BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.

Etc., etc.

Others to follow.

SKETCH MAP OF AUTHOR'S ROUTE

BY
DESERT WAYS
TO
BAGHDAD

BY

LOUISA JEBB
(MRS. ROLAND WILKINS)

THOMAS NELSON & SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN
AND NEW YORK

"Oft have I said, I say it once more,

I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself;

I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me;

What the Eternal says, I, stammering, say again."

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PROLOGUE

It was a hot midsummer's day; X and I sat on the long grass under an apple-tree: she had a map of Asia and I had a Murray's Handbook. We were about to travel together in the East. X was going primarily in search of health; but she had studied comparative religions and was prepared to be incidentally intelligent about it—visit mosques and tombs, identify classical spots, and take rubbings of inscriptions.

I was merely going with X. She had unearthed me from a remote agricultural district in the West of England with the idea that contact with the agricultural labourer would have fitted me for dealing with the male attendants who were incident to our proposed form of travel.

We were fully agreed on one fundamental point—that we should choose a country which could be reached otherwise than by sea; and that, having reached it, its nature should be such that we could travel indefinitely in it without reaching the sea.

Now of all the continents Asia Minor is the one best adapted for this purpose; for if you were a giant you could easily step across the bit of inland sea which separates Europe from Asia in the neighbourhood of Constantinople; and once landed on the other side your field of operations is practically unlimited, extending even into the adjoining continent of Africa; for any one who could step across the Bosphorus could also step across the Suez Canal.

But having once settled on the particular continent, our ideas were somewhat vague. How indeed can they be otherwise if you propose travelling in a country which has not yet been ticketed and docketed for the tourist? This product of a modern age can, thanks to Messrs. Cook and Lunn, already tell, in the corner of his own fireside, the exact hour at which he will be gazing at the dome of St. Sophia on any particular day, or at which he will be eating his dinner, with the number of courses specified, in the hotel the outside appearance of which is already depicted on the itinerary. But it was not to be so with us. What we should eat and what we should gaze upon was still wrapt in the mystery of the great unknown.

X took a pencil and marked a straight line from Constantinople across the Anatolian Plateau and the Taurus Mountains to Tarsus. "That looks a good point to make for," she said, "Alexander led an army over the Taurus." Then, having stopped within measurable distance of the sea, she drew her pencil eastwards across the Euphrates to a point on the Tigris high up in the Kurdistan mountains; from here she drew another line following the Tigris to Baghdad. At this point we were coming dangerously near the sea, so turning back she marked a line in the contrary direction across the Syrian desert to Damascus.

"That will do for a start," she said; "we can fill in the details when we get there."

Now this method of undertaking a journey might have its disadvantages in what is known as a civilised country; for here we are all such servers of time that unless we arrange everything beforehand, as everybody else does, we are apt to get pushed aside; you must, therefore, take your place in the general hustle and secure your bed and your dinner and your right to look at sights by ticket long before you are in need of them. In short, you must make a plan. But in the untravelled parts of the East you reign supreme; there is no need to go about securely chained to a gold watch which metes out with inexorable exactitude the dictates of railway time-tables, steamers, diligences, and table d'hôte summonses. Ignore Time, and he is at once your servant; treat him with respect, and he at once becomes your master. In those countries where Time has become master he develops a system of locomotion to which you must conform or lose its benefits; it will not accommodate itself to you. But in the East, do you but recognise the principle of making Time your own and at once plans become unnecessary. Systems of locomotion, for instance, spring up in answer to a preliminary wish in your brain; and their existence being solely due to you, it is possible to use them when and where you will. You want to get from one point to another: your wish is passed on, and a mule or an araba appears at your door; and whether it be punctual, or whether, as is more usual in the East, it be late, it is of no consequence, for Time is waiting for you and will wait for ever. Once you are started, moreover, the stopping-places are not arbitrary; you have merely to wish, and at once the mule or the araba stops. In the same way when you wish to sleep your bed is where you make it; and when you wish to eat you need wait for no summons. And should it so happen that you have been misguided enough to make a plan, it is of no consequence should you think fit to change it. One only asks, "Why have made the plan?"

Thus it was that, without any more preparation than this preliminary idea of our route, X and I were able to carry it out in detail exactly as we had sketched it in the rough.

The drawbacks of course were there. Sometimes we had nothing to eat through not having arranged for food; and sometimes we slept out in the wet. But does this never happen to those who have made elaborate plans against all possible contingencies? And have they not had the worst of it after all, for they have had the planning with no result, and have suffered the annoyance of having their best laid plans mislaid.

Is it possible, moreover, to judge this method of travel by our standard of ideas in the West? In a civilised country where beds abound and it is merely a matter of arrangement to acquire one, there is no delight in passing the night under a damp hedge with drips down your back; there is shelter round the corner, and you merely curse yourself for your own stupidity, or pretend you like it, and take care not to do it again. But when you lie on your back on a sandy desert with nothing within measurable distance of you, and the rain beats mercilessly down or the wind howls through the crevices of your garments, you are conscious of battling against great primeval forces akin to the unknown elements of your own being; you cannot escape from them, for there is no shelter round the corner: you are brought up face to face with something fundamental; all the little accessories with which we have learnt to shield ourselves fall away, and you are just there, stripped yourself, and in the middle of naked realities. And if only you have been wet enough, or cold enough, or hungry enough, it has been worth while, for you never forget it; and the remembrance of it will come to you ever and anon when you are once more tied up in the bonds of convention and are struggling to keep a true idea of what is a reality and what is not.

So it is, perhaps, that in setting out to write any account of such a journey, one is dominated by the remembrance chiefly of facts which in this country seem trivial. All the little details of life take on an exaggerated form; for what in civilisation we are apt to ignore and take as a matter of course, occurring almost unnoticed in the ordinary routine of daily life, becomes out there of enormous importance. A good meal, for instance, seems of far greater moment than an attack by brigands, because of its rarer and more unexpected occurrence.

If you are travelling for no particular purpose, with people whose language you do not understand, and in a country where the manners and customs are not familiar to you and you are merely moving on slowly from day to day—all you can get is a passing impression of outside things. If you are not a scientist or an archæologist or a politician striving to catalogue each new acquisition on your particular subject; if, in fact, you have no particular knowledge of any sort, but your pores are wide open to receive passing impressions, what you get is a vivid idea of the appearance of things. This is all that you can hope to pass on.

In the following pages I do not propose to give a connected account of the various places we visited or of the many adventures which befell us; this is not a travel book. I shall have no intelligent remarks to make on the historic spots we passed, journeying slowly through this country so rich with still undiscovered monuments of ancient times; a country which is also destined to become, as civilisation advances with the Baghdad Railway, the centre of future political interest. What justification is there then for writing a book at all?

The Danes have given us a definition of their idea of education: "It is," they say, "what is left after everything that has been learnt is forgotten." So it is with any form of travel; the value of it to the traveller himself is what is left after lapse of time has effaced all recollection of minor incidents and softened the vividness of strong impressions. In very slow travelling through desert countries, where day after day the same trivial events occur in similar yet different settings, the essential facts of that country sink into you imperceptibly, until at the end they are so woven into the fibres of your nature that, even when removed from their influence, you will never quite lose them.

There are certain notes in the East which form part of a tune sung all the world over, but which give a clearer and more definite sound in the land which first gave them birth. The sketches given in the following pages are framed on them; they are what I have left, and what I would fain pass on to the reader.

If I have succeeded in striking these notes true, there is no need of an apology to those who have already heard them in the country whence they spring; for any one who has ever travelled in the East welcomes anything that will once more touch that particular chord, at whatever time or place. And if I have succeeded in striking them so that here and there amongst those to whom the East is still but a name, there are some who may hear a faint echo of the real thing, I shall feel that there has been some justification for this contribution to the literature of the desert.

PART I

BRUSA TO DIARBEKR

"It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence.

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;

Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd;

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried."...

BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD

CHAPTER I

DISENTANGLEMENT

It was our first night in camp; little mysterious hillocks shut us into a world of our own; we had it all to ourselves and only the stars overhead knew, and they seemed to be congratulating us on our escape; they twinkled and winked and beckoned. Constantin had lit a fire, and this at once became the centre of our world; the door of our tent looked out on it, the muleteers, the Zaptiehs, and our men sat round it, our supper was cooking on it, and we all thought about that; the horses and mules, tethered in a semicircle, turned that way and blinked at it; far away a jackal saw it and barked. It drew us all together, and its smoke went quietly up towards the beckoning stars.

They would be eating their dinner now in the hotel at Brusa just the same as last night; the thin young man who had asked us what we should do if it rained, the old lady who wanted to know if we were doing it for pleasure, and the middle-aged spinster who thought we had no business to expose ourselves to such dangers unless it were for missionary work. The waiters would be bustling about; good Madame Brot would be carving diligently at the side table with an anxious look; bells would be ringing; men and women would be coming and going and talking and laughing and scolding; down below in the hot kitchen the men wash one pile of dirty plates after another.... Yes, it is very quiet out here; the men speak in undertones and the fire crackles in the cool, still air. Constantin lifted the pot off the fire. "Mangez," he said. He was Greek but could speak a word or two of French. He ladled the onions and rice on to two plates and picked out the bits of mutton; then after handing us the plates, he began to beat up eggs for an omelette.

We had been stretched out on the ground; we drew ourselves up, and sitting cross-legged balanced the plates on our knees. The food tasted excellent although it had been cooked in one pot. Constantin had wanted to bring three pots; he had been camp cook to the best people on hunting expeditions—three courses for dinner, with clean plates and knives for each course. He looked the part: his clothes were European, except for the fez. He remained on the border-line of civilisation and reminded us of what we had left. We had had a scene with him before leaving Constantinople; he had accumulated a large assortment of saucepans and kettles, of pans for frying and pans for stewing, of pots for boiling and pots for washing; we had gone through them critically and disregarded everything but a stew-pan, a frying-pan, and one pot for boiling water. Constantin was in despair. "Pas possible, mademoiselle," he kept on ejaculating, "pas possible, comment faire cuisine?" But we were adamant; we wished to travel light and live largely on native food.

As it was we had a whole araba[ [1] loaded up with our belongings; there were the two tents for ourselves and the men, our camp-beds and sacks of clothes, and the cooking utensils. It all seemed a great deal now, and yet we were only taking necessaries. But then it had been so very hard to know what necessaries were; it is very hard to get disentangled from the forces of tradition. We had escaped now and would know better. Life was becoming extraordinarily easy, for we had left behind most things and forgotten all the injunctions and warnings of our friends.

But there was still Constantin in his European clothes and his aristocratic ideas and his broken French.

However, he does make delicious omelettes; we will forgive him for smuggling in that omelette-pan in defiance of our orders.

It is getting very dark; we could no longer see the hillocks, but we knew that they were there. We could hardly see the horses tethered beyond the fire, but we could hear them munching and stamping, and now and then one would neigh suddenly.

Constantin lit a lantern and hung it on a stick; then he washed up the dishes. The other men sat on by the fire and we looked through the smoke at them. There was Calphopolos. Now Calphopolos was a Greek, and he was a mistake. We have said that Constantin was on the border-line of civilisation and reminded us of what we had left. But Calphopolos was right in it without really being of it—so that when he was about one forgot that there was anything to be said for civilisation and only remembered its drawbacks. His unbrushed black clothes contrasted painfully with the native dress, especially when seen through the smoke of a camp-fire. He always carried about a little black handbag, out of which his tooth-brush was constantly falling. But his worst offence was that he spoke a language which we understood, and jabbered French at us from morning to night. He was in the employment of well-meaning friends whom he accompanied when they made business excursions into the interior. They had sent him to start us comfortably on the way; his knowledge of the amenities of life was to pave the road leading away from civilised methods of living.

Then there was Ibrahim, a long, lean Turk with a smiling face. He put up the tents and rode in attendance upon us, and haggled with the villagers over milk and eggs. They had told me earlier in the day that Ibrahim was troubled in his mind; "never before had a woman looked him straight in the face and shown him a watch." Two Eastern precepts had been violated, and I had been the unwitting offender. It was at Brusa, which we had left with such difficulty that morning. We had arranged the night before to start at 8 o'clock. But 8 came, and 8.30 came, and 9 came, and then the Zaptichs came who were to have come at 8 to escort us on the way; but there was no sign of our own retinue, of Constantin, of Ibrahim, of our own hired horses, of the arabas and muleteers with the baggage.

The news of our departure had got about and the people of the hotel gradually collected at the door. "Where is your dragoman?" they said; "why do you not send for him?" We confessed to having engaged no dragoman. "No dragoman! that was very rash. We could speak the language, then?" No, we had only a Turkish dictionary. They gave us up then as hopeless. Another individual pushed his way up to us. "You will never get your men to start or do anything else," he said; "you do not realise what these Turks are."

I recognised him as a professional dragoman offered to us by Cook the week before. But he was only telling us what everybody else out of the trade had been dinning into our ears ever since we planned the journey.

I repaired to the inn where the men and horses had been collected the night before. In the open yard stood the araba, unpacked and horseless. Constantin sat on a roll of baggage near by, with a resigned expression and a settled look, as if he had been sitting there for hours.

"Pas possible, mademoiselle," he said.

Ibrahim stood in the stable door, smoking complacently, and our muleteers were squabbling violently over the roping of a box.

It was at this moment that I stepped up to Ibrahim and showed him my watch. He looked at me with a startled expression, his jaw dropped, and he turned hastily on the muleteers. But it was not till later that I learnt how his inmost susceptibilities had been roused. One is at a decided disadvantage with no knowledge of a suitable language, but by dint of gesticulating with my riding-whip and pointing at everybody in turn, I managed, at the end of another half-hour, to get the araba and the men under way, and mounting my own horse rode behind them to the hotel. In another five minutes we had sallied out on our road. X and I rode ahead with Ibrahim and Calphopolos and the two Zaptiehs, then came the araba with our baggage and the muleteers, then Constantin with bulging saddle-bags suggesting the intrusion of various forbidden cooking utensils.

Our road ran unshaded and dusty through the outskirts of Brusa, with Mount Olympus towering above us. Bit by bit we left behind the staring tourists, the staring native children, the unconcerned stall-keepers displaying their wares of Brusa silk and printed cottons from England; then we passed the country people riding in on mules with their vegetables and chickens; we passed the little cultivated patches and got amongst the larger fields, stretching away on each side of the road. "Tutun," said Ibrahim, pointing at them with his riding-whip. I looked at him inquiringly. He tapped his cigarette and pointed again at the field.

"Tutun," he repeated. "Tobacco, you understand, mademoiselle, tobacco—such as he is now smoking." Calphopolos always would insist on explaining the obvious. The day got hotter and the road got dustier. At midday we skirted a willow plantation, and a stream gurgled through the damp green patch, inviting us to come in and rest. We crawled out of the sun under the low willow bushes, and the men tied the horses to the stronger branches. This first lunching place will always remain indelibly printed on my memory: the slices of brown bread thickly spread with solid cream; the watermelons and the grapes; the men grouped about amongst the willows, eating great hunches of bread and cheese; the horses breaking loose and straying about, browsing the finer herbage which sprang up through the dried and yellow tufts of older grass; the joy of being out of the sun and the dust; the cool sound of the water in the brook; the sense of rest and freedom, the sense of having really escaped at last.... On recalling this lunch with X, after many adventures had made it seem very remote, I found that she retained equally vivid recollections of it. I heard her murmur reflectively to herself, "And we thought it was always going to be like that!"

Then we had reluctantly left it all, the unwilling horses were pulled and dragged away, snatching at last bites, and we rode off on the dusty road again, until we reached the village near which we had arranged to camp. We had ridden round and chosen this site in the middle of the mysterious hillocks, which shut us out so effectually from everything except the stars.

We were destined to spend many more such nights in camp; but perhaps none can give you exactly the same thrill as the one on which for the first time you sleep out in the open.

It is full of surprises; you expect it to be quiet, and you find the darkness and stillness is full of noise. Nothing escapes you: the breathing of men and animals, the crackling of the fire, the rustling of leaves and grass: there seems to be a continuous movement very close to you. You sit up many times expecting to see something in your tent; it all makes you very wakeful. You drop off into a disturbed sleep very late, and are awakened before sunrise by the stir in the camp. You are positive you have not slept all night and that strange people have been prowling round you in the dark.

Yet as one lay in this semi-wakeful state of excitement and mystery, one's strongest impression was that of wanting protection merely against a few primitive forces; with the wild beasts we shared the dangers of cold and hunger and attacks from man. Slowly and painfully you have crawled out of the net in which you have all this time been unconsciously enveloped, and emerging stripped and bewildered grope about for what is actually going to serve and protect you in this primeval state of battling against the primitive forces of nature; a state, moreover, where protection against the dictates of an organised society is no longer needed. To those who are confronted with this problem for the first time, it is almost impossible to walk straight out of the net and have an impartial look round. Tradition still clings to us in little bits, and we grope hopelessly about, wondering what will be an essential and what will not.

Looking back now on these first few days of preparation for our journey in the wilderness, I realise that by far the hardest part of the journey was this initial disentanglement from the forces of tradition. If you are about to alter fundamentally your method of living, you must take care that you are discarding all those accessories which are due to tradition; you must either adopt those evolved by the tradition of the races among which you are about to travel, or you must bring abstract science to bear on the question of how to provide for your immediate wants under the changed conditions. A bare tent in a country where weather is still an interesting topic is a safe place for such reflections; the realities of the situation make one strictly practical. On getting out of bed our clothes were damp with dew and the grass was cold to our bare feet; at the next town we bought the strip of carpet, the idea of which we had rejected at Constantinople.

CHAPTER II

BRIGANDAGE

Brigandage. The capture of Miss Stone, ancient history as it now is, has served to give a vivid meaning to this word in the public mind. We were being continually asked if we wished to emulate Miss Stone. Travelling second-class through Bulgaria on our way to Constantinople our fellow-passengers, rough, good-natured farmers, joked about it; but they always added, "No, it will not happen to you." Then they would look at one another and laugh. The capture of Miss Stone did not seem to be looked upon seriously out there.

Then there was the Embassy at Constantinople. They were horribly nervous about international complications. As a matter of fact capture for ransom is a decided danger in the neighbourhood of larger towns in Asiatic Turkey. Not that there are any professional brigands prowling about, but there is a certain class of native ready to become a brigand on the spur of the moment, should they get wind of suitable prey. They are not Turks—no Turk would be bothered; they are, as a rule, Greeks, and always Christians. It is as well, therefore, on any expedition, not to make very great preparations and talk too much of your line of route; but as quietly and expeditiously as possible to get hold of your horses and men and start off before news of your movements has been noised abroad.

It was not at all in our favour that X bore a name well known to fortune hunters; one of her uncles was in the habit of big-game shooting in this district, and his means were fabulously exaggerated.

Calphopolos had been sent with us partly because he could be so thoroughly trusted to take all precautions. He certainly earned his reputation; he seemed to have been born with the fear of brigands in his soul; mere conversation about them caused him to break out into a profuse perspiration. He had talked to us very seriously on leaving Constantinople, as we sat on the deck of the steamer which took us across the Sea of Marmora on our way to Brusa.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mesdemoiselles, soyez secrètes; la secrécé, c'est tout."

"La secrécé" became his by-word. If there was one thing he was more afraid of than anything else on earth it was X's surname. He implored her not to use it, but to call herself Miss Victoria. He had all our luggage labelled Miss Victoria; and if in casual conversation the dreaded name leaked out, beads of perspiration rolled down his face and he would glance nervously round to see who was within earshot.

X was rather a reprobate on the subject. On our arrival at Madame Brot's well-known hotel at Brusa, from where we were making our final departure the next day, she marched up to Madame Brot and said, "I think you know my uncle"—mentioning him by name. Calphopolos, who was just behind, explaining that our name was Victoria pure and simple, turned green with horror. With bent back and staring eyes, shaking the same finger in warning which his subconscious self was trying to put on his lips, he endeavoured to attract X's attention from behind Madame Brot's broad back. But X went glibly on, quite oblivious of the panic she was creating. Calphopolos turned to me with the resigned expression of a man on whom death-sentence has been passed. "It is all over now," he said, "everybody in Brusa will know about us in half an hour. Mesdemoiselles, did I not implore you for the love of God to respect the secrecy? Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quelles demoiselles!"

And then poor old Calphopolos, who was not without his sense of fun, laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "The only thing left to do," he went on, when he had sufficiently recovered to speak again, "is to pretend we are going to Angora and put them off the scent. Mesdemoiselles, for the love of God please try and remember that it is Angora you are going to. Tell everybody you are going to Angora. The secrecy it is everything."

It must be confessed it was very difficult at that time to feel seriously alarmed about brigandage, for we seemed to be moving in ordinary respectable society, and Calphopolos's treatment of the subject merely caused us to think of it as a joke. Still, we fully realised that it was a real risk, against which it would not do to neglect taking ordinary precautions; and this sense was heightened by the extreme alarm of the Vice-Consul at Brusa to whom we applied for the escort of Zaptiehs, without whom one is not permitted to travel in Turkey with any guarantee of safety. He could not understand why we would not drive through to Nicæa in a landau in one day, like the ordinary tourist; this, with a suitable escort, made the journey quite safe, and it is a common thing for travellers to do. But to ride there in three days with our camp, sleeping on the way, was another matter. Every extra hour spent loitering in any one district heightened the risk of being attacked by brigands. X tried to explain that it was for the sake of her health, which only made him more bewildered; surely a landau was more suitable for invalids!

Finding us, however, unmoved by his arguments, he promised to send us two men the next morning and implored us never to leave their sides for a moment. He must have rubbed the same instructions well into the Zaptiehs, for during the seven days which they accompanied us as far as Mekidje on the Anatolian Railway, they never were more than a couple of yards away from us, day and night. This certainly detracted from the sense of freedom we were otherwise experiencing. It seemed at first as if we had only escaped from one form of bondage to fall into another. But the fact that the men were unable to speak any language we understood prevented it from becoming irksome, and one was soon able to become nearly oblivious of the clanking sword at one's elbow.

Calphopolos, however, was not so easily ignored. He had a sort of feeling that we were always running away from him, and tried to check this pernicious tendency on our part by engaging us in constant conversation in his broken French. The more we edged our horses away from his side and tried to put a silent Zaptieh between him and ourselves, the more persistently would he pursue us, propounding some new problem which required an answer. Our behaviour on breaking camp that morning had probably given rise to his state of mind. We had ordained that the start should be made at eight o'clock; but the usual procrastinations had ensued and the men seemed totally unable to get off. Calphopolos kept packing and unpacking his little bag in search of the missing tooth-brush, and tried to keep us calm.

"It is thus in this country, mademoiselle; have no anxiety—we shall go, we shall go."

X and I agreed that there was only one way to go. We had our horses saddled and rode away, in spite of Calphopolos's prayers and entreaties to wait till the whole camp was packed. The Zaptiehs, after the orders they had received, were obliged to ride after us. This left Calphopolos and the muleteers without Government protection, which so filled them with terror that in a very few minutes they also were on the way. Calphopolos came tearing down the road after us, the tails of his long black coat flying out behind, the tooth-brush sticking out of his pocket, and the perspiration rolling down his cheeks.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu!" he gasped as he caught us up, "pour l'amour de Dieu!" and then he had so much to say that he couldn't say it and relapsed into laughter and ejaculations of "Mais quelles demoiselles, mon Dieu, quelles demoiselles!"

The second day our road lay across the great Jenishehr plain. Herds of buffaloes strayed about on the wilder parts, and here and there fields of corn and tobacco, suddenly springing up beside the stretches of rough grass, signalled the approach to an occasional village.

Here also it was very difficult to think of brigands; the harmless look of peaceful cultivators did not suggest them. Besides which the country was so open that you could not be suddenly pounced upon; you would have ample opportunity of considering evil-doers as they approached you across the wide plain.

We encamped that evening near the small village of Jenishehr. The excitement of the novelty had worn off and we had had a long day in the open air. In consequence of this I had fallen into a profound sleep at once on going to bed. Suddenly I was awakened by a noise in the tent, and looking up distinctly saw the figure of a man coming cautiously through the tent door. In one moment I had hold of my revolver, kept loaded at the head of my bed, and had it levelled at him, wondering when the psychological moment for pulling the trigger would occur and whether I should manage to live up to its requirements.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mademoiselle! pour l'amour de Dieu!" came in a terror-stricken voice.

I put down the weapon rather crossly.

"What do you want?" I said.

"Quels sont vos noms," stuttered out Calphopolos in great agitation.

"What on earth do you mean?" I said; "you know our names well enough."

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, quels sont vos noms," he repeated.

"X," I called out, "wake up and tell me what is the matter with Calphopolos—I think his head has been turned by this fright about your name; he is going about jibbering over it."

X had a soothing influence on Calphopolos, and gradually extracted from him that the local Zaptieh had come up for our tezkerehs and wanted to know our names. His agitation over the revolver had been so great that he had been unable to explain articulately that it was our tezkerehs that he had come for.

The next day the whole character of the country changed. The plain gradually oozed away into a more tumbled country and cultivation disappeared. We were about to cross the range of hills which shut out our view to the north.

The Zaptiehs were very much on the alert here; they unslung their rifles from behind and rode with them across their knees. We were told to keep close together and ride quietly without talking.

The mountains closed in on either side; they were bare, rounded hills for the most part, with stunted shrubs on the lower slopes, which one soon learnt to regard purely as cover for a possible enemy. There was no difficulty about realising possible dangers here; the broad road slowly narrowed, and at every turn in the winding path one almost expected to be confronted by a villain. At the snap of a twig or the rustle of a leaf our Zaptiehs grasped their rifles tighter, and without turning their heads moved their eyes in that direction. Once, on the wider road we had left, a cloud of dust had arisen in the distance, and a long line of camels laden with wood filed slowly past us in twos and threes. Our men exchanged a few monosyllabic words with the drivers, and in another minute or two the tinkling of the bells and the tramp of feet had subsided, the dust settled once more, and we were alone again with the silent hills and the crackling twigs, and wound our way in and out in single file across the rounded hillocks. Here and there the sight of a herd of sheep or goats, tended by peaceful looking natives, relieved the tension caused by our escort's precautions, for it is always difficult to associate danger with such rural scenes. At last there was a break in front; we were through the pass and began to descend.

Calphopolos had been silent all this time; his conversational powers seem to have suffered a severe check. Now he brightened up, mopped his forehead, and murmured, "Grâce à Dieu nous voilà."

Half way down the hillside, perched on a projecting ledge just off the road, stood a lonely coffee-house. The Zaptiehs, pointing at it with their whips, hailed it with delight. They slid off their horses, and holding ours, helped us to dismount. We sat in the porch and sipped thick, hot Turkish coffee; below us the lake Ascanius lay like a blue sheet between the purple hills, its eastern end fringed round with a band of green, in which the minarets and domes of Isnik itself were just visible. All around us the stunted shrubs still formed harbour for the suspected brigands. Our Zaptiehs lay stretched on the ground in front, apparently asleep; but their rifles were never laid aside, and the least stir in the bushes made us realise their state of alert watchfulness.

But not a living creature showed itself, and we rode on down and down the curving incline until we reached the green band of vegetation and our horses trod softly through grassy slopes of olive plantations, whose grey leaves shone like silver as the sun's low rays beat through them. Past the olive plantations lay a stretch of low-lying reedy marsh.

"You shall have a good supper to-night," said Ibrahim; and throwing his reins to a Zaptieh he plunged in on foot. He shot two snipe, and joined us again as we reached the outskirts of the town.

The old city of Nicæa is now represented by a collection of a few hundred miserable houses forming the village of Isnik. But, as everywhere in the ancient towns of Asiatic Turkey, one is confronted at every point with tokens of former splendour. Four great gates in the old Roman walls give access to the town. Courses of brickwork are built in between the large stones of which the bulk of the walls consists; here and there semicircular towers rise up, their ruins still surmounting the ruins of the wall. One, more perfect than the rest, is said to mark the site of the church in which the Nicene Creed was framed.

We fixed on a spot for the camp just inside the walls and outside the present town, where a green field, which merged into a cemetery, lay in the curve of a shallow brook.

The pots and pans were speedily tumbled out of Constantin's saddle-bags and Ibrahim had our tents up with European alacrity; but it was dark before the smell of roasted snipe pervaded the night air. We ate our supper by the light of a lantern hung on a forked stick. The fear of brigands departed and the sleep of the just fell upon the camp. Owls hooted in the green-covered walls of ruined Nicæa, and away in the distance the still mountains kept guard over the dark waters of the lake as they lapped mournfully on the ruins of Roman baths on its stony shore. The Zaptieh on guard poked fresh sticks into the dying fire and sighed heavily between the snores of his companions.

In and out amongst the upright white stones of the cemetery a jackal prowled stealthily and sniffed the smell of snipe bones.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE

One tree stood out in the middle of the field in which we were encamped. We spread our carpet under it and laid ourselves out for a lazy day. There were letters to write home and plans to make about the journey ahead. It was impossible to do such things comfortably after a day's ride and with the feeling of transitoriness engendered by a short night in camp. So we had decided to spend this Sunday at Isnik.

Constantin got out all his pots and pans to give them an extra cleaning, and promised us a vast meal. He complained that he had never had time to show us what he could do.

Animals and men alike were pervaded with that sense of rest which is in the air on a hot Sunday morning. The horses, after rolling on their backs, stretched themselves out motionless on their sides; the arabajis dozed in the araba. Calphopolos retired inside the men's tent, prepared to make up for the loss of sleep occasioned by anxious nights. We got out our books and papers and thought about all we should get through that day.

We were encamped within the old walls of Nicæa, and from where we sat were in full view of the outskirts of the present town. By and by some native women sallied out in our direction and, skirting the camp, peeped cautiously round our tents; then getting bolder they sidled towards us, smiling propitiatingly. We felt peacefully disposed towards the whole world and smiled back at them. Thus encouraged they advanced nearer and felt the substance of our clothes and examined our hats.

Finally, not finding themselves repulsed, they fingered our hair and stroked our hands. X hunted in her vocabulary for suitable remarks and delivered them at intervals. Meanwhile other women straggled out from the town, and, finding their sisters already so much at home, they also satisfied themselves as to the consistency of our clothes and skin. The earlier arrivals now established themselves on the ground around us, jabbering away amongst themselves and occasionally addressing a single word to us, which they repeated again and again, pointing at each of us in turn. X looked it up, and came to the conclusion that it meant "sister." So we shook our heads and looked up the word for "friend." The effect was magical; we had established social intercourse. More and more women arrived and joined the throng settled round us, all new-comers being initiated into the already acquired knowledge concerning us. Soon everybody had a word they wanted looked out in the dictionary, until X became fairly exhausted. We tried "goodbye" and "no more" with disappointing effect, and finally let them sit there gazing at us while we went on with our writing, keeping a sharp look-out on our hats, which every one was anxious to try on. It seemed to please them just as much to look at us as to talk to us, and they sat on in placid content.

By and by Ibrahim hurried up and spoke to the women; they all darted to their feet and fled. We looked at Ibrahim inquiringly. He pointed in the direction of the town, and we saw two men arriving at a slow and dignified pace. Constantin appeared on the scene.

"Gouverneur," he said, "faire visite."

X and I hastily donned our hats and sent for a seat for the "gouverneur." But Ibrahim could only find a saddle-bag. X turned over the leaves of the vocabulary in the hopes of finding suitable greetings. We bowed and scraped mutually, and X delivered herself of the first greeting.

"We are very pleased."

The "gouverneur" bowed and made, no doubt, what was a suitable response; but as we could only attack single words we were no wiser. There was a pause while X collected the words for another.

"Beautiful country," she attempted.

The "gouverneur" bowed very gravely.

"I hope I have said that," said X nervously, "he looks rather shocked."

At that moment Constantin appeared with coffee and cigarettes, which gave us time to recover.

"I should not bother to talk to him," I said. "That is the best of these people—they understand how to sit happily in silence, just looking at you."

But X determined to make another try; it was good practice.

"Health good?" she said.

The "gouverneur" turned to his companion and said a few words in Turkish. The young man looked rather terrified, and began to speak to us in what sounded like gibberish. Constantin came to take the cups away.

"Parle français," he said, pointing to the young man.

We strained our ears to try and catch an intelligible word, but could only shake our heads.

So we all took refuge in silence and looked at one another. There was no sense of gêne. The Turk and his companion seemed as content to sit and look at us as the women had been. When he had finished his cigarette he rose, and, bowing once more in Turkish fashion, took his leave.

We picked up our papers once more, then Constantin came and said lunch was ready. We sat on saddle-bags outside the tent and ate chunks of mutton and onions out of the tin bowl keeping hot on the charcoal brazier at our side. Ibrahim filled our cups with water from the brook, and the grass tickled our hands each time we lifted them from the ground. The pots and pans lay about all around, and Constantin, squatting in the middle of them, brought the coffee to the boil three times in the little Turkish pot.

"Sheker, effendi?" he called out, "un, deux?" as he ladled in the sugar. Constantin's language was always of a hybrid nature, consisting of alternate words of French and Turkish.

Then we had returned to the carpet under the tree and sipped the thick, hot coffee out of the little Turkish cups, and sent thoughtful rings of smoke up into the branches of the tree above. And with the rings of smoke went up thoughts of the coffee they were drinking now in the drawing-rooms; the little cups there would have handles, and each one would help himself to sugar off a little tray.

"I guess you find it slow here!"

An American tourist couple from Brusa stood over us. They had seen us off at Madame Brot's hotel, and had then announced their intention of driving to Nicæa in a landau.

"We thought we would just look you up and see if you had got here all right, but we cannot stop a minute; we've only had an hour to see the walls, they were so long getting lunch."

"You ought to see the tower on the site of the church where they discussed the Nicene Creed," said X.

"The Nicene Creed—eh, what?" said the American, as he consulted his guide-book.

"Say, we just ought to have a look at that," he said to his wife.

"We shall miss the Augusta Victoria if you do," said the lady. Then she turned to us. "We go on to Smyrna in it to-morrow morning," she explained, "so we must get back to-night."

The landau appeared at that moment; time was up. Smyrna, Beyrout, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Luxor had to be got in during the allotted time, and there had been no provision made for the Nicene Creed. So in they got and dashed away over the plain.

They had come as a whirlwind over from the West, sweeping the surface of this Eastern land and catching up the loose fragments on it; but its traditions were too deeply rooted to be caught in the blast; these had merely bent their heads and let the blast pass by. Strong as it is, it cannot unloose the sway of ancient customs. Even for Americans the East will not move. The natives gazed at the landau, hardly wondering at it; then they forgot it. But we did not forget it so easily. For us an odour of the West was left hanging over the plain—and above all, our sense of time had been offended.

A French engineer with his wife and family were the next to appear on the scene. They were the only Europeans living in the place, and rejoiced over the sound of their mother-tongue. The man poured out volumes of it, and was interesting about his work up to the point when we became fatigued.

"Ah! mademoiselle, what it is to be in civilised company again! We live here from day to day and year after year, and have no one to speak with, no one with whom to exchange ideas. C'est comme la mort."

"Do you not see anything of the natives?" we inquired. "They seem very friendly, and you can speak Turkish."

"Ah! mademoiselle, what can one do with such people? how can one associate with them? They are canaille, mere canaille."

"We were talking to some of them," we said, "and thought them very intelligent."

He held up his hands in horror.

"But, mademoiselle, do you not understand? Certainly there are the Christian races, but for the most part, ce sont des Turques, des infidèles, des chiens. There is Marie there, pauvre Marie! it is bad enough for me, but then I have my work; but Marie, the pauvre Marie, she dies of ennui, she can speak to no one but me and the children."

The pauvre Marie seemed indeed to have lost the power of speech; she sat silently as her husband poured out his contempt of the canaille.

We had found the Greek women very entertaining in the morning, and they too had sat and looked at us in silence. But they had not been ashamed of their silence; Marie was, and felt awkward; so we all felt uncomfortable, and tried to talk to her.

One felt then how little actual language had to do with social intercourse. We could not get into touch with Marie, whose language we understood, in the same way that we had got into touch with the native women, whose language we did not understand.

They sat on and on; it was not until the sun began to send out long warning shoots of colour, heralding its disappearance behind the purple mountains, that they rose to go.

And we, worn out with this final effort in sociability, gave ourselves up to the quiet of the deserted camp, and watched the shades of night creep once more over the ruined walls and the distant hills, over the houses of the French engineer and the canaille.

CHAPTER IV

THE DAWN OF THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY

I

There is something very weird and uncanny in the terminus of a railway in the middle of a wild and desolate country such as this. The Monster runs his iron fangs into the heart of its desolation and shoots you into it like a ball out of a cannon's mouth. Roaring and hissing and sending out jets of flame, he comes racing through the darkness to a certain definite spot; here he discharges you in the blackness of night and subsides. Next morning when you awake he is gone, and you are left to shift for yourself as best you can. But there is a certain human friendliness about this Monster while you are travelling with him. He seems to draw all the signs of life out of an apparently dead country and collect them at the stations for you to see. Great warehouses filled with sacks of corn testify to the productiveness of a country which, judging it from the train window after harvest time, one would dismiss as mere barren soil; an occasional MacCormick's "Daisy" reaper awaiting delivery on a side platform, native carts hanging about, and truck-loads of empty sacks tell the same tale. Groups of peasants, idly gossiping, gathered together by the whistle which heralds the Monster's approach, belie the impression of an uninhabited land; for Turkish villages are carefully designed so as not to attract attention. When one's eye gets more familiar with the seemingly uniform colour of the landscape, varied only by light and shade, one becomes aware of the low, flat-topped, mud-brick houses, which, even at close quarters, often seem but part of the natural rock.

Even the unchanging East is powerless once the Monster's fangs have taken hold; he alone of all influences comes to stay and leave his mark.

Slowly, perhaps, but very surely, he undermines with irresistible persistence the customs and habits which from time immemorial have held their own against the religious, educational, or military forces of stronger nations.

This particular spot has long been the battlefield of the East and the West; now one, now the other, has had temporary ascendance; in the long run the East has always conquered.

But already we can see what a power the East has to reckon with in the railway. For one thing it attacks the Eastern in one of his vital points—his conception of Time. Time waited for him when he had but camels to load; but the railway will not wait for him; the Monster screeches and is off. Sunrise or two hours after sunrise is not one and the same thing to him. Relentless as day and night he comes and goes, and there is no cheating him as the Eastern cheats Time.

But the railway is cheating the East out of its time-worn customs and ideas, and there is a certain sadness in the evidences of transition. All down the line picturesque native costumes are being replaced by ugly European clothes. The men wear terrible fancy trouserings from Manchester; the women spend more money on dress—and unfortunately it is European dress—and less on the old-fashioned wedding feasts. The turnover of the shops in the larger towns has increased fourfold in the last ten years. The bazaars are now a medley of stalls exhibiting native manufactures side by side with cheap trinkets from England and loud flannelettes from Italy. The price of wheat has doubled; and with that of wheat the prices of other exports have also risen. Opium, wool, mohair, hides, and salt are amongst the products of these great plains.

Two short days' ride from Nicæa had brought us to Mekidje, a station on the Anatolian Railway half-way between Haida Pasha and Eskishehr. The single line went as far as Konia, and one train ran each way every day. It stopped for the right at Eskishehr, continuing the journey next morning.

We arrived at the station some hours before the train was due, and sat in the stationmaster's strip of garden, for there did not seem anything else to do. We said goodbye to the Zaptiehs and to the muleteers who were returning to Brusa, and watched them slowly disappear down the road we had come. Then we heard the low, familiar tinkle of camel bells and a score or more of laden animals paced slowly into the open ground round the station. They have a more discreet and tuneful way of announcing their arrival than the Monster, and when they appear on the scene they do so in a more dignified, calmer manner. Having arrived also, they do not look as if they were off again the next minute; they look as if they had come to stay for ever, and they give you time to think. One by one, in answer to a word of command, they knelt down in the dust, and the great baskets holding the goods were unfastened and rolled about on the ground. Their owners seemed too slack to do any more. They let them lie there while they looked at the sun. The Monster is slowly replacing these carriers of the East; but their day is not yet done by a long way, for they must feed him from the interior. His life is still dependent on the life of those he is working to destroy.

At last we heard his distant shriek. Down upon us he came, dashing up all in a minute, in such a splutter and such a hurry, waking us all up. Officials rushed up and down the platform, and swore at the natives who were loading our baggage. Everybody talked at once to everybody else, and the Monster hissed impatiently, noisy even when he was standing still.

There were not many passengers; in a first-class carriage a Pasha travelled in solitary state; all his harem were delegated to a second-class carriage, where the blinds were pulled down. In the third-class were a few natives, who leaned out of the windows and gossiped with the camel owners, idle witnesses of the busy scene.

But the Monster is getting impatient; he hisses furiously and finally gives a warning shriek. Then off he goes, and we take a last look at the kneeling camels, munching away as unconcernedly as if their destroyer had never invaded their peaceful country.

Mekidje is practically at sea-level; Eskishehr is a tableland two thousand feet high; we had therefore a steady rise on the whole journey up the valley formed by the Kara Su, a river which has its source in the neighbourhood of Eskishehr. On each side rounded hills shut out the horizon, save where here and there a tributary valley would reveal, through steep-sided gorges, a distant view of purple ridges with snow-clad tops.

It was night when we arrived at Eskishehr, and we groped our way to the Grand Hôtel d'Anatolie, kept by Greeks. It was at this hotel that we first met Hassan, who was destined to play such a large part in our future travels. He was an Albanian Turk, and had been introduced to us by our friends in Constantinople, whom he accompanied on their shooting expeditions in this district. They had written to ask him to look after us during our brief stay at Eskishehr.

Ibrahim brought him into our room, and there he stood silently, after salaaming us in the usual way.

Ibrahim was a tall man, but Hassan towered above him. He wore a huge sheepskin coat, which added to his massive, impressive look.

X looked up words in her Turkish book.

"They told us you would look after us here?" she said.

"As my eyes," he answered very quietly and simply. And thus began one of those friendships on which neither time nor distance can leave its mark.

Two days later X asked him whether he would accompany us on the next stage of our journey, across the Anatolian Plateau and the Taurus Mountains to Mersina.

"Will you come with us and guard us well?" she said. He dropped on one knee and kissed her hand.

"On my head be it," he said.

Eskishehr, before the days of the railway, was a purely Turkish town; it displayed the usual chaos of mud-brick and wooden houses, with their lower windows carefully latticed over for the concealment of the women; of narrow, winding bazaars, here a display of brightly coloured clothes and rugs, there a noisy street of smithies and carpenters' shops; and rising above it all the minarets of half a dozen mosques.

But the railway's mark is on it to-day. The population has been increased by some five thousand Tartars and Armenians, whose houses, planted together near the line, have a neat, modern, shoddy look, contrasting with the picturesque squalor of the ancient Turkish town.

The railway is slowly attacking the stronghold of the Turkish peasant, extending his operations on the wasted stretches of cultivable land, and slowly opening out dim vistas of prosperity athwart his present apathy. In the same way the railway is slowly affecting the town merchant. But one shudders here at the effect of prosperity unaccompanied by civilising influences. For in the rich merchant of the town you have the Turk at his worst. The simple, hospitable Turkish peasant is made of good stuff; the Turkish soldier of rank and file, if his fanatical tendencies are not encouraged, is equally good; the official Turk is corrupt, but only because the particular method of administering his country's laws obliges him to be so; the educated Turk of Constantinople is rapidly becoming a civilised being. But the rich middle-class Turk of towns has nothing to be said for him. The Christians have taught him to drink, and he is rich enough to keep a large harem. We had an introduction to one such person in Eskishehr. The polished Turkish phraseology of welcome could not conceal the coarseness and vulgarity of his mind, and we were glad to escape to the sacred inner chambers, where a very young and pretty woman sat in lonely state, the latest addition to his harem. There she sat, draped in the softest silks of gorgeous colourings, surrounded with all the evidences of luxury and comfort, as sulky as a little bear.

We were accompanied by a Greek lady, who talked French and Turkish and acted as our interpreter; but never a smile or more than a word could be drawn out of the cross little thing. She simply stared in front of her with an expression of acute boredom in her beautiful eyes. A good-natured, elderly serving-woman, who stood at the door, explained matters. She had been very much pampered at home, and she had had a good time; she saw all her young friends at the baths, the social resort for Turkish ladies. The rich merchant had been considered a great parti; but already she had had enough of it. She never went out except for an occasional drive in a closed carriage. She was tired of embroidery work, she was tired of eating sweets, she was tired of smoking, she was tired of her fine dresses. "Amān, but it would come all right—and the serving-woman winked and nodded, and stroked her mistress's listless hand.

"Is it always like this?" we asked the Greek lady.

"Ah, mon Dieu! not at all! This man is very jealous, and she may not see her friends. He heaps on her what money can buy and thinks that is enough. But with the poor it is different. You will see. There is a wedding to-day in a poor family. I will arrange for you to go. Mon Dieu! no, it is not always thus. La pauvre petite."

The room in which we sat was draped in the usual Turkish manner with magnificent curtains in rich Eastern colourings. Round three walls ran low divans covered in the same way. There was not such a room in Eskishehr we were told. Had the decorations stopped there, and we had been able to forget the unfortunate prisoner, the general effect would have been decidedly pleasing. But as we sat there our eyes were kept glued, by some horrible attraction, on the glitter of a cheap gilt frame of the gaudiest description, containing a crude coloured print of the German Emperor; below this stood a gimcracky little table covered with a cheap tinselled cloth, on which was placed a glass and silver cake-basket in the vilest of European taste. It hit one terribly in the eye. It was a jarring note in the Monster's work.

We took leave of the sulky little lady, and left her once more to her sweets and her embroideries in the long, weary hours of lonely splendour.

We had only seen the second act of this bit of Turkish drama; when the curtain went down for us we had had enough of it.

But we were about to see Act I. in different surroundings. The Greek lady kept her word, and in due course we found ourselves ushered into the house of the bridegroom. The preliminary ceremonies had already begun—in fact they had been going on all day. There sat the bride at the end of a room which had been cleared of everything except the low stool which she occupied alone. She was a lumpy looking girl of seventeen or so, and sat there motionless with downcast eyes. On the floor sat dozens of women, packed as tight as the room could hold. The bride might neither look up nor speak, which seemed hard, for every woman in the room was both looking at her and speaking about her; the hubbub was terrible.

She rose as we entered and kissed our hands; this much is apparently allowed on the arrival of strangers. The Greek lady explained that she was obliged to stand until we asked her to sit down again, and that she might not look at us. This was a good deal to ask on such an occasion; European ladies are not, as a rule, guests at the wedding of the Turkish poor, and we caught one or two surreptitious peeps from under her long eyelashes. We joined the throng on the floor and continued to gaze at her as every one else did. Marriage customs in general, and her own affairs in particular, were discussed for our benefit, the Greek lady interpreting in torrents of voluble French.

"She may not speak to her husband for forty-eight hours. When he comes in he will lift the veil and see his bride for the first time. Then he puts a girdle round her waist and it is finished. His mother chose her for him. If he does not like her, no matter, he can choose another, for he is getting good wages, and can afford to keep two."

By and by a large tray was brought in, piled up with rounds of native bread and plates of chicken. It was placed on a low stool in the centre of us all, and, following everybody's example, we grabbed alternate bits of chicken and bread. Then followed hunches of cake made of nuts and honey.

We were still eating when we heard a noise of singing and musical instruments outside; it became louder and louder, and finally stopped by the house.

"They are singing 'Behold the bridegroom cometh,'" said the Greek lady; "the man is being brought in a procession of all his friends."

The food was hastily removed, and all the guests were marshalled into an adjoining room, which already seemed as full as it could hold of babies and children and old hags, who presumably had been left to look after the younger ones. We were allowed to remain while the finishing touches were put on the bride. Her face was first plastered all over with little ornaments cut out of silver paper and stuck on with white of egg; then she was covered over entirely with a large violet veil. And so we left her sitting there, sheepish and placid in the extreme, in strange contrast to the voluble Greek lady and the excited friends. We met the bridegroom in the passage. He kissed his father, and stood first on one foot and then on the other. His mother took him by the shoulders, opened the door of the room we had just left, and shoved him in. Let us hope that the silver ornaments did their work and made his bride pleasing in his sight when he lifted the violet veil. What she thought of him need not concern us any more than it did her or her friends, for such thoughts may not enter the minds of Turkish brides.

The show was over. The curtain of the first act had gone down for us. It gave promise of a more successful drama than the one we had previously witnessed.

It is 267 miles or thereabouts from Eskishehr to Konia. It took us a good fifteen hours by rail. We were now on the summit of the tableland; the bounded river valley gradually gave way to long stretches where signs of cultivation were more apparent. We were getting into the great wheat-growing district, which the railway is causing to extend year by year. At Karahissar, a town of 33,000 inhabitants, a gigantic rock with straight sides and castellated top rises abruptly out of the plain, and from here another corn-growing valley merges into the great plain stretching away to the north. Mount Olympus, whose base we had skirted on leaving Brusa, could be very dimly discerned on the sky-line.

Then darkness set in, and the Monster ran steadily on with us into the unknown. Towards eight o'clock there was a sudden stop; it had come to the end of its tether.

We had left Calphopolos and Ibrahim at Eskishehr, and now only Constantin remained as a link with civilisation. Hassan had appeared at the station at Eskishehr, prepared to accompany us round the world if need be. He wore a brown suit of Turkish trousers and zouave under his sheepskin cloak. His pockets bulged rather, so did the wide leather belt which he used as a pocket, otherwise his worldly goods were contained tied up in a white pocket-handkerchief.

And so we arrived at Konia. Behind us was the railway, leading back to the things we knew, to the things we should hope to see again; before us was the plain, leading us to strange new things, things we should, perhaps, just see once and leave behind for ever.

The iron Monster had dumped us down and was no further concerned with us; if we would go further it must be by taking thought for ourselves.

There were horses and arabas to hire, there were provisions to lay in, there was the escort of Zaptiehs to be procured and the goodwill of the authorities to be obtained. We had letters of introduction to Ferid Pasha, then Vali of the Konia vilayet and since Grand Vizier of Constantinople. He was not as other Valis; he was called the great and the good, and had established law and order in his province. There need be no fear of brigandage while we were within the boundaries of his jurisdiction.

The Government building, the Konak, occupied one side of the square in which stood our hotel, and we sent Hassan across to pay our respects. But Ferid Pasha was away, which caused us great disappointment; we could only see his Vekil, the acting Governor.

Taking Hassan and Constantin with us, we went up the long flight of steps and down a corridor leading to the Vali's room. Peasants and ragged soldiers hung about the passage, and black-coated Jewish-looking men hurried in and out. A soldier showed us the way, holding back the curtains which concealed the entrance to various rooms, and from behind which the mysterious looking Jews were continually creeping.

The Vekil sat at a table covered over with official documents; a divan, higher and harder than those we had seen in private houses, ran round two walls, on which squatted several secretaries, holding the paper on which they wrote on the palms of their left hands. Beside the Vekil sat an old Dervish priest, and next him the Muavin, the Christian official appointed after the massacres to inform Valis of the wishes of Christians, and better known amongst those who know him as "Evet Effendi" (Yes, Effendi).

X was getting fluent in matters of Turkish greeting; she now reeled off a suitable string in reply to theirs. Hassan stood beside us, grave and dignified, and we noticed that all the men greeted him very courteously. X then endeavoured to explain our desire to travel to Mersina and requested the services of a suitable escort. Owing to limitations in her knowledge of the Turkish vocabulary, the nearest she could get to it was that the Consul at Mersina loved us dearly and wished us to come to him. Matters were getting to a deadlock; the officials appeared to be asking us what was the object of our journey, and we could only insist on the intense love of our English Consul.

Suddenly another visitor was ushered in, and for the first time since leaving Nicæa the strange sound of the English tongue fell upon our ears. The newcomer was Dr. Nakashian, an Armenian doctor living in Konia.

He at once acted as interpreter. Officialdom for once put no obstacles in the way, and an escort was promised us for the journey. The Vekil inquired whether we should like to see the sights of Konia; and on our replying in the affirmative, he arranged that we should be taken round that afternoon; Dr. Nakashian also promised to accompany us.

Accordingly we sallied out later on horseback with Hassan. Dr. Nakashian was mounted on a splendid Arab mare. The Government Protection, in the shape of two Zaptiehs and a captain, followed in a close carriage. We started off very decorously, but the Arab mare became excited and plunged and galloped down the street; our horses caught the infection, and we followed hard; the Government Protection put its head out of each window and shouted; the driver lashed his jaded horse, and the rickety carriage lurched after us in a cloud of dust. The natives lining the streets shouted encouragingly; finally we landed at the Dervish mosque. Dervishes are strong in Konia. Their founder is buried here, and his tomb is an object of pilgrimage. The chief feature of the mosque is its wonderful polished floor, where the dancing ceremonies take place.

At Konia, perhaps more than at Eskishehr, one is struck with the railway's influence in the passing order of things. There are many fine buildings in the last stages of decay in this ancient city of the Seljuk Turks; the palace, with its one remaining tower, the fragments of the old Seljuk walls found here and there in the middle of the modern town, the mosques lined with faïence, beautiful even in its fragments. Contrast with this the squalor and the dirt of the present Turkish streets, the earth and wood houses, enclosed in walls of earth, the apathetic natives, and the general feeling of stagnation and decay.

A Well in the Konia Plains.

Then, outside the town, the railway appears; modern European houses spring up round it—offices for the Company and an hotel. A whiff of stir and bustle brought in along with the iron fangs of the Monster brings a sense of fresh life to these people, whose existence seemed one long decay of better things, like that of the ruins amongst which they spend their days.

And everywhere there was a whisper of yet closer touch with civilisation. The Anatolian Railway stops at Konia, but its continuation under the name of the Baghdad Railway was everywhere in the air.[ [2] No one spoke openly about it; its coming seemed enveloped in such a shroud of mystery that one felt there was a sort of halo around its birth. At first one mentioned it baldly by name; and at once the official would put on his most discreet and impressive manner and refer to the will of Allah; the merchant would nod mysteriously and then wink with evident satisfaction. "It comes! oh yes, it comes! but it is better not to talk of it yet." And the Zaptieh would sigh heavily, thinking of his unpaid wages, and say, "Please God, it comes," and then look hastily round to see who had overheard him.

And so at last we also learnt to speak of the Coming of the Monster with bated breath and lowered tones, and were duly infected with the impressiveness of his arrival—the arrival of the Being whose touch was to bring new life into this dead land.

II

It was on the morning of the third day after our arrival at Konia that we made the plunge into the great plain from the spot where the Monster had left us. We collected in the square in front of the Konak. There were two covered arabas to convey the baggage, and in one of these Constantin and Hassan also rode; X and I rode horses, and had saddle-bags slung under our saddles. Our escort consisted of three Zaptiehs, a Lieutenant, Rejeb, and an ancient Sergeant, Mustapha.

The head of the police accompanied us a few miles out of the town.

Slowly, riding at a foot's pace, we left it all behind, the squalid streets, the modern houses, the scraggy little trees; the lumpy road became a deeply rutted track bordering stubble fields; lumbering carts passed us, squeaking terribly as the wheels lurched out of the ruts to make way for us. The track became an ill-defined path, along which heavily laden pack-animals slowly toiled, raising clouds of dust. Turning in our saddles, all we could see of Konia was the minarets of its mosques standing above a confused blur on the horizon line.

There is a strange fascination in watching the slow disappearance of any object on the horizon, when that horizon is visible at every point round you. The exact moment never comes when you can state the actual disappearance of the object. You think it is still there, and then you slowly realise that it is not. And when you have realised this, you turn round again in the saddle once for all, and set your face steadily towards the horizon in front of you, which for so many hours on end has nothing to show and nothing to tell you, and yet whose very emptiness is so full of secret possibilities and hidden wonder.

We had got beyond the point where one met others on the road; we had now become our own world, a self-contained planet travelling with the sun through space. When he disappeared over the horizon line we pitched our camp and waited for his reappearance on the opposite side. At the first glimmer announcing his arrival the tents were hauled down, the arabas loaded up, and by the time his face peeped over the line we were in our saddles, ready once more to follow him to his journey's end.

It is a great half-desert plain, this part of Anatolia; desert only where it is waterless, and very fertile where irrigation is possible. In places it seemed to form one huge grazing ground; now it would be herds of black cattle munching its coarse, dried-up herbage; now flocks of mohair goats, now sheep, herded by boys in white sheepskin coats, tended by yellow dogs. Then we knew that a village would be somewhere about, although we did not always see it; for here too the villages are the colour of the surrounding country and perhaps only visible in very clear sunlight.

Or it might be that we would ride slowly through a cluster of mud huts, and the yellow dogs would rush out and bark furiously at us, while the men and children stared silently, too listless even to wonder. At times we would stop in a village for our midday meal, sