTER III.

Tipping at Chakallu khan— Gouts one of the curses of mankind — A weird beggar — On the great plateau of Asia Minor — Kara Dagh and its robbers — A Roman road — An ancient and modern watering- place — A fashionable khan at Khavsa — Absence of women in Turkish travelling — Ritual of coffee-making — Gorge of the " Flowing Backwards" river — Flour mills — Difficulties with camels — A Greek fisherman — I leave the Bagdad Road — Walnut groves, vineyards, and burying-grounds at Marsovan.

When I looked out of my window at six the next morning the road was filled with a raw autumnal fog. A little later Achmet appeared, to see for himself when he might hope to get away, for like all of his calling he loved an early start. Already the khan was empty. In my sleep I had heard vehicles rumbling off, and the clatter and talking and jingling of bells which announce the coming of dawn in a khan. And now, like one left behind by his fellows, my driver was ill at ease. It was eisrht o'clock when the boys carried my luggage to the araha, and only then did Achmet bring his ponies from the stable, fearing lest by standing in harness they might be chilled. He lost no time now, and drew out of the yard even before I had distributed tips.

After paying the ^/lan-keeper I looked round for his satellites. There they all were, busy, cheerful in anticipation, but all with the eye and expression of body that tip-seekers the world over display at the right moment. And these Ottomans had nothing to learn from any of the fraternity in the matter of tactical adroitness. With an air of all imaginable

GOATS AND THE SCRUB 27

innocence they had contrived to place themselves between me and the gate, and maintained their position there until I called them.

Beyond the khan the road soon began to ascend, and as it did so the fog thinned, blue sky showed in the rifts, and in a little while the sun appeared. For a time we travelled in a narrow valley with scrub- covered slopes, and a stream in the bottom ; but presently the valley ended, and the road coiled itself into long loops with hairpin bends to reach the pass. There was a steep direct track, going through low scrub, on the mountain-side, and up this I went in lightness of heart. Here was travelling such as I had often sought and not often found. A wild land, a climbing mountain-path, sunshine and cool air, and upon me a strong consciousness of having got somehow into the world's earlier and more romantic days. Not a little of my illusion was due to the sounds that floated through the stillness of this green mountain-side. For I could hear Achmet crooning a plaintive Turkish melody to himself, and the jingling of his ponies ; and with his distant falsetto across the woods came the measured hollow beating of camel- bells as a caravan slowly wended down from the pass. And while I stood to listen, a far-away tremulous piping struck in, not from one point only but from two — the reed-pipes of goatherd boys, sitting with their flocks about them on the sunny hillside.

It is a story of that dignified and official body, the British Levant Consular Service, that a Vice-Consul began one of his official reports with this surprising and seemingly irrelevant paradox : " The goat is one of the curses of mankind."

Now although the writer in the fervour of convic- tion may have plunged too abruptly into his subject, yet it would appear that he had the truth of the matter in him, at least as to parts of Anatolia. No one can see without surprise and curiosity the oak and beech scrub which covers so much of the country. It seems to consist of some unfamiliar dwarf species.

28 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

The bushes all grow to about the same height, and there they stop, though to the eye the oak and beech of the forest. It is a puzzle until you see the cause ; but even then there is diflficulty at first in realising that the cause is so universal and unfailing in operation. Pass through these districts and you find goats among the scrub in thousands, each little flock of fifty or a hundred in charge of a goatherd and fierce dog ; and often, as you go, a sapient bearded head rises above the bushes, and the animal, standing on its hind-legs, nibbles off the topmost young shoots in demonstration of how the universal goat controls the scrub.

Within living memory these areas, or large portions of them, were covered with heavy forest. Although the forest has been recklessly felled, nature would have restored it — has, in fact, begun to do so — but after the felling came the profitable goat in myriads and arrested nature's process. As another result, a land that never had too much rainfall now receives less ; and much of what it does receive goes off quickly instead of being retained. To this fact bear witness washed-out roads, fans of shingle and detritus spread at the foot of gullies, and many dry water- courses showing high on their sides the litter of sudden floods.

I reached the summit of the pass long before the araba, and found there a little kahveh, a place of welcome refreshment for man and beast. So I sat on a bench before it, and took coflee with the kahveh- keeper while awaiting Achmet, and looked over the deep valley to the range of Kara Dagh which I was to cross during the day. Larks were singing in a blue sky. The fog had melted into thin wisps that rolled and dissolved while I watched them in the wooded glens below. The sun was hot, and the air clear and fresh as spring. Winter seemed far off" — and so it proved to be. This glorious weather of the Little Summer into which I had come was to go with me, almost without break, for more than six hundred miles.

Beggar of the Bagdad Road.

Tiartic on Bagdad Road, near Khavsa.

A WEIRD BEGGAR 29

As we rose out of the next valley a donkey and a figure on the ground beside it attracted my attention. They were in the shadow of a solitary tree growing at the roadside. The donkey stood with drooping head, the picture of patience, but the figure moved in curious fashion, and I went up to look more closely. And now it appeared that I had fallen into the trap of a beggar, one of those mendicants who infest the road and profit by their infirmities. He sprang up and asked for alms, and because these were not im- mediately forthcoming went on all-fours and showed a number of antics, imitating a dog and goat and other animals to admiration. Then I saw that he was without thighs ; that the knee-joint was at the hip, the leg rigid, and only half the usual length. With his grim bearded face thrust upwards, and the odd movements of his little legs, he lacked only a stump of tail to make me think I had come upon a satyr in life. At last I photographed him, and gave him three piastres for his trouble. Achmet protested against the amount : the fellow was rich, he said, and added with apparent admiration that he had two or perhaps three wives. But I heard afterwards that Achmet had exaggerated the beggar's standing not only in goods but in wives, seemingly as a matter of principle. For he was ever hostile to beggars, and jealous of all to whom I gave tips. As a hard- working, honest, thrifty man, it galled him to see worthless folk receiving good money for nothing — gifts that, he suspected, might diminish his own gratuity at the journey's end.

From Samstin to the pass of Kara Dagh had been a switchback road, that crossed three mountain-ranges and two deep valleys in a matter of forty miles. But at Kara Dagh I reached the great central plateau of Asia Minor, which stands from 2500 to 4000 feet above the sea. It is a plateau of geography and not of the eye — the general level of interior plains and valleys from which chains of mountains ascend and leave you quite unconscious of any high supporting tableland.

30 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

But it has this effect : the mountains always seem low for the height recorded by map or aneroid. So when from the pass of Kara Dagh I looked south- ward to Ak Dagh's 7000-feet ridge ten miles away, it had no more dignity than a Welsh mountain. It had a crest of snow, and its flanks were broken and wooded, and here and there on its blue spurs above Ladik rose thin columns of smoke from charcoal- burners' fires ; it had beauty and suggestion, but of real majesty little. It was a mountain defrauded of its full estate.

Ak Dagh means the White Mountain, from the snow it carries, and Kara Dagh the Black Mountain, from the pine forests along its summits above the pass. Kara Dagh has not only a sinister name, but a reputation in keeping. If storms are abroad, they are at their worst in this simple-looking pass which is little more than 3000 feet in height. You may, indeed, get rain and hail upon it, when to the north and south a mile or two away you find good weather. Here, too, winter snow is deep, though elsewhere to- wards the sea it may be light. And in days, not a generation since, when robbery by armed bands was of greater frequency than now, this pass of Kara Dagh was a place of doubly evil fame. It is told of the last well-known band which haunted this district that all went well with them until they ventured on a Turkish officer. Hitherto they had robbed, almost with im- punity, whom they chose ; had killed when killing served their purpose ; and had been known to leave three dead Armenian travellers set out in an orderly row by the wayside ; but they went too far when, in a high-flown moment, they shot a Turkish major in the leg. To shoot a soldier or zaptieh is the one unforgivable sin in this country, and so it proved for these. A relentless hunting followed, and in a running fight of several hours among the open pine-woods on Kara Dagh the band was destroyed.

A little way inland from the summit of the pass are remains of a Boman road. Some of its closely-

KHAVSA 31

fitted stones, one supposed, had seen the legions, and Byzantine lancers, and Georgian mercenaries of the Empire of Trebizond, and then, most picturesque of all, the Seljuk cavalry. And now, as I passed, across them rode a figure who represented the Osmanlis — a shabby blue zaptieh with slung rifle, mounted on a grey with sweeping tail. And I wondered who next these wise old stones would see as rulers.

From this point a long, hot, dusty road descended gently with many windings to the small town of Khavsa, which faced me from its sunburnt hillside for more than two hours. A parched, uninteresting country lay on either side, — treeless, with little culti- vation and few villages. But under slanting sunlight the mountains stood in delicate blues and purples, with pink on the snow, and hollows and swellings carried subtle variations of light and shade ; and a brilliant atmosphere seemed to varnish all distant features. By this time, also, we had overtaken the general body of south -going traffic, and peasants carrying their purchases were returning slowly from market. Amid these scenes I went down into Khavsa for the night uncomplaining, despite heat and dust and a dull country.

Khavsa is a watering-place whose reputation extends far over Anatolia. Its fame for medicinal baths goes back to Roman times ; and now as then many come to take the waters, but more especially to bathe in them.

Baths, and large rambling khans, and a few eating- houses — better, perhaps, than the average — are all the attractions that Khavsa can show its visitors at the present day. For the rest it is dirty and insig- nificant : geese and fowls and dogs wander at large in its streets ; there is scarcely a green tree in sight, — the town concerns itself entirely with elementals. Yet it seems to have been, at one time, a place with pretensions. I saw fragments of marble columns, and friezes, and tiles, also a small bronze vessel, like an amphora, that had been unearthed here ; and

32 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

there were said to be Greek inscriptions built into the walls of the baths.

The khan to which Achmet took me as the one he liked best was large and rambling and old. It had two floors of interior balconies supported by wooden posts, and would have been picturesque in any other land, but by no goodwill of imagination could be called picturesque in its present condition here. It was flimsy and rickety and dilapidated. There were broken boards and windows ; plaster was falling from walls ; holes were patched by pieces of paraffin-tins ; and the quadrangle itself, with its horses and dogs and fowls, had the appearance of a farmyard. Yet as khans went the building was passably clean, and a good many visitors found it well enough to their liking. Through half-open doors on the balcony I saw into rooms littered with bedding, and cooking utensils, and food, and articles of dress, and heard the voices of women and children. Evidently families in search of health thought nothing of herding to- gether three or four or five in a room while taking the baths.

Soon after getting in I found the jar in my room empty, and therefore called loudly from the balcony for water, as a thing strangely overlooked in a khan of such fashion and importance. No one was in sight below, and my shouting, if heard, passed unheeded. So it became necessary to wait upon myself; but as I went, earthenware jar in hand, a voice beside meN said, " Here is water," and a female arm slid round a nearly-closed door and placed a tin vessel outside. The door was shut when I returned the tin, and remained so whenever I passed afterwards, and 1 never saw the person who had shown kindness to a stranger and foreigner.

But water was still my need, and not wishing to shout again, I set out once more with the jar. This time I came upon three well-dressed women in a dark corner of the balcony, who fluttered off like startled doves at my approach, and covered their heads with

ABSENCE OF WOMEN 33

white shawls as they went, more concerned, it would appear, to hide their faces than their legs, — though these, I believe, were stockingless. I had disturbed a water-party, and in this way discovered that of which I was in search. The women had been gathered round a paraffin-tin standing on a low shelf, draw- ing water from it by the smallest and most tedious tap man ever made. This home-made cistern contained the supply for inmates on our balcony, and was replen- ished from time to time as thought necessary by a careless man-servant. Little water remained in it now, and for a moment I doubted what to do. Should I draw off what was left, thinking only of my own convenience ? Should the startled women presently return to find that the Englishman had driven them away in order to seize the water ? Such are the problems that may arise in a fashionable hhan. I solved this problem by going down to the yard and having my earthenware jar filled there.

Perhaps the sharpest and most impressive contrast between Turkish and European life that a traveller finds in Asia Minor arises from the Moslem seclusion of women. And not Moslem women only are with- drawn from view. The custom extends in large degree to women of all the Christian populations. As a general principle women are beings to be kept out of sight as much as possible. So you go through the country waited upon by men ; your food is cooked by men ; in shops you are served always by men. At khans you never see the equivalent of the innkeeper's buxom wife, never the innkeeper's comely daughter, never a cheerful maid-servant. It is much the same in the streets of villages and towns. There indeed you see women sometimes ; but they go timidly ; they are closely veiled, or have their heads more or less enveloped in shawls. Even peasant women working in the fields will twitch some kind of covering over the face as you pass, or turn their heads away, though you may be thirty or forty yards off. You see women if you enter the homes of Christians, and

c

34 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

may see them also if a Moslem peasant receives you in his house for the night. But in general you travel through a womanless world, and by so much find your comfort and not a little of the charm of travelling gone.

While I sat in the drivers' common-room next morning, waiting for the araba to be got ready, the attendant occupied himself in a leisurely manner by roasting and pounding coffee. The berries were spread on a sheet of thin iron placed over a slow charcoal fire in a square brazier. From time to time he moved the beans, took off those sufficiently roasted, and added fresh. With a large handful of berries roasted and ready he began pounding, using a heavy, ancient-looking, well-moulded brass mortar and pestle which I coveted exceedingly. Pound- ing is a slow process, for these Turkish experts in coffee -making are not satisfied with the gritty fine- ness produced by a coffee-mill. They demand that the berry shall be reduced to impalpable dust even finer than flour. There is, too, a sort of ritual in the brewing, without which a Turk does not get the coffee he likes. So now, when I called for coffee, the man poured about two egg-cups of water into a small brass jezveh — a vessel like a mug with a long handle — and added a teaspoonful of coffee dust and a lump of sugar. Then he pushed the jezveh into the edge of the embers and watched it closely. When the con- tents rose in froth he drew the vessel back. Three times he slowly pushed the jezveh into the dull embers and drew it back as the froth rose. After the third frothing the coffee was ready. You may think the coffee of Paris best of all, or the coffee of Vienna, as some do ; but in Turkey you will find better, and whether it be taken black, or converted into cafe au lait, as the sort preferred, you will declare that this is coffee and the others are not.

From Khavsa, the inland road turns down a narrow rocky gorge along which flows the Tersikan Su — the Flowing Backwards river. It rises in Ladik lake, on

DIFFICULTIES WITH CAMELS 35

the northern side of Ak Dagh, and thence runs away from the sea to join the Yeshil Irmak at Amasia. When the gorge opens a Httle a strip of cultivated land fills the bottom. Here are flour-mills too, — in a land of small rainfall and deficient rivers they gather thickly beside each suitable stream, — with something of the traditional romance of all country flour-mills driven by water or wind. One here lay white in the sunshine, a few trees beside it ; there was the flashing of water, the purring of stones, the kindly white dust of flour on everything within, and a sense of the miller being a hearty, prosperous, independent fellow. These Ottoman millers, like millers the world over, are charged with making illicit gains ; but a custom of the country bears hardly upon them some- times, for a body of farmers will go now and then and give a miller of undue prosperity a beating.

In parts of this gorge the narrow road went with a low stone wall between it and a sheer deep drop to the river. Caravan followed caravan — hundreds of camels in line, whose loads, projecting like a great pannier on either side, sometimes left little room for passing vehicles ; and camels go straight and do not step aside for anything. But that was Achmet's trouble, not mine. I had got into the bottom of the gorge and could hear him shouting from time to time, and see the caravans like a moving chain crawling slowly along the mountain-side.

Camels travel tied head and tail, from saddle to head-stall, in sevens or eights. The halters of horse- hair rope are of great strength, but in the coupling between each pair of animals a link is provided break- able by slight strain. You may see a camel suddenly fling his head into the air and snap this link, the wisp of wool by which his halter is tied to the saddle of the next in front. That is as it should be, what the weak link is for, and the camel-man comes back presently and restores the lashing. You are told that had nothing given way the beast would have gone mad, and begun to plunge and scream, and set the

36 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

whole group doing likewise, with broken legs and necks as the inevitable result. But the irksome tether broken the beast is satisfied at once, and goes forward without faltering in his lurching stride.

Beside a pool somewhere in this gorge I had one of those instantaneous glimpses, like through a narrow window in passing, which seem to be into the ancient past. It was over in a second or two, but in that time I saw what the Greek sculptors saw and were able to arrest in statuary. A man, naked except for a pair of thin white cotton " shorts," had been netting fish in the pool. He had just waded out of the water and was standing on the bank. He was young, brown-skinned, sunbm-nt, and black-haired : not big, but exceedingly well - formed and muscular, — the muscles of his arms and chest and legs seemed to creep as he moved. Presently he gathered the net loosely into one hand and began whirling it round his head — to dry it, I supposed — and so doing fell into a natural and unconscious pose which had in it the very spirit of Greek sculpture. He stood erect — his legs parted, yet not too widely — his head thrown back ; one arm swung the rapidly whirling net, the other was thrown out with easy grace for balance. He was in sunlight ; behind him water ; behind the water bushes and rocks on a climbing hillside. Such chance visions the old sculptors saw, too, from time to time. They saw and carried in mind, and with striving and adequate craftsmanship endowed their work with the spirit they had so caught. And the beings, male and female, who provided these rare transitory visions, were the product of their environment — that favoured and peculiar combination of sea and mountain and island, and warm pellucid atmosphere, and sunshine and sky and colour, and rock and stream and wood, which is found in and around the ^gean Sea, and nowhere else.

I knew that this man must be a Greek, but asked him in order to make sure ; hoping to find, also, that he called himself Alcibiades, or Pericles, or Homeros,

VINEYARDS AND WALNUT GROVES 37

as many do in this country. But he called himself merely Christos, which, though Greek enough, carries no glamour, and pertains rather to that modern Greece whose Western admirers, gazing from afar, pathetic- ally think is capable of living up to the ancient fame.

A couple of hours beyond Khavsa, the highway divided just as the gorge opened to the plain of Mar- sovan. On the left the Bagdad Road crossed the river by an old high-pitched stone bridge of a single pointed arch, and went off along the hillside for Amasia ; the other road climbed low spurs on the right, to reach the plain and town of Marsovan. I wished to visit this town, which lay about ten miles distant in the south-west, so here I left the Bagdad Road for a time.

In a little while a wide dark belt of trees, which I knew for the vineyards and orchards and walnut groves of Marsovan, began to rise above the brown plain in the distance. And then, as I drew nearer, ap- peared on my right a minaret, showing now and then over the domes of walnut foliage. It was the minaret of Marinja's village mosque — obscure Marinja that nevertheless had sent a son of hers into Europe once, where he made stir and commotion enough for a time.

Vineyards and orchards and gardens, closely set and luxuriant, surround Marsovan wherever water can be brought by irrigation. Through these I passed, fol- lowing a narrow lane between rough hedges of hawthorn tangled with wild clematis and overhung by walnut-trees. Next came the burying-grounds, on the edge of the town, Moslem and Christian apart, with the freshly-made graves of many cholera victims, and the great mournful heap of loose stones piled above Armenian victims of a massacre. The path then went among houses, climbing a low hill, and at the top, through a gateway with a gatehouse above it, I entered the walled compound of the American Mission.

38

CHAPTEE IV.

Marsovan — Vineyard quarrels — The Tash Khan as a place of refuge — Armenians and Turks — Pistols — Kara Mustapha Pasha : Donkey- driver, Janissary, Grand Vizier — His plot — His defeat at Vienna — His death by bowstring.

Marsovan is one of the few towns in Asia Minor without historical interest, or that does not at least stand upon the site of some known ancient city. It never had any importance of its own. It lay upon no great route of armies, and never was a fortress, for it had no natural features of the kind thought suit- able in early times for the making of one. It has always been a plain market - town in a district of husbandmen ; and town and district have the reputa- tion among Turks of being a sort of Ottoman Boeotia, or worse. "Like a Merzifounli" is a reproach that may imply dulness, or boorishness, or bad manners. Yet it is a town fortunate in its situation. It is built just where the abrupt range of Tafshan Dagh, rising to nearly 6000 feet behind, meets the plain in gentle slopes and downs. In front of the town the ground sinks gently for three or four hundred feet ; and thence the plain, eight or ten miles in width, with Ak Dagh on the north and lesser mountains on the south, goes forward to the second gorge of the Tersikan Su and the enormous blue precipices of Amasia twenty-five or thirty miles away. Past the town, in a little valley, runs the Chai — a mountain stream where it issues from its deep glen in Tafshan

Street in Marsovan.

In the Mission Compound, Marsovan.

VINEYAED CULTIVATION 39

Dagh. But there the water is snatched away at once in channels for irrigation, and only enough flows along the natural course to make a few un- pleasant pools among the shingle.

Marsovan is a warren of narrow alleys and streets and courts, such as might be expected in a walled city but not in an open town of 20,000 souls. And yet from a little distance it makes a good appearance ; for many of its buildings, though only of sun-dried brick, are plastered externally, and give the effect of a white town with red-brown roofs. Up to this huddle of white walls and warm roofs upon rising ground come vineyards and orchards and gardens, the custom being to build closely in towns, and for each householder of substance to have his piece of cultivated land in the immediate outskirts. Here, therefore, for a mile outside the dwellings, are in- numerable plots divided by paths and water-courses, and dotted with huts for summer dwelling standing amidst trees and vines.

Farmers and cultivators of the district get wheat and barley, vegetables and fruit — grapes, apples, apricots, melons, cherries — in profusion. By merely scratching the surface with a wooden plough and sowing broadcast, there comes in June tall bearded wheat, heavy and long of ear, that rustles in the wind across the slopes. And down in hollow places the ground is hidden by rank waving poppies, grown for opium as the most profitable crop of all. It is a fat land, which yields all things for little labour, if you do but supply water.

With each piece of garden ground is the right to water in proportion upon payment ; the water measured by time of flow. When a cultivator's turn for irrigating comes he must make sure of his oppor- tunity or suffer loss. He has a few hours of haste and hard labour — leading the stream into the rows, damming them, opening the dams, and making as many channels as possible to drink up the fluid. It may be also a time of quarrels for him, of standing

40 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

stiffly upon his rights, or going without his due of water. For instance, Ali, when his time of water- ing comes, may find no water at all in the public channel ; or perhaps the flow is small and in- sufficient. Whereupon Ali goes up-stream, anger in his eye. He has known this sort of thing be- fore ; knows, too, how to deal with it. He has to go, perhaps, some distance before he finds that a certain fellow named Abdul has dammed the channel and is feloniously diverting water. With- out much waste of time in expostulation Ali kicks away the dam of earth and grass. From this stage it may be a short one to the next — perhaps only a step, — and Ali and Abdul pass from mere words to hasty shooting, being men who carry arms. There- upon results another case for the Mission hospital — or very likely two, for the range is short and both opponents filled with purpose.

Notwithstanding that Marsovan is so meanly built, and has nothing to tell of a past better than the present, there are a few substantial stone build- ings which go back for nearly three hundred years. They provide glimpses revealing that the people had it in them to create towns distinctive in style, and satisfactory, and failed of so doing by very little. You perceive that with a slight increase of motive to set industry and energy going, perhaps with no more than a change of one or two theological beliefs, these Moslems would have built towns comparable with any of the time.

Such a glimpse is that of a tall, massive, old stone wall enclosing a mosque yard. In the wall is a heavily arched doorway, through which is got a hint of railed tombs, of a fountain canopy supported by columns, and of oriental figures in bright colours coming and going. Above the wall appears the mosque, banded in parti - coloured stones, and an ancient plane-tree, whose huge contorted trunk and limbs seem disproportionate even to the great height and spread of foliage. Without the old wall is a

THE TASK KHAN 41

narrow street, having white buildings on one side with upper stories overhanging, and windows screened by wrought-iron scroll-work. In the breadth of cool shadow thrown by the wall are more oriental figures ; but these are seated on low stools, and are careful to keep themselves just clear of the fierce white light which runs beside them ; so the shadow is full of figures, and the sunlight falls on vacant street. For here is a sort of open-air cafe, where indolent men linger away the day with coffee and gossip and cigar- ettes, heedless of the industrious clanging of smiths' hammers, beating out vessels in the copper bazaar not far away.

Another of these glimpses is of the old Hammam, or Turkish bath. It is built of red-brown, weather- stained stones carefully squared, and is low, massive, and arched, and has a peep of flat dome showing for roof; and before the door is a small open court, filled with the pale green light of sheltering vines upon an overhead trellis.

The Tash Khan — merely the Stone Khan, as a sufficiently notable name — is another building of the same period and style and red-brown stone. It is built round an inner quadrangle, and has two stories of heavy pointed arches forming open arcades to the courtyard. Four ponderous, windowless, external walls enclose all. Nearly a hundred merchants have their booths and shops in the arcades within this build- ing, glad to be behind massive walls pierced by only a single doorway. And the door is a thing that by itself tells much ; it is incredibly heavy and strong, and banded and clamped with iron — once closed nothing short of explosives would force it open. Building and door belong to a time when brawl and riot and raid were more frequent even than now ; when merchants required the security of a fortress for their goods, and were willing to pay rents that made the building of such places a profitable venture. And they like such places still ; for you hear that stalls in this khan are always in demand, and the

42 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

door ever kept ready for sudden closing. Enter one of the shops and you find it a nest of low dark rooms opening out of each other. Here you may buy excellent towels by weight, and the Armenian who sells them tells you in English that they were hand - woven in the town, of yarn imported from Manchester, — that being the process followed by some cotton weavers in Asia Minor.

While he sells he speaks of his race and its woes ; of what has befallen it in this town. Of a hundred and fifty slain in an hour. Of the increasing dread that the killing may break out again at any time. Of the ever-listening ear and watchful eye for sounds and signs — like waiting for the first tremors of an- other earthquake after one that has just done damage. He tells also that, during the last massacre, many hundreds of his people reached this Tash Khan ; and having closed and bolted the great door, found safety within until the gust of fanatical Moslem rage sub- sided. Hearing of these things you wonder that he, who could go to America if he chose, should be satis- fied to remain here. That he has chosen to stay, it seems, must be some measure of how he judges his risks ; that, in fact, he has balanced these against his profits.

The attitude of Armenians towards the Turk who has so vilely used them can only be called a peculi- arity of the race. In Western Europe the Armenian is regarded as a harmless, peaceable, mild - spoken man, without warlike spirit, without power of resist- ance to oppression. This idea does a great injustice to the people. It is widely incorrect even of Armenian town dwellers, and still more so of the peasantry. For all their greater than Jewish love of gain, the seden- tary classes — the tax - farmers, usurers, and shop- keepers— live amoDg dangers requiring daily no little physical courage to meet, and are a stubborn uncom- promising brood ; the peasantry are nothing less than dour, and from some districts are fighting men second to none in Asia Minor. The Armenian is a better

1

ARMENIANS AND TURKS 43

fighting man than the average Greek, for instance. He never stands in awe of the Greek, and never has done so in all his history. He is fierce and bold enough in quarrel with a Greek, and seems, indeed, to be conscious of a moral ascendancy. But let him be opposed by a Moslem, and straightway his confident spirit gives place to a sort of furious despair, for which, between one man and the other, you can see no reason at all.

And yet this average Armenian, when accompanied by a European, may become aggressive to the point of insolence in his behaviour to Moslems, and willing to risk the most serious trouble. Such an Armenian, serving me as araba-driver for a journey, lashed the camels of a passing caravan, seeking to stampede them in a spirit of bravado. And an American mis- sionary doctor, speaking of the same Armenian trait, told me that once he had to gallop for life because, on the open chaussee, his Armenian servant purposely rode among the feet of Moslems seated by the wayside.

That this industrious and not unwarlike people should have got so hopelessly under the Turkish heel is chiefly due to a single infirmity of nature. They are prone to falling out among themselves, and as good haters have ever been slow to lay aside per- sonal animosities in order to show a united front against their common enemy. With such an unhappy faculty for dissension, they combine one or two other characteristics which help to make resistance to the Turk almost futile.

Since the massacres at the close of last century Armenians have armed in self-defence. It was the right course, and if followed up with any reason- able degree of unity and wisdom, would soon have made an end of massacres. But to arm, and boast of it ; to boast, also, of what would happen next, and then to prove incapable of making good the boastings, was no less than fatal. Moslems, knowing better than any the strangely contradictory Armenian nature, remembered the boasts, and laughed at the

44 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

preparations for defence. These, they said, were all saman — or straw.

And so I reluctantly thought myself, after an illuminating incident which befell me at Marsovan. I wished to buy a Mauser automatic pistol, and inquired discreetly — for they were illegal weapons to carry — if one could be found in the town. The next morning an Armenian merchant called on me, anxious to do business. He could tell me, he said, that no Mauser was to be had ; but for five pounds a Mannlicher — which he spoke of as a much better pistol — was at my disposal ; and with that he placed on the table a new Mannlicher and belt of cartridges. Like the Mauser, it was an illegal weapon, being longer in the barrel than careful Turkish law permits citizens to own. The merchant had much to say in favour of the Mannlicher. It was less complicated, and therefore less likely to get out of order than a Mauser, and for that reason had been adopted by Armenians. In Marsovan at least five hundred of his countrymen were armed with this formidable weapon. He proposed that I should take the pistol and try it, and was confident that when he called again I would be a buyer.

It shot like a rifle and was pleasant in the hand ; but jammed at every third or fourth round, and by no cleaning and oiling could I make it do better. When I next saw the merchant he was surprised and disappointed at what I told him. He said he had never heard complaints about this kind of pistol before ; he would give me in confidence the address of an Armenian gunsmith at Sivas, an expert in pistols, and armourer to one of the Armenian revolutionary societies, who would speedily set right any defect.

Seeing at last that I would have nothing to do with Mannlichers, another idea occurred to him. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, and after unwinding a long hidden belt of cartridges, produced a yet greater pistol of the same make. That, he explained, was his own, which he had carried for years. It went with him everywhere, for he wore it by day, and

PISTOLS 45

placed it beside him at night. It had cost six pounds, and would kill at a thousand yards. He seemed to regard it as a certain talisman against Moslem violence, much as an expert shot might do. It was not for sale, he explained, but would I, as a favour, try it as I had done the other ? I thought he was practising on me some form of subtle salesman- ship, but agreed to do as he asked, and went out on the hills with this weapon. It jammed like the other ; and on returning I told the merchant he would do better with a stick. Had he never had trouble with it himself, I inquired.

" No," he said thoughtfully, but in a curious voice, like one thinking of a loss. And then the truth came out : he had never fired the pistol ; and had never fired any firearm in his life except a revolver once or twice. I asked what he thought would happen if the need arose to use his pistol in earnest, and suggested that he could not begin practising too soon.

" Fire off half your rounds this week," I urged. He made a hopeless gesture with his hands, and said —

" The cartridges, they cost much money." And yet they did not, for they cost no more than in England. He was a smart -looking, able-bodied, youngish man, who appeared quite capable of defend- ing himself. No doubt he would have fought bravely enough against Moslems when pushed ; but he was essentially a man in pursuit of gain, and found part- ing with money painful. When arming was forced upon his race as a necessity, he and others who could afford the outlay had each bought an automatic pistol for five or six pounds, and received as well a hundred rounds of ammunition as part of the pur- chase. These weapons they regarded as costly pro- tective instruments, efficacious chiefly by reason of intrinsic quality. That another pound or two should be spent on each to make it really of use was an idea opposed to the buyers' deepest principles and instincts. Of those who bought such weapons, few indeed took

46 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

the trouble to become proficient with them. These pistols, I have no doubt, were supplied to Armenians as purchasers not knowing what they bought, and for whom anything would do that had the looks.

Marsovan has one link connecting it with European history which it does not readily forget. For here — or, more correctly, at the village of Marinja, a mile outside the town — was born Kara Mustapha Pasha — Black Mustapha — who conunanded the Turkish army at the siege of Vienna in 1683, and came so near to establishing the Crescent in Central Europe. His name, familiar and dreaded in Christendom once, is almost forgotten now, but Marsovan has it still in daily speech in shortened form. They have the Pasha Mosque and Pasha Baths, and the public water supply is the Pasha Water — gifts of Black Mustapha to his native town ; and there is the Tash Khan, built by him as a speculation, the rents of which are received by his descendants to the present day. The village mosque at Marinja, erected by him in memory of his mother, has also come to bear the greater name of her son.

His was one of those romantic careers of which the Turkish Empire shows so many examples. With Sultans ever on the watch for men to serve their purpose, and influenced in their choice by no con- siderations of rank or birth, high appointments often went to the obscure. A stableman, eunuch, pipe- bearer, coflee-seller, private soldier — any one with wits — might suddenly find himself lifted to greatness by the mere word of his sovereign. Black Mustapha's was a more steady ascent, but took him quickly to the highest position under the Sultan.

One reads that Black Mustapha was born son of a hey ; one hears locally that his father was a donkey- driver or muleteer, and that young Mustapha followed this calling in his native district till he was seventeen. Like any country lad of the present time, doubtless he trudged, dusty and hot, in goatskin sandals behind his beasts, going to Amasia and Samsiin and Angora

KAEA MUSTAPHA PASHA 47

and Sinope, and sometimes crossing Tafshan Dagh by the narrow precipitous path to Vizier Keupru, twenty miles from his home. Probably it was at this place that he made his first definite step towards greatness, for there lived a great landed family which had given the state two Grand Viziers — and was to give a third and even a fourth — famous in Turkish history as the Keuprulu Viziers. One of them saw young Mustapha, liked the look of him, and with that the youth was not long in reaching Constantinople.

Books tell us that the famous corps of Janissaries was recruited from Christian children taken captive, converted to the Faith, trained to arms, and dedicated for life to the warlike service of their captors. Pro- bably this story had some degree of truth at the outset, but much less afterwards. Somehow one seems to detect in it the wounded vanity alike of effete Byzantine Greeks and more virile Balkan Christians. W^ith Christian territory and military reputation gone at the hand of Moslems, Christian historians endeavoured to save something on paper by attributing defeat to the prowess of Christian blood. If the Order of Janissaries provided careers alluring enough to detain tens of thousands of enter- prising and ambitious men in its ranks, it seems fanciful to suppose that Moslems by descent would not share in its opportunities.

At all events we are told that young Mustapha, a Moslem of Moslems, enlisted in the Janissaries when he reached the capital. Soon he became one of those whose special duty was to watch over the person of the Sultan. He went to the wars and rose rapidly. He married a daughter of his patron, the Keuprulu Vizier. In time he became Grand Vizier himself, and then followed the great event and tragedy of his life. The project of capturing Vienna is said to have been his own on this occasion, with the cause of the Faith and his Sultan as seem- ing motives, with his own personal aggrandisement as hidden motive. He is credited with the ambition

48 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

of creating in Central Europe a great province of Islam, which in a few years he hoped to weld into a sultanry for himself

So for four months he besieged Vienna with an army of 80,000 men, and went near to taking the city. Its relief by John Sobieski, King of Poland, and the Saxons under August of Saxony, is an old story, now grown dim, though at the time the coffee- houses of London had much to say about it. If Chalons was the decisive struggle of Europe against the advance of Islam from the west, not less so was Vienna decisive against the advance from the east. The greater danger, indeed, would seem to have threatened from the Danube.

It is told that on the day of battle which settled so much Black Mustapha gave a banquet to his son and high officers, and in a spirit of oriental defiance had the open banqueting tent pitched facing the Christian armies at a little distance. And now in the Green Vault of the Castle at Dresden you are shown Black Mustapha's sword and this banqueting pavilion and its trappings, all captured by the Saxons on that afternoon of destiny outside Vienna.

Black Mustapha reached Belgrade with only frag- ments of his great army, his schemes all gone to nothing, his influence destroyed. As a beaten arch- conspirator, particulars of his private ambitions were not long in reaching the Sultan. In the citadel of Belgrade, a year after the defeat at Vienna, Black Mustapha's career was closed by the executioner's bowstring. Although no disinterested patriot, yet he had pushed Ottoman arms far into Europe, and his memory has been invested with a certain halo by his countrymen. An Armenian professsor at Mar- sovan College, who took a detached interest in Turkish history of the period, told me that in Stambtil he once had come upon Black Mustapha's tomb, and that it seemed to have been carefully preserved.

49

CHAPTER V.

American Mission at Marsovan — The " Gilt-edged Mission " — The old compound — English nurses and hospital garden — An American walled village — "The Parting Tree" — Busy days — The "Business Manager" — Students of Anatolia College — Many nationalities — Ascendancy of Russian students — Armenian students — Revolution- aries and the College — Greek students : their ancient Greek characteristics.

There are, however, other matters of interest at Marsovan than those strictly native to the country, and by singular contrast they originate from the New World. For more than a hundred years American missionary societies have been busy in Asia Minor. They began in a small way ; but have now a large vigorous body of missionaries in their service, and their missions are scattered over the country from the Persian border to Constantinople. The greatest mission of them all is at Marsovan.

The popular conception of a mission may be of a few missionaries and many mild native converts in white ; native huts of bamboo or wattle ; a large hut of the sort as school, a still larger one as church. As for the individual missionary, he is often pictured as an earnest, amiable, white-bearded man in tropical gar- ments. He generally rides a horse, carries Bible and umbrella, and gathers natives about him in the shelter of convenient palm-trees. If this, or any- thing like it, is the general idea of an American mission in Asia Minor, and more particularly of the Marsovan Mission, and the methods of its staff,

50 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

hardly any conception could be wider of the truth. American missions in Asia Minor are the property of an American board, which is a corporation under charter granted by the State of Massachusetts. The property of American missions and foundations in Asia Minor, Syria, and Constantinople, runs to a value of many millions of dollars — even to millions sterling, and is ever increasing. One hears that normally the chief duties of the American Embassy in Constantinople lie in watching over the interests of American citizens and property connected with the missions.

Marsovan Mission complains that by reason of situa- tion it does not have as good opportunities for securing bequests and gifts as those more favoured missions which stand upon the coast. Marsovan cannot be reached by steamer, railway, or motor-car. Rich men, one is told, are precisely the folk to whom a journey by araha and its accompaniment of staying at filthy khans appeal least. Rich men keep to the coast, see the great missions there, with the American flag flying over buildings erected upon historic spots, and giving and bequests by will follow. If only we were more accessible, sighs Marsovan Mission, matters would be so greatly better for us. How apparent the work we do upon inadequate means would become ; how obvious, too, that with double the means our power for doing good would be quadrupled ! Like the Greek mer- chants of Samsun, the missionaries of Marsovan hope for the railway.

And yet Marsovan has not done badly for itself There are missions still further inland which look upon it as a sort of unduly privileged metropolis of missions. Far and wide these missions of the inner wilds agree to speak of Marsovan as the " Gilt-edged Mission," which unduly attracts to itself not only money but missionaries. And yet no visitor, I think, would ever wish to see Marsovan Mission curtailed in any way, much rather would he see it grow indefinitely.

THE AMEEICAN MISSION 51

But judge of the Mission for yourself.

It stands in a walled compound of some twenty acres, against two sides of which abut the wretched dwellings and narrow alleys of the Turkish town. On the other sides are open fields extending to the mountains a mile away. Within the compound are the buildings of Anatolia College, a High School for girls, a school for deaf mutes, a hospital of sixty or seventy beds, and a Boys' Home. There are also workshops in which trades are taught, and college students may earn the cost of their education ; a flour mill capable of grinding for a population of 4000 ; a bakery ; a printing press and book - bindery ; the houses of the Americans ; and a Turkish bath. You learn that about 700 souls in all, counting boarders, hospital patients, and Americans, live within the com- pound walls. Space is limited, however, and native servants live outside, and so do the native professors.

Regularity has not been attempted in laying out the compound. Buildings were erected and added to as suited the immediate purpose, and so a picturesque village has grown up. Some of the Mission houses are built on the eastern slope for its view of Ak Dagh and the plain ; others face the west to get the western mountains and haunting beauty of the sunsets. No two houses are alike, nor on the same line of frontage. Many are red-roofed ; lichen grows upon their tiles ; wistaria clambers over verandahs ; and there are balconies — or porches, in American speech — shadowed by great cherry-trees, where they pick ripe fruit while seated at breakfast. Among the houses go cobbled passages and alleys that pass under old quince-trees, and apple, and cherry, and white mulberry, and walnut ; and here and there is a spray of pomegranate, and above a fence appear now and then the tall drooping leaves of Indian corn — for each house has its garden. The college, too, has a pleasant garden of its own, tree-shaded, and gay in season ; and so has the hospital. This hospital garden has been formed and maintained by a succession of English nurses who

52 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

brought with them from English homes the love of a garden for itself, and patient care in the tending.

They sowed grass round the wide-basoned fountain in the hospital courtyard, and called the yard " the lawn " — a fugitive, kittle thing in this land of hot sun and scanty rain — and imported a lawn-mower, and with a little mowing and a vast deal of assiduous watering, were able to speak of " the lawn" truthfully, though not without a touch of imagination still being necessary. But the climate though hard on grass, prospers other garden growths if water is applied, and water being available, a pleasant garden resulted. The first nurse made a walk under the mulberry- trees, and bordered it with tall Easter lilies, which flourished, as did her roses ; and the violets she planted under the trees grew and spread like weeds. Succeeding nurses carried on the work, and made beds of annuals that blossomed brightly ; and now the hospital garden, with its grass, and splashing fountain, and shady walk, and gay flowers, is a spot where patients, all unused to surroundings of this kind, sit and rest and find themselves growing well. As aid to the Mission hospital the garden is an influ- ence not easy to overrate. It creates an atmosphere aflecting all patients ; they come and not only are healed, but carry away vivid and pleasant recollec- tions which they convey to others, and thus disarm prejudice and hostility. The whole compound, in fact, with its cheerful gardens and dwellings, its cleanli- ness, order, and happiness, is a most powerful silent agency of the same kind. It provides a standing and surprising contrast which fails to strike no one who sets foot within the gates. You pass at a step from squalor and pools of filth in narrow alleys to the bright compound, and seem to have got into another world.

Doing this again and again a curious impression grows upon you. It is that the compound is a walled village of another race, established in these surround- ings by some unexplained cause. And a walled

"THE PARTING TREE" 53

village it is, in fact, and an American walled village at that — though such a thing no man may have heard of heretofore. It has a Town Gate, West Gate, and North Gate, and there is a gatekeeper — or warder, let us say — at each, and the gates are heavily-barred solid pieces of carpentry that more than once have troubled a mob. Its houses are connected by tele- phone, and you find that electric lighting is mooted ; but in spirit it is an old-fashioned walled village of a well-doing, friendly, hospitable people. By so much have Americans, thrown together in Asia Minor, been led by instinct and necessity to adopt some of the picturesque forms of the Middle Ages.

Such is the old Mission Compound at Marsovan, the original settlement and place of sentiment. It is not really old ; but time soon gathers memories, especially for exiles. Hidden away in one corner of the compound is a little green secluded spot which is the Mission burying-ground, where for fifty years they have been laying their dead and making it a place of memories. There was also another place, too, with many associations about it, but that has now been lost. It was no more than an old walnut-tree — " the Parting Tree " they called it — beside the vineyard path, a mile outside the com- pound. During many years it had been a custom of the Mission to go there in a body and say farewell to those who were leaving, — for not seldom these proved to be last farewells. But the owner of the tree, or some other Moslem, took offence ; there was singing, I suppose, and perhaps prayer, so in despite the tree was felled. Now you are shown merely the stump, and hear that the practice which grew up about the spot has fallen into disuse, as if with the tree went the associations which had hallowed it so long.

If the Mission as it stands is in guise a peaceful village, nothing of the sleepiness traditional to village life broods over it. It is a place of restless activity, spread over long hours each day. In the Mission houses they breakfast at seven ; by eight the day's

54 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

duties begin, and go on unceasingly till ten at night. They are always short-handed, whatever staff may be in residence. An increase of staff means an increase of work undertaken, and not an easing for those already working to the full extent of their powers. When the Sabbatical year of each missionary comes, he or she is obviously much in need of it.

The Mission includes officials whose duties seem strange, until you consider the amount of work per- formed, and the need for division of labour ; and that if some teach and preach, and some conduct a hospital, other services are required for which the true enthusiastic missionary temperament is not, as a rule, well fitted. Long ago the Mission found that its business affairs did not prosper in the hands of preachers, educationalists, and doctors. So a Business Manager and Treasurer was brought from America and charged with transacting the Mission's affairs. You may see him now in his office, with all the block and tackle of business around him — safes, ledgers, letter-books, piles of correspondence and all the rest of it — and he is a busy man. Busy, also, is another unexpected secular member of the Mission, officially "the Stenographer."

Anatolia College, the chief work of the Mission, is an American college, in all but its students, set down in Asia Minor. Very interesting it was to see the various races, more than a dozen in all, which figured among its students, and to learn the places whence these students came. Their homes were in Dalma- tia, Albania, the ^gean Islands, the various Balkan countries, European Turkey, Asia Minor, and, least expected of all, in Russia. Nearly all the Russians came from Caucasia, and were sons of soldiers settled there after the war of 1878. Perhaps more definite impressions of racial characteristics may be got by seeing lads of various races thrown together, as at this college, than from a similar mixed company of men. In lads their racial peculiarities are given full play ; in men they may be masked — at least are never

MANY NATIONALITIES 55

so fresh. By demeanour and character these students of Anatolia College unconsciously illustrated much in the history of their several races.

Greeks and Armenians numbered three- fourths of the whole ; the Russians, few more than a score, but these were the bold enterprising spirits. They were open - faced, hearty, free - spoken, careless, and had things pretty well their own way among their fellows. As students they had no great reputation, though English, the subject which had brought them here from their own schools, they acquired with amazing readi- ness. More than anything else they were Russian patriots, with their country as no dim uncertain figure. They came from an outlying province, acquired not so long ago by force of arms, but regarded them- selves Russian as much as any could do who came from the heart of the Empire. They showed also the assimilating power of Russia, for one told me he was a Greek by blood, and spoke of another who was Ar- menian ; but on both had settled the consciousness of a greater citizenship. The College authorities welcomed these Russian lads for the spirit and independence they displayed, hopeful of the example benefiting other students deficient in such characteristics.

The Armenian students ever seemed uncertain of how they stood ; what they should do ; what not do. They regarded with jealousy the arrival of fresh Russians and any increase of Greeks, — as if the College were, in a sense, their own preserve. Their manner was defensive, but defensive apparently with- out spirit. Yet again and again they have demon- strated that this outward seeming altogether belies their courage, and that in reserve is a grimly steadfast mood in which they become capable of anything.

One of the College regulations is that no student may belong to a revolutionary society ; another pro- hibits the possession of firearms. Both regulations are necessary, and both have failed in their purpose from time to time. During the period when Arme- nian revolutionary societies were active they secured

56 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

a footing among Armenian students of the College ; and these lads and young men, none out of their teens, served the cause with a boldness and secrecy of which they might have been thought incapable. There are stories of their doings, in times not many years ago, that sound like wild detective tales. A foreign col- lege, never viewed with favour by the Government, had to go warily in those days, and exact the most correct behaviour from its students. Yet Armenian revolutionaries, desperate men long hunted by the police, reached Marsovan and disappeared there, secreted and fed in the College by student com- patriots, their presence not even suspected by others. They were discovered only by accident, and then succeeded in escaping into the town. The same day the quarter in which they were known to have taken refuge was surrounded by zaptiehs, and after a fight the fugitives were shot.

A printing press is not, one would suppose, an object easy to hide or easy to work in secrecy, yet at one time the College was charged with harbouring a revolutionary press. In the best good faith the Mission repudiated the charge. They searched, but could find no sign of a press, — it was impossible, they said, for one to exist unknown in the Mission precincts. But the Turkish Governor reiterated his charge ; a revolutionary printing press, he said, was issuing sheets and pamphlets from the Mission compound, — of that he had proof definite and conclusive, in his judgment. He was invited to make his own search ; his ofiicials were helped, every nook and corner and likely place were examined, and still no press could be found. And yet long afterwards it came out that a press had existed within the compound, and been busy throwing off revolutionary matter ; but was so cun- ningly hidden, and its operators so loyally screened, that the closest search failed to reveal its whereabouts.

At Anatolia College Greek students are more numerous than those of any other race ; and like all Greeks, whether of Europe or Asia, have a quality

GREEK STUDENTS 57

which always compels interest. In general intelli- gence, in quickness of perception, in the power of acquiring knowledge, they are said as a race to have no equals among their fellow-students — nor in their capacity for opposing each other and making moun- tains of difference out of nothing. Watching them, it grows upon the observer that traditional Greek characteristics have survived strongly in the race, and that an Asia Minor Greek of to-day is probably little different from a Greek of twenty centuries ago.

A gathering of present-day Greeks, especially if assembled for discussion, is like a gathering of no other people on earth. All are so highly intelligent ; they have such a flow of words, such an instinct for gesture ; they command such a fury of eloquence for matters of no moment ; they see fifty different sides to every question, and are torn fifty different ways at once. They give the idea, indeed, of speaking less for the plain purpose of settling any matter than for exercising and displaying individual eloquence and perception ; and every man of them seems to be at heart a demagogue. Such an assemblage provides a clue to why Greek States fought on the side of Persia against Greeks ; why old Greece never rose to the height of her opportunities ; and why Greeks of old, with the coast-line and sea-borne commerce of Asia Minor in their hands, never spread inland and secured the whole of that fine country as the everlasting heritage of their race.

One may have thought sometimes that in the hidden scheme of racial and national destinies the Greek race had been intended to fill Asia Minor — if it could do so under the laws which govern the development of nations. That it instinctively made the essay, succeeded as to the easy fringe of coast, and thereafter failed, every one knows. In a gathering of eloquent Greeks, each man convinced he can sway the others and endeavouring to do so, one suspects that this instinctive craving for an audience and " gallery " has had much to do with the Greek failure.

58

CHAPTER VI.

Marsovan Mission Hospital — Mission doctor and robbers — "Harden Effendi " — Hospital scenes — A case of self -amputation — Magic of the " actual cautery " — The pensioned smuggler — Hospital shooting season — Hard-worked medical staflF — Surgeon and nurses on the run — Running orderly and patient — In the foreign nurses' sitting-room.

More than college or school, more than any other form of misionary enterprise, the Mission Hospital at Marsovan reaches people of all races and faiths. It alone — and like it other mission hospitals — attracts the Moslems. Colleges and schools these leave to the Christians, and keep the missionaries at arm's-length ; but to the hospitals they come as readily as any, and for the doctors have nothing but regard and gratitude.

"Do not fear, effendi," replied a party of men questioned by a mission doctor on the road as to the recent doings of a well-known band of robbers. " Do not fear : we are the robbers." They had recognised the doctor, although unknown to him, and he, at least, was free to come and go unharmed.

The medical staff of the hospital is considered at full strength with two American and one native doctor ; the nursing staff with one English, one American, and six or eight natives ; but such an establishment is not often maintained. To other mission hospitals, each with a single overworked doctor and nurse, the staff at Marsovan seems happy superfluity. But when, as happens sometimes at

THE MISSION HOSPITAL 59

these distant stations, the doctor or nurse, or both, break down, it may fall to Marsovan to fill the gap or see a hospital closed. At the time of my visit the second American doctor was away on some such duty, and the native doctor had been called to the army. Under the familiar pressure of necessity, the hospital is glad to make use of any one who can help. In me, therefore, as a man known to have seen blood and unlikely to faint, they recognised one day a promising emergency anaesthetist. A native doctor of the town had been requisitioned, but suddenly found himself unable to attend. Operations which could not be put off had to be done, so it was pro- posed to instruct me quickly that I might fill his place. Fortunately, however, he came after all, and my usefulness was never tested.

The medical mission service requires the complete missionary spirit of sacrifice in addition to professional skill. Remuneration is merely a living wage, propor- tioned to the low cost of living, and is the same that all appointed missionaries receive. The president of a college, the doctor, and youngest missionary all draw alike. A mission doctor makes fees as well — sometimes a considerable income — but these he turns over to his hospital ; for not only does he provide the professional skill, he also helps to support the hospital by his earnings, and even contributes to the building of a new hospital when that is possible. His work is a labour of love, with the professional recompense of finding in it unbounded opportunity for exercising his skill. He has a free hand, and is above cavil, criti- cism, or advice. Subject only to professional etiquette and his conscience, a mission surgeon performs any operation he thinks fit, and attains a sureness of skill like few. Five or six major operations a day often fall to the American surgeon at Marsovan. The limits set to operations not seldom are the beds available and the operator's strength — drawn upon heavily besides by duties in his clinics and the hospital.

The hospital itself — the old hospital, for they are

60 ACEOSS ASIA MINOK ON FOOT

building a new one to contain 150 beds— is a rambling old building and collection of sheds rudely adapted to hospital needs. Its wards defy almost every canon of hospital construction. Equipment is remarkable only for its makeshifts. In the slack season that follows harvesting, when men have time to think of the ills from which their wives and children and themselves suffer, and have time also to travel, the hospital is packed to the utmost. Patients are found crowded in low dark rooms that may have been used for storing firewood, or tools, or fruit before the rush set in. They are doing better thus, however, than if the hospital had not received them. And in spite of all disadvan- tages of building, equipment, and a grossly over- worked staff, the figure of hospital mortality is so low that it would be called excellent under the best conditions.

Watch the Mission hospital for a month, for even a couple of weeks, and you get a better notion of Anatol- ian life in its peculiarities than could be gained by half a year of travelling. At the doctor's clinic gather the most hopeless pitiable band of suffering mortals that mind can picture. Some are of the town, but the greater number have come long journeys. For days on end these have jolted in araba or crawling bullock- cart, have ridden on asses, have walked from dawn to evening, having heard that marvels of healing are done here by " Harden Effendi," whose name is known from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Many patients contrive to pay something for their treatment ; but while there is room in the hospital no one whose condition is not hopeless is turned away if payment be impossible. Strange and pathetic cases appear every week. One such was a blind woman who, led by a young child, had walked above a hundred miles, carrying her infant whom she had never seen. She came in hope that was not misplaced, for an opera- tion restored her sight. As an illustration of native methods and endurance in dealing with the injuries which so often overtake them, let the following ex-

THE "ACTUAL CAUTERY" CURE 61

ample suffice. A man arrived from the mountains, several days' journey distant, with the flesh almost gone from one of his arms. Four or five weeks earlier he had shot off the hand by accident, and the flesh instead of healing had steadily sloughed and left the bone projecting. Finding the stump much in his way, the patient had then sawn ofi* the offending length himself.

Women are brought in with strange nervous dis- eases,— nothing wrong except delusions that they can- not speak, cannot walk, one at least that she could not swallow. She was in a fair way of dying from starva- tion when her relatives conveyed her hurriedly to the Mission hospital. Now for some obscure reason cases of this kind are rather frequent, and a sure remedy awaits them if the friends consent to the treatment neces- sary ; consent of the friends, however, is necessary, and they have to witness the operation. What that is precisely I do not know ; but the *' actual cautery " is said to play an important part. Under its compel- ling influence speech suddenly returns in a flood ; the physically sound, lately unable to walk, able to do nothing but lie at full length, take to sudden leaping ; and always after these rapid recoveries the patient embraces the doctor's knees with exclamations of gratitude. So it all fell out with the woman unable to swallow ; she hastily swallowed water and bread in demonstration of her cure, and was duly grateful. But straightway her friends, who had witnessed the sudden recovery, developed a very ill humour. With nothing really wrong, why, they argued, had any cure at all been needful : the patient had caused them a vast deal of trouble and expense that might well have been avoided : as consolation for their need- less worries they took her away and beat her soundly.

There is no end to the odd incidents of this hospital.

" Who are those people ? " asked the English nurse, seeing a strange party seated gravely round a body on the lawn.

"They have brought a cholera case," answered the

62 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

doctor. " I can't have it in here. They are waiting while the authorities find a place to put it in."

A tall, thin, elderly figure, by his dress a person of quality, was leaning against the balcony railing as I passed one afternoon. The doctor told me his story later.

" He was a famous tobacco-smuggler, one of those who lead or control a band of smugglers," he ex- plained. " The Tobacco police never could bring it home to him. They knew he was at the back of it all, and tried to get him for years, but never suc- ceeded. He was often ill. He was always ill when a big coup was in hand, sometimes as a private patient here. How are you to rope in a man like that ? Anyhow the police gave up catching him, and then did better. They made him a pensioner of the Tobacco Regie ; gave him ten or twelve pounds a month as the cheapest way of keeping him quiet. He draws his pension now and doesn't smuggle any more. It's visiting day; and he's come to see his son, who's wounded." I asked if the son was a smuggler too.

" Sure," said the doctor, laughing, " I'd say he stepped into his father's shoes."

Gunshot cases are numerous enough at all times ; but the hospital records show a clearly defined shoot- ing season.

The season is in spring, when water is most valuable for the young crops, and cultivators in the irrigated gardens and vineyards fall out over distribution. It was after an aifair of this sort that two men came running to the hospital, each with a hand clapped over the hole in his abdomen made by the bullet of the other. One was found to have five perforations of the intestines ; the other seven. But they were hardy folk, and in three weeks' time were about again, in a condition to renew the quarrel if desired.

In times of pressure the hospital staff may be said to work literally at the run — at least I generally saw them running. The sight was fascinating ; I found myself ever looking to see them run ; to see my host

OPEEATING-ROOM ACTIVITY 63

go with long quick strides down the balcony and pres- ently break into a smart sprint ; to see nurses spring through French windows on the same balcony, and go out of sight with pattering feet. Such breathless ac- tivity I saw morning after morning. The male orderlies alone seemed able to avoid this general haste, though sometimes they, too, caught the infection ; and once at least I saw an orderly run when by every rule he should have gone slowly. I saw him one morning when I was in the hospital garden, busy among the English nurse's flower-beds — for in that labour, too, all help was welcomed. The operating-room door was not far away, opening to the lawn ; I had heard the doctor say that a specially busy time was before him, so I looked for more movement than ever. Operations had already begun, when a bell rang sharply : quick, imperious signal for the next patient on the list to be brought to the table. For a minute or two no one appeared, but presently, at the farther end of the verandah, a slowly moving figure in grey pyjamas came into sight, supported by an orderly. At this moment the bell rang again, even more sharply than before. Clearly the operating-room thought time was being wasted. Now that the patient found himself at last going to the dreaded table he was moaning piteously. With some distance still to go he faltered, stopped, seemed anxious to return, and then collaps- ing, would have fallen but for the orderly. At this sight I took a step or two to help, but the Armenian orderly was equal to the situation. With the sharply rung bell still sounding in his ears he stood on no ceremony. He stooped, put his head into the patient's stomach, heaved the limp figure up, and with it sag- ging and dangling across his shoulder like a loosely filled sack, set off to the operating-room at a run, making up for past delays.

In the foreign nurses' sitting - room — pleasant sanctum of the English and American nurses, and also their duty room, for two wards opened from it — the grateful custom of afternoon tea was never allowed to

64 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

lapse ; and here I sometimes found myself a visitor. By its sights and sounds this room provided vivid impressions of life and scenes in a mission hospital in Asia Minor. Here you were in the presence of hard unceasing work : you heard of hopes and successes, scraps of the patients' histories : you heard also cries and moans of pain, for about this time dressings were being done. Through the ward doors were glimpses now and then of dark- faced patients in rows of closely spaced beds. Outside the open French windows was the balcony, here overhung by a clambering trumpet- vine between whose leaves the sunlight streamed and made patterns of light and shade on wall and floor. Up and down the balcony went patients taking the sun and air. They always gazed curiously into the room in passing, and wondered at its easy-chairs, and tea-table, and foreign inmates following the customs of their country. Beyond the balcony lay the lawn and garden, a screen of young trees, and then the compound wall with the native town huddling against it ; and a red brick minaret so near at hand that you could see the priest walking round the little gallery, see him place open hand on cheek, and clearly hear each word of his call to prayer. In this room one afternoon I asked about the surgical patient who had been carried like a sack of wheat.

" He is getting on well," said the English nurse brightly, as if nothing else could have been expected.

At this moment a message came for her — something about a bed to be ready.

" Another shooting case," she remarked as the messenger left the room. " Do you know Bromley — Bromley in Kent, at all ? " she went on, her mind turning to home.

But then another interruption took place — a cry without of ''Posta gelde" (the post has come); and following it was a sense of general stir and move- ment ; of feet turning quickly towards the Mission Post Office. For the coming of the mail is the great event of the week.

Roadside Tomb, Marsovan Plain.

Entering Amasia.

65

CHAPTER VIL

On Marsovan plain — A conqueror's saying — Achmet a Bulgarian mohadji — Charcoal-burners — A singular ravine — The making of pekmez — An ominous noise — Amasia the most picturesque city in Asia Minor — Its precipices and river — Choosing a meal — Kabob — Moonrise, singing, and drums.

Before we left Marsovan Achmet stipulated for a limit to the distance he was to go. He would go to Sivas, about a hundred and fifty miles, but not farther, fearing that if he did, snow might prevent his return until the spring. His wife and family, he said, were in Marsovan, and he could not leave them uncared-for during several months.

On a fresh morning, bright and sunny as any, I left the Mission before eight o'clock, rode through the streets in order to avoid comment, and alighted at the edge of the town. The plain sank gently before me, its farther end closed by the huge blue precipices of Amasia thirty miles away, which showed my evening goal. And now, where the way divided beside the ruined tomb of some long-forgotten holy man, I took the Amasia road, feeling that all Asia Minor was to come. The warm South was my large destination — as it always should be for the perfect excursion on foot. And on the journey so much to be seen that few strangers had looked upon ! Old cities of the plateau ; great mountains ; the cave-dwellers' land of Cappadocia ; inland defiles of Taurus ; the historic Cilician Pass ; and perhaps for- gotten mountain strongholds of those Pamphylian

E

66 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

and Cilician pirates against whom Pompey went, some of whose castles are still to be explored, and even dis- covered. Before I should reach the flowers and low wheat-covered hills of northern Syria, of which men speak with delight, I hoped to have had many devi- ations. On this morning of promise and anticipation I would have changed places with no one.

In such good spirits I followed the rough road which crosses Marsovan plain. Farmers were clean- ing up their threshing-floors after the threshing, and loading the straw in great wicker-baskets placed on carts drawn by black oxen. Flocks of goats and sheep were scattered about, a shepherd and dog to each. Many droves of horses also roamed at large, bearing out Strabo's statement, made nearly twenty centuries ago, that this plain was noted for its horses.

There is a Turkish proverb which may be rendered roughly : "To Osmanlis the rich lands ; to others the mountains." This conqueror's saying faithfully represents what has happened. In the plains, in rich valleys — wherever you come upon water, and good trees, and good crops — you are sure to find a Moslem population. You may also find Christians ; but Moslems will be in the majority. Go into the mountains, however, and there you see little villages tucked away in folds, or clinging to the slopes, and such are likely to be Greek or Armenian. So as I passed over this plain of Marsovan I saw the min- arets of many village mosques rising from clumps of trees. Village spires dotted over an English country- side give an impression of native piety ; and here the minarets produced a similar idea, which the flashing crescent above each building did nothing to qualify.

When at midday we stopped to eat by the road- side Achmet carefully covered his ponies, though they had come at only walking pace, and the weather was hot. I asked, therefore, if they were his, or whether he had hired them from a khan, as many drivers do. He was startled by the question, which

BULGARIAN MOHADJIS 67

seemed to touch him in a tender place. No old free- holding yeoman if asked to whom his acres belonged could have been more vigorous in reply than was my driver.

" Benim" (mine), he exclaimed vehemently, as if the thought that I had misjudged his standing, and done so all this time, ruffled his dignity exceedingly. He was, indeed, no Asiatic Turk, but a Bulgarian mohadji (an emigrant for the faith), brought as a child from Varna by his parents after Bulgaria became independent. It is a fact worthy of remark that these Bulgarian mohadjis — and there are many — stand in a class apart wherever they have settled in Asia Minor. I never heard of one who had not a reputation for industry, enterprise, and reliability. They are thrifty folk, better off than their neigh- bours, and inclined to drive hard bargains ; but are men of their word, and honest in their dealings, like most Moslems. They are said to take no part in massacres ; and have been known to protect Chris- tians at such times. In habit of mind, in face, in physical appearance, they have little in common with their Osmanli countrymen of Asia Minor ; one can scarcely doubt they are Moslem Slavs, or at least must have in them much Slav blood. It has been observed that the finest Moslem subjects the Otto- man Empire ever had were those in Europe — in Thrace, Bulgaria, and Albania — and that without them the Turkish Empire could not maintain itself long. From these districts came the best troops in the Ottoman service, and many high servants of the State. I have heard it said that the defence of Plevna was chiefly the work of Thracian and Bulgarian Moslems : redifs of middle age, robust enduring men, cool in battle yet fierce of spirit.

For a couple of hours during the afternoon I passed abreast of Ak Dagh, which rose steeply from the northern edge of the plain, a few miles from my road. Its front was cut into glens and ridges already set out in the light and shadow of sunshine falling aslant.

68 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

There were breadths of dark forest and scrub upon the slopes and a hovering cloud or two about the rocky grey 7000-feet summit ; but not a vestige of snow could be seen on this southern face, though the reverse side was white far down, as I came from Samstin.

High on the side of Ak Dagh several shafts of smoke were rising from charcoal-burners' fires. In the still air they rose vertical and unwavering, till they thinned away and became invisible against the blue background of distance. The mountain- side which appeared so vacant and inaccessible held something living after all ! There men were working who found their livelihood among the clambering oak forests ; and as I went I found myself turning again and again to look at their columns of smoke. There is something, indeed, about a column of smoke seen upon a far-off hillside, especially a hill- side covered with forest, which is likely to stir the instincts of any one. Our wild old ancestors, looking out over blind woodland from their hill-top forts and palisaded villages, took a lively interest in such columns of smoke, and saw in them much of hostile significance at times. And at a later date, not so many generations ago, bale fires and beacon fires had a power of meaning for every one.

So I saw the distant smoke of these charcoal- burners' fires always with interest and even with a touch of respect, the more so that once I had come upon a charcoal-burners' camp in these parts. Climb up the side of Ak Dagh for a couple of hours and you will find just such a group about their lair now. Three or four cutting branches with curiously shaped axes, dragging wood and building a fresh kiln ; one man perhaps asleep, for he will be busy at night. They are not only grimy, but evil-looking men whom you would not care to trust. It is possible, indeed, that having got here alone in this way you would never return. You would become the subject of consular inquiry, and at last figure as one of those

A SINGULAR RAVINE 69

Europeans who have disappeared in Asia Minor and left no trace. These charcoal-burners are of long descent in their calling, and likely kin to the Chalybes of the Black Sea coast, not far away, whom Jason and his Argonauts saw, and who are still there, smelting iron with charcoal as of old.

Early in the afternoon I came to the ravine by which my road found its way into the famous Amasia gorge ; and here I saw the Bagdad Road again, smoking with crowded traffic drawing into Amasia for the night. Between these roads, each keeping close to its own side of the ravine, ran the *' Flow- ing Backwards" river whose course I had followed inland from Khavsa. As the plain closed in, gardens and orchards appeared and soon filled the narrowing space : I was entering a district famed throughout Asia Minor for luxuriant gardens — gardens which had caused Amasia to be known in earlier days as the Bagdad of Anatolia.

Between bottom and side of this ravine was all the contrast between oasis and desert. Below was the smooth river, sliding quickly in spite of weirs, for the fall was rapid, with gardens and a dense growth of trees on each bordering level. Enclosing this rich vegetation were precipitous arid slopes and dark clifis and rocks going up a thousand feet or more. Dropped suddenly into this spot one would have been at a loss to guess in what latitude, in what part of the world, it lay. The heat was intense ; the sunlight white ; vultures circled overhead in a cloudless sky ; water-wheels were clicking; traffic rumbling and clattering on an invisible road ; scarcely a building could be seen ; and except for low vines the trees and plants were those of an English garden. And dotted here and there upon the cliffs — on them only, and not on the slopes — were shrubs whose foliage made splashes of crimson like hanging flags. The colour was so gorgeously vivid that I doubted what the bushes might be. I climbed to see, and found the autumn foliage of stunted beech.

70 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

In this land are curious processes of manufac- ture : of preparing food, of cultivation, and the like, which leave you wondering by what series of accidents they were discovered. They are the immemorial craft of a people who have yet to adopt machinery. One of these strange processes I saw now. An even, beating sound came from beside the road ; I knew what it was, but had never yet seen the operation that caused it. Not many European men, even in Turkey, see a Turkish woman making pekmez; but this was the sight I saw on peering cautiously through the willows. Pekmez is grape juice, boiled, and then prepared by beating, which changes it from a thin watery fluid to a thick partially-crystallised substance like clouded honey, but of a colour nearly as dark as treacle. These methods are fairly obvious ; the curious part is that the beating must be done with the open hand, and nothing else. You cannot make pekmez by beating with wood, or bone, or metal, so you are told. And further, once the beating has begun it must go on to the end without ceasing, or the pekmez will be spoiled — there must be no cessation of blows at all. After the grape-harvest, therefore, Turkish towns and villages resound with the making of pekmez. You hear beating all day and beating all night. For the process is a long one, — so long that the women and girls take turns at the work, and beat until their hands are blistered and painful. It is said that sometimes the labour lasts a day and night. What I saw now behind the bushes was a woman kneeling on the ground before a shallow, open bowl nearly two feet across. With arms bare and open hands she was steadily slapping the contents, and by her half- closed eyes and look of resignation I supposed she had not only been at the work some time, but that the obstinate stuff was still far from being p)^kmez.

I had not gone a mile before noise of another kind attracted my attention. It was rumbling and heavy, and grew louder as I advanced, until the ravine, in

PICTUEESQUE AJVIASIA 71

width not four hundred yards, was filled with a vibrating roar. It seemed to be coming towards me, like an unseen train roaring from a tunnel ; but for my life, though I speculated with nimble imagina- tion and thought of waterfalls, and whirlwinds, and landslips, and falling rocks, I could think of no reasonable cause. The mystery was explained when a long train of ammunition waggons came at a sharp trot round a bend in the Bagdad Road. They came jolting heavily — thirty or forty of them — in a cloud of dust, with a cantering troop of zaptiehs in front and a red flag with white crescent on the leading waggon ; and at the sight all traffic drew hurriedly aside. And then the column rolled by, bumping, jingling, clattering, with a prodigious volume of confined, reverberating noise, and illustrating the difficulties of military transportation in the Turkish Empire ; for this ammunition was being taken from Sivas to Constantinople for use of the army holding the Dardanelles against an Italian landing.

A little farther on the two roads united ; and then I soon reached the outskirts of Amasia with a dusty procession of animals and bullock-carts. The sun was still high, but already the shadow of the western precipice lay over the town.

Amasia is called the most romantic and picturesque city in Asia Minor. I had heard so much in this strain that I approached the place now in a spirit of scepticism, prepared to find every story an exaggera- tion. I came in sight of Amasia almost hoping I should discover an ordinary Turkish town.

But when I emerged suddenly from the hot ravine of rocks and gardens and entered the mighty gorge, like turning from an insignificant side -street into a noble main thoroughfare, I saw at once that report had spoken truly. I even felt that report had not done the place justice, and I apologised mentally to those whose opinion I had doubted. When better conditions exist in Asia Minor, and railways and good roads make journeying easy,

72 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

foreign visitors will come to Amasia in numbers and declare that in wonder of situation combined with haunting charm they have never seen anything quite its equal.

It has a slight resemblance to Dinant, but with the physical features of that town magnified out of comparison. The gorge is about a mile in width, enclosed by stark precipices which rise, you are told, some 3000 feet on the eastern side, and a third that height on the western. Small lateral ravines ascend steeply into the heart of the rocks. On the western side is a fine old castle crowning a crag which falls sheer to the town for a thousand feet. Amasia City, once the capital of Pontus, and birthplace of Mithridates the Great, and still an important place with a population of 60,000, lies in the bottom between these great precipices. It stretches for more than a mile along both banks of the Yeshil Irmak — better known perhaps by its ancient name of Iris. A score of bridges, one at least showing Roman work, and others Seljukian, span the river, which runs between gardens and trees, and mosques and quaint old overhanging buildings, and crowded Eastern streets. There are many great water-wheels raising water for irrigation, whose slowly tipped buckets make a pervading sound like the ticking of gigantic clocks. Between the precipices the gorge is packed with houses and gardens, terraced in the ravines and on the slopes. There are Seljukian mosques, colleges, khans, and monuments. There is Roman work and Mithridatic work ; and looking down on all from the face of the western precipice are the five great rock-hewn Tombs of the Kings. They were old when Strabo, who was born here in B.C. 65, wrote of them, and they re- main now unchanged and uninjured from the time they were cut. High cliffs are impressive enough when overhanging sea or river or lake ; but when, as here, they are upon the grandest scale, and con- front one another across a belt of crowded city, they

I^k-..^^

b>', r- J/XjfU/W'ZJ- ^r^r

CHOOSING A MEAL 73

become awesome. So I thought as I walked slowly to a khan on the main street. As I went I had glimpses of old teJckes, and mosques, and mosque- yards, and bridges, and river ; on one hand were precipices and trees and buildings in bright sunlight, and upon the other hand precipices and trees and buildings in deep shadow ; and always I was made conscious of enormous vertical height exhibited above me. Entering Amasia in the way I did, I thought that for situation it was the most impressive city I had ever beheld. It is said that by much the best time for seeing it is in spring ; I saw it at the end of October, and was abundantly satisfied.

After taking possession of a room at the khan I went out again, and wandered in the streets and hung over the bridges till darkness fell — the trans- parent darkness of shadow with light around it, for the hour was early, and the sky overhead still bright. And now the fancy took me to try the food of this city rather than prepare a meal myself. I summoned Achmet, gave him shining aluminium plates to carry, and bade him take me to the best cook-shop that he knew. There I would buy food and he should take it home for me. We went solemnly along a quarter of a mile of darkening street filled with people, then he dived through a low doorway and down steps. Within was a dim stone-built room where cooking was going on and customers were seated eating. Along one side of the room, upon a sort of stone counter with a hollow down its length for charcoal fires, stood a row of open shallow copper basins, each with a different stew simmering in it. In one was halmia, in another tomatoes, in a third white beans, each with meat, but little of meat to a monstrous deal of vegetable. In a greater pan was rice pilaf, with sheep-tail fat as a thick hot fluid round a sodden island of rice : and to encourage me as buyer the cook ladled the rice with fat.

More attractive was the roasting meat. You never

74 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

find in Turkey roast joints as we know them. Meat is cut into thin slices for roasting, and these are stuck on a metal spit and built up so that the hundreds of slices form an inverted cone of meat, perhaps two feet high and nine or ten inches across the top, around the spit. The spit is kept revolving before a char- coal fire, and when meat is required the external surface of the cone is pared off with a long sharp knife, and the falling shreds are adroitly caught in a plate. By evening the cone of meat which looked so ample at morning has been pared away almost to the spit.

For less than a shilling I received more roast and stew and pilaf than two men could eat. I think that Achmet knew he was to share the feast, for a sudden and unexpected turn of humour took him on the way back to the khan. As he bore the heaped and glittering plates before me in the street, he shouted now and then the araha-drivera' warning cry, " Vardar / " " Vardar ! "

After the meal I went out on the balcony behind the khan, and looked down upon the yard filled with waggons and arabas. Now and then came the stamping and whinnying of stabled horses. Groups of men were smoking ; I could hear the low tones of their voices, also the buzz of talk and laughter from the common-room below. The great eastern precipice stood black and overpowering above me, showing a ragged edge against a sky I thought still strangely light. I looked at the minarets, watched the waxing and waning of the smokers' cigarettes, sniffed the indescribable smell of a Turkish city — nowhere stronger than here — and then I paused. A curious light was spreading round me. Objects in the yard that had been uncertain were now distinct. Dim minarets had become white columns. A fire, I thought, must have broken out somewliere, yet I could hear no sounds of alarm. "With that I happened to glance upwards, and there was the moon now pushing its lower half above

SINGING AND DRUM-BEATING 75

the edge of the precipice. It looked exactly like an inquisitive face peeping over a wall. I could almost see it move. It came up round and brilliant, and shone on the city with a flood of light that made mosques and domes and minarets and gardens visible as by day. In a little while distant singing began, a voice here, a voice there, wailing melancholy Turkish songs to the twanging of an instrument like a mandoline. And then a little drum began to beat — the saz, I think they call it — with skin stretched hard as a board, and a barbaric defiant note which surely responds to some instinct of the race whose music it is. You could never think of these drums as instruments of Armenians or Greeks. Just such drums, one imagines, must have sounded along the Jihon river in Central Asia when the first Turkish nomads began moving west. The same drums, too, and many more of them, were doubtless beaten here when this was a favourite city of the Seljuk sultans who beautified it with so many build- ings. Of this sort also, one thinks, must have been the drums of Timur when he came here on conquest.

76

CHAPTER VIII.

Arrested in Amasia — An Armenian offers help — In a chemist's shop — " "Who is Sir Edward Grey 1 " — Interviewing the Governor — Achmet climbing — The castle — Treasure-trove in Asia Minor — Signalling sunset — Early morning scenes — Punishing a thief — Old buildings of Amasia — The Mirror Tomb — Land of the Amazons — Amazons of the present day — Gardens of Amasia — A German colony.

Overnight I had told Achmet that he must be ready at eight the next morning to accompany me about the city as guide ; but when the ti-me came he was nowhere to be found. The weather was divinely sunny and clear, and after waiting awhile and feeling that daylight was being wasted, I started alone to take photographs. I should have done better with less haste.

Before I had been out long two zaptiehs came up to me. After questions — no more than courteous formalities — as to my whence and whither and nationality, they said I must go with them to the Chief of Police. Protest was unavailing ; they were executing their orders ; they looked at my pass- port with large respect, but to the Chief of Police I must go immediately. And now I wished that I had waited for Achmet. A Moslem servant is a passport in himself better than any other in such a position as this. He vouches for you. The fact that you are accompanied by a Moslem means not only that you are, so to speak, on the Moslem side, but that you are already watched by a Moslem. His confidential report of what you are like, what you

ARRESTED IN AMASIA 11

have done, where you have been, and where you are going, is convincing. With Achmet I should have gone unmolested.

We walked down the busy main street and an interested crowd began to gather. Boys ran in front, boys ran behind, and a line of wondering citizens watched the little procession pass. Not often do the good folk of Amasia see a foreigner ; and behold 1 here was one plainly arrested by zajptiehs. The Capitula- tions have made the person of a foreigner almost sacrosanct in the Turkish Empire, and when native law does lay its hand upon him the sight has charm in native eyes.

Presently a voice from the crowd called out in English, " What is it you do ? " and a young man, evidently an Armenian, came up to me. He in- troduced himself as a graduate of Sivas American College, and a man anxious to be of help.

*' The Governor is my friend," he said, when I had given him a few particulars of myself. " Let us go to the Governor when he comes to the Konak." I suspected that a Turkish Governor would not readily acknowledge the friendship, but was grateful all the same to my new-found Armenian supporter.

The Chief of Police could not be seen as yet, so, for a preliminary examination, the zaptiehs took me to the shop of a native chemist, who, it was said, would be able to understand my passport. A chemist's shop in Asia Minor is the resort of doctors all day long. There they smoke cigarettes and sip coffee and wait for patients ; thither patients go to find them. An incoming patient makes his choice of the assembled doctors on reputation or appearance or the ascertained reasonableness of his fees. Each doctor, on his part, endeavours to secure the patient for himself I have not heard that any binding etiquette controls profes- sional rivalry in these circumstances. Tufenkjian Effendi, of known reputation, may have agreed terms with a patient, and be stepping with him into the little consulting-room behind the chemist's shop, when

78 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

he finds the patient suddenly draw back. The truth being that Kopekjian Effendi, who is an energetic young fellow pushing his way, has found means to suggest lower terms, and the bait has taken.

Into a haunt of. this kind with its waiting doctors, came zaptiehs and an English prisoner, and an Ar- menian who was taking part in the affair ; and the chemist, in the presence of all this company, was to demonstrate his knowledge of English. He was a short, fat, youngish man, with small black moustache and beady eyes ; he wore a long black stamhulina frock-coat, black trousers, and red slippers, and was anxious to do his best.

The stately phrasing of the British passport must have given rise to many such scenes as followed here. Difficulty began with the opening words. In the chemist's opinion, " We, Sir Edward Grey," certainly referred to the bearer of the passport.

" No ? Sir Edward Grey, he is who ? "

" The English Grand Vizier," I explained impres- sively.

" Pekki," said the chemist, taken aback and finding refuge in the Turkish " very well." But he felt the ice thin under him, and would have no more to do with reading aloud and explanations. He wrestled with the document, slowly and in silence, and read it from beginning to end, finger on line, with a frown of concentration. In the end he decided that I was a person to go before the higher authorities ; mean- while coffee and cigarettes were brought in, for there was no lack of politeness. After an hour spent thus, it was decided that the Governor might be seen instead of the Chief of Police, and we went to the Konak.

We found the Governor seated in his room of audience. He gave immediate attention to the matter ; for whatever the defects of Turkish rule may be, difficulty of access to rulers is not one of them. Whether poor or rich, you may push aside the padded curtain which serves the audience-room for

BEFOKE THE GOVERNOR 79

door, and enter the presence of Authority. And that Authority does actually listen to what you say. By practice or long tradition all these personal rulers, from the Kaimakam of a little town to the Vali of a province, have a patient, judicial manner, and give the impression of really considering and weighing the subject before them. Many may be corrupt ; they may pay little attention to right when that is in con- flict with their personal interests ; but their manners in the seat of authority seldom ruffle a disappointed or injured suitor.

In my case, the Governor sat with such a look of wisdom, and listened so attentively to everything said, that I supposed my innocence obvious to him. With surprise, therefore, I presently found him not at all convinced of my harmlessness. The passport did not remove the suspicion that I was a secret enemy of the State. At this stage I remembered an old teskere that I carried — a permit that had authorised me to travel in the interior eighteen months before. Tesheres had been abolished since, and I carried this one now more as a curiosity, a souvenir of the old unreformed Turkey, than from any hope of benefit to be derived thereby. Here, how- ever, the teskere had all its original value. The Governor fastened on it with relief, and as he glanced at its mystical characters, and the involved cobweb of strokes which is the Sultan's signature, and lastly, and more closely, at the great violet stamp, his manner of polite doubt disappeared. He asked me to stand while he checked my personal appearance with the description in the document.

"Stature high" he read, and passed on to "red and grey " for eyes, but that he took as near enough. He now was satisfied, and apologised for my deten- tion. The country was at war, he said ; agents of the enemy were known to be going about, and care had to be taken by the authorities. Such care would be taken also in my own country, no doubt ; and a similar mistake might be made even there. It gave

80 ACROSS ASIA MINOE ON FOOT

him much pleasure to meet an Englishman and to do anything for one, for England had ever been the friend of Turkey. He would give me a letter to the Chief of Police securing me from any further trouble. And as I wished to take photographs, this letter would permit me to do so wherever I might go, even in Syria ; for that he could promise.

I never saw the letter — though I saw it written in violet ink with a great reed pen, and dusted with pounce — for it was closed and handed to the zaptieh who accompanied me to the police quarters. It was a long letter, but I doubted if it would be so potent as the writer claimed. I did not think the Governor of this city could ensure me the goodwill of officials in distant places — perhaps military officers, jealous of their authority. The fact remains, however, that wherever I went subsequently, even into districts under martial law, where foreigners were closely watched, I was always free to photograph, and never was troubled again by the authorities. British nationality is, or was, a great possession in Asia Minor.

All this business took five hours of daylight, to my great disgust ; then I met Achmet and set out for the castle, depending on him to find the way, for he had made the climb before. The day was hot enough for August, and the ascent a thousand feet of clambering upon a slope like going up a roof, and had Achmet known just what awaited him he would not have been so anxious to act as guide. In addi- tion to other clothing, he was much swaddled about the middle with a girdle of numerous windings ; his trousers, too, were thick as fearnaught ; on top of all he wore a long heavy overcoat. His shoes were incredibly heavy, and like clogs, open at the heel for easy slipping off and on when attending mosques. Besides handicap of dress he was a big- bodied, big-limbed man, more used to sitting cross- legged on the front seat of his araha than climbing precipitous rocks. Such was the man who faced the ascent about three in the afternoon, when the

THE CASTLE 81

shade temperature must have been in the eighties. I had felt considerable respect for Achmet before, but this day's experience greatly increased it. His shoes were ever slipping off, and sometimes caused him a return of twenty or thirty feet to recover them. He lost his breath. He was elephantine upon rock, and sometimes fell. Having slipped he sometimes rolled. But whatever happened he always made light of difficulty and stuck grimly to his work. And at the summit, when climbing about on broken walls became necessary, he seemed to make it a point of honour to go wherever I went, though he might well have sat down and waited.

Even Timur, great in sieges, found this castle beyond his power to take. He could get at it only by a narrow causeway ; it was provisioned for years, and had a tunnel to a deep well in the heart of the mountain. For seven months the siege went on and made no progress, yet only one other place of arms ever foiled the Asiatic Napoleon. The greater por- tion of the castle is in ruins, and what remains intact is chiefly blank masonry, notable only for its careful workmanship. There is Koman work in it, too, and I brought away a piece of Roman brick and a small shapeless fragment of bronze.

You may indeed find almost anything within reason if you have good fortune when among the ancient sites of Asia Minor. It is a belief that seizes you and becomes an obsession as you wander among walls and excavations which have stood for two or three thousand years ; stood on ground, moreover, that has been fought upon often since the days when men first recognised advantages of position. You know that such sites have been open to the yearly washing of heavy rain ; that in centuries of sunlight many thousands of eyes have searched, prompted by the same thoughts as yours, and yet you are hopeful always. You have, indeed, good reason for being hopeful, though likely to go without reward. You know that every year many articles are so found ; and may, perhaps, have seen some of

F

82 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

these findings. To a friend of mine, lingering one day among the ruins of that old castle on Mount Pagus, which looks so nobly over Smyrna and the Gulf, came great good fortune of this kind. Without thought or search, in a spot familiar to tens of thousands, his doubting eyes fell upon an intaglio in perfect condition. It proved to be of Alexander's time, and cut in a burnt emerald. And yet I, ever on the alert, ever thrusting into these places and crawling in subterranean passages, ever prodding with a stick, ever digging, and ever feeling that perhaps I should find a silver tablet with a Hittite treaty or the Hittite alphabet set out upon it, never did find any- thing at all beyond a paltry copper coin or two and some human bones.

Looking over a wall of Amasia Castle was a breech - loading field-gun with a thousand-feet drop under its muzzle. During the thirty days of Ramazan it would nightly give the time of sunset, important moment to a population waiting at tables below to break the day's fast — a moment so important that the State under- takes the duty of signalling it. You may hear this signal booming along the Bosphorus during Ramazan, and see people in open-air cafes waiting, knife in hand, for the sound ; and the same sound and sights you may hear and see at this time in every town in the Turkish Empire. The Faithful attach vast importance to accuracy in such matters ; and short of individually seeing for themselves, require the State to vouch for sunset. But even the State be- comes inadequate authority sometimes, so vital is precision to these observances. Mohammedan ecclesi- astical authorities in Constantinople, on the assurance of an observatory, once telegraphed throughout the provinces that the new moon had just been seen, and therefore the Feast of Bairam — or it may have been some other festival — might begin. On getting this telegram Amasia looked earnestly from its rocky peaks, being no whit behind the capital in anxiety to begin the feast, but could see no new moon what-

EARLY MORNING SCENES 83

ever. Here was proof of liability to grievous error in trusting the telegraph. In these circumstances Amasia replied to Constantinople that it would wait and see the new moon for itself.

As Paris is seen from the Eiffel Tower, or Rio Janeiro from the summit of Corcovado Mountain, so Amasia is seen from the castle rock. You look down upon it vertically. You see the winding river fringed by trees and cut into sections by bridges ; can count the low domes of baths, the minarets, the open courtyards of mosques, and might make a plan of the streets. Buildings on the opposite sloping talus a mile away seem to lose their high position, and to be standing in the valley bottom. But above them goes the great eastern precipice, grey and but- tressed and warm in the sun ; and it goes up and up, high above the castle level where you stand, and shows itself over the crags this side of the gorge to the whole plain of Marsovan and the surrounding mountains. Looking either up - river or down you see gardens and orchards going away into a sort of forest, so closely are they placed and so dense their growth, till a turn in the gorge cuts them off. When I left this rock the sun had not yet set, but lights had begun to twinkle in the dim gulf below.

Early morning in a strange place is apt to leave impressions which are carried long in mind, and colour the larger memories that a visitor brings away. I was familiar enough with the sights and sounds to which I awakened on the second morning in Amasia, but had never found them before with the narrow streets and glamorous atmosphere of an ancient city as setting. I awoke when the dawn was still dark, and realised at once, in a way I had not done till now, that I was in the East ; not merely the East of maps, but the East of romance and tradition, more often found in books than in actual life. The subtle Greek in- fluence which pervades the coast had gone ; I had got among those whose feelings were more purely Asiatic.

84 ACEOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

So I felt as I stood looking from my window, brought to it by the sounds without. I saw the castle precipice dark against a sky of stars. In the narrow street below me, whose latticed windows I could just discern, were two straggling lines of shadowy animals and men passing in opposite direc- tions in a fog of dust — caravans upon the road, one line for the sea, the other for the far interior. They came out of darkness, and went away into darkness.

But while they passed like shadowy ghosts they filled the street with the music of bells — slow camel- bells ; gallant horse-bells, sounding with each toss of head, and the lightsome tripping jingle of donkey- bells. While I watched and listened cocks began to crow, and now and again I heard the barking of dogs. And then a great brazier of flaming charcoal was suddenly placed under an archway, just opposite my window, to burn out its noxious fumes before being used within doors ; and its light gave a touch of weirdness to the scene. By this time men on foot were passing, carrying packs and evidently going far, and bullock-carts and waggons and arahas. And when I glanced at the sky again the stars were still bright and the castle rock dark ; for my watch showed the hour as only a little after five.

When leaving the khan for another day in the city, I witnessed the summary punishment of a thief, whose operations I had watched with interest. Be- tween two heaps of barley spread on a large sheet in the Man -yard, a couple of kneeling men, who disputed as buyer and seller, were carefully measur- ing grain. So absorbed were they in shaking the measure, in levelling ofi" the barley on top, and arguing about too much shaking or not enough, that they overlooked a barefooted boy pilfering behind them. His scheme was simple and audacious. He stole up noiselessly with a bowl, filled it and made off", and came again. He made a number of success- ful trips, and varied them sometimes by coming into

p

<

OLD BUILDINGS 85

view and nonchalantly watching the measuring. De- tected at last when filling the bowl, he ran, but the barley-merchant ran faster and captured him in the archway leading to the street. Having knocked down the thief, the merchant dragged him to a cobbler's hutch in the Man-yard, pressed the victim's head on the doorstep, snatched a flat-faced hammer, and began smiting, using the step as an anvil, as it were. What he smote was the head, and his blows were not light ones. The boy's screams quickly ceased, and I intervened. He seemed to have become insensible. But the angry barley-merchant had done this kind of thing before, apparently, and knew how to deal with fainting. He stopped his blows and violently pulled the boy's ears, first one and then the other, as a restorative process, and the screams recommenced ; but with that the punishment ended.

In Amasia you may see old mosques with cloistered courtyards, Seljuk colleges, teJcJces, and khans; there are old bridges, old houses, and rock-hewn tombs, but the finding of them depends chiefly on inquiry and your own labour. There is little in guide-books to help in your search, little of the buildings' story and associations, nothing, or very little, of the city's history. After bringing together all the pieces of information available you remain much in the dark. Even if sufficiently an archaeologist to recognise old work and assign it correctly, you are thereby only furnished with a dry skeleton. A Seljuk quadrangle or khan may be very beautiful in itself, but is a dead thing without some outline of its history, some notion of those who built it, some story of life within its walls. Looking at such buildings, you are conscious that they have seen a world of romantic Eastern history, of hopes and fears and ambitions and effort and tragedy, that their story would have more than ordinary interest ; but you are conscious, also, that their story is hope- lessly lost. Investigate Seljuk history a little, and you find not much to go upon. The most notable Turkish

86 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

people of any, the only people of their race to erect fine permanent buildings in a native style, have left little of recorded history. So you go through Amasia — and other cities — and see their buildings, more or less intact, or come by accident upon beautiful door- ways and other fragments and tiles and carving, and see them chiefly as so much curious excellence.

During the hot afternoon I went with Achmet to the " Mirror Tomb," the finest rock-hewn monument of the district. It stands in the gorge about two miles below the town, and is cut in a face of rock looking eastward across the river. Outwardly it is an arch, nearly semicircular, thirty or forty feet in span and more in height, sunk in the cliff to a depth of ten feet. A flight of eight steps leads up to a narrow platform from which the sides of the arch rise. Twelve or fifteen feet above the platform is a rectangular doorway to the tomb. The whole out- ward surface within the arck is polished, and so, it is said, is the interior of the tomb, and from these polished surfaces comes the name.

One would suppose that around a monument like this, and the similar Tombs of the Kings, overlook- ing Amasia, traditions of some sort would gather. But there are none. What you do hear are merely echoes of European theories coupled with tales of treasure. These monuments are known to have ex- isted in the time of Strabo ; but by whom hewn and what sovereigns ever filled them, even the approxi- mate date of execution — all are matters of unfettered conjecture. Too many floods of conquering people have passed over the country for any authentic traditions to remain. To the present population each such monument, great or small, is simply "shey" — a thing.

The front of the Mirror Tomb was shaded by walnut-trees, making a grateful shelter as I sat on the steps and looked across the river and gardens to the opposite rocks. The only sound was the ticking of a solitary water-wheel, except when herds of black

The " Mirror Tomb," Amasia Gorge.

LAND OF THE AMAZONS 87

and white goats were filing along the narrow path. Like most animals in this land they wore bells ; but theirs were smaller than an egg, and so thin and sharp of note that when many were heard sounding together in the distance they made no more than a rustling like the wind among aspens. Several flocks passed, each with goatherd and dog, and disappeared round the rocks lower down. They followed a path of more than ordinary interest, leading to a wild, romantic country which has figured in legend. One day's march down this gorge of the Yeshil Irmak, or Iris, is reached the valley of the Lycus, where, above the meeting of these two rivers, stand the mountains of Amazonia. We speak of " fabled Amazons," and are probably as far from the truth in believing them altogether unreal as if we took the old stories at their legendary value. If all legends are facts more or less embellished, this legend should be counted among the least idealised. There are curious stories current in these parts of the mountain-dwellers above the Lycus. They are called by some a people without affinities. But of whatever race they may be, their customs affecting women are remarkable, the more so considering the country in which these customs prevail was of old the land of Amazons. Women are the bread-winners — workers in field and among the herds ; they have the superior physique, they are the masters, their men nothing but indispensable drones. So one is told. I had heard the tale from various sources, as a matter of common knowledge along the Lycus and lower Iris.

Had I reached Amasia a month earlier I should have gone to Amazonia as part of the present journey ; now, however, the season was too late, and I had to leave it unseen ; but I told myself hopefully that in another year I would make another journey and visit this unknown region, and see these strange women for myself So I went along the pathway to its next bend, and thence looked down this gorge

88 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

that I hoped some day to follow. Its eastern crags that caught the sun were delicately pink, its farthest heights were violet ; here and there upon the cliffs was a flame of scarlet autumn foliage ; and beside the glassy river were orchards and overhanging walnut-trees and the white dusty pathway going on in shadow and sunlight under the rocks. That old unknown king, I thought, who chose to have his sepulchre hewn here, had seen the gorge on some such afternoon as this.

An hour later I was in Amasia again, endeavouring to trace, beside the Tombs of the Kings, the names cut during tedious hours by French prisoners of war confined in this remote place in 1802.

In all Asia Minor there are no such gardens and orchards as those of Amasia. They go far up the gorge ; they go far down it ; I had seen them filling the ravine from Marsovan plain. A rich soil, abun- dance of water, strong sunlight reflected by clifis, and heat given off at night by the same rocks, make the gorge and its ravines a gigantic hothouse. But the fruit is that of the colder latitudes ; for the winter climate is severe — there were temperatures much below zero during the year of my visit. The finest apples known in Constantinople and the Levant, fine as the best to be found anywhere, come from these orchards. In Amasia some call them " English apples," the original stock having been introduced from England nearly a century ago : the equally famed Isbarta pears, grown in the lake district of southern Asia Minor, are called " English pears " for the same reason. Amasia apples are of no sort known to me ; but climate and other conditions of growth may have changed well-known characteristics.

If it is easy to understand why Seljuk sultans should have liked Amasia, less apparent are the causes which drew or sent here a German colony during the first half of last century. They estab- lished silkworm farms ; they exported silk ; later they built steam flour-mills ; they engaged in other

I

a

o

A GERMAN COLONY 89

businesses ; and in all things were thorough and prospered. They do not seem, however, to have been able to maintain their nationality. Intermar- riage with Armenians began during the first genera- tion, and now no German colony as such remains. But a strain of German blood is evident enough in the appearance and characteristics of all descended from the colonists. One of these German-Armenians became a revolutionist and leader of note in his world. Report says that Turkish rule became intolerable to him in youth, and that earlier than most of his purely Armenian compatriots he reached the stage of taking to the mountains in rebellion. After years of adven- ture he was shot in fight, lacking adequate support.

Another of these German -Armenians I had the satisfaction of meeting several times, and very in- teresting I found him. When a young man he reached Berlin, and became Assistant Professor of Turkish in the University there, but after some years was drawn back to Asia Minor. One would call him remarkably capable, and find it hard to understand why he should prefer living in an inland Turkish town when his abilities and acquirements fitted him for a sphere altogether greater. In manner and appearance he was German, despite his Armenian father. He was fluent in various languages, and as archaeologist, botanist, and explorer, had a remark- ably full topographical knowledge of Asia Minor. One of his incidental activities lay in taking and recording aneroid readings of heights — a useful in- terest in a country never accurately surveyed.

Although Germans are not usually thought to take much interest in this part of Asia Minor, they are still attracted to it, perhaps as part of the whole. A few miles from Amasia is another and more recent German colony, a small one certainly, yet with curious features. It commands much capital, but is said to make no profit, and is called a rich man's hobby. At Mount Carmel and other places in Syria are German colonies on an ambitious scale, self-

90 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

contained communities in no risk of merging their blood with natives. The truth is that the German peoples haye taken a sentimental interest in Asia Minor during centuries ; and that generations before the Bagdad Railway adventure converted sentiment into shrewd national aspirations, an unseen, far- visioned German influence had been at work grad- ually preparing the ground.

91

CHAPTEH IX.

Market-folk at Amasia — Many races — Eock-dwellers — Begging children — A professional beggar — "Wayside shop — A swaggering Kurd — Yeni Bazaar Khan — Zilleh and Julius Caesar.

I LEFT Amasia on a morning when country-folk were coming to market, and for miles I travelled against a stream of peasants and animals. In every land market-day provides the finest opportunity for study- ing the people ; but in Asia Minor, with its succes- sive hordes of conquerors and invaders, and hostile faiths which prevent the mingling of blood, the crowded market-places make history visible. It may be questioned whether in an equal area and under one government so many different races can be found elsewhere.

On market-day in any Anatolian town you see a people of such varied origin that no one type can be said to predominate. You could not even generalise and say that on the whole they were a dark people or a fair, or a blend of dark and fair. They are of every sort who ever came here, for blending is in- complete. On the road this morning I passed seven or eight hundred countrymen in an hour, and saw a people as diverse as history makes their origin. There were ruddy men with light-brown hair, red- haired men, albinos, men almost black, and others who were merely dark. In feature, too, was as much variety as in complexion. Some faces reminded of hawks, others were heavy and ill- formed, a few so

92 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT

Mongolian that they might have passed for Chinese, and now and then appeared the Assyrian type. Strangest of all, however, were faces so English in form and expression as to be startling. What strains of blood have contributed to produce men of the sort in these surroundings I can offer no con- jecture. South of Amasia I noticed few ; between Amasia and Sinope, however, they may be seen any market-day — men with foxy-brown hair, grey-blue eyes, and clear skin, like numbers of our east coast fishermen.

Beyond Amasia the gorge began to open, but still showed bold precipitous sides, going up to the height of mountains. The road kept to the valley bottom, in which the river went curving among gardens and vineyards and trees, and fields that filled the level space. Beside the road were camel-camps, places of regular halt for caravans. Camels are given a day of rest from time to time when journeying, so these camps were generally occupied and had piles of saddles and goods standing round the drovers' tent, with the beasts kneeling or grazing not far away as the only cattle of the landscape.

A few miles out of the city I came in sight of a rocky knoll from which, seemingly from the earth, smoke was rising in various places. I thought of lime-kilns and tile-burners, but was altogether astray. I had come, in fact, upon a colony of rock-dwellers, with people running in and out of burrows like rabbits in a warren. Many children were in this colony, all of them beggars of the most pertinacious sort, who recognised in me, a foreigner on foot, a victim more promising than any they had seen before. They came swarming from their holes like excited bees, and ran beside me crying incessantly, ''Baksheesh, effendi! Baksheesh ! " They were so numerous, indeed, and pressed me so closely, that I found it difficult to go on until they turned upon each other, and those in front were pulled away or thrown down by those behind. Scrimmaging in this fashion they accom-

A PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR 93

panied me till I threw coppers among them. They formed a heap upon the spot in an instant ; a many- coloured, frantic little heap, which was still there when I looked back.

As I went swinging along'^this pleasant road between sunlit mountains and rocks, a dirty white bundle of rags splashed with colour appeared in front of me beside the way, and a hollowed hand pushed slowly out as I passed. At first I could find no semblance of humanity in the rags, for neither head nor limbs were visible ; but while I looked the heap began to squirm, and a face revealed itself Beggars' art was evident in the whole performance. In this writhing heap, which somehow reminded me irresistibly of a knot of worms, in the position of the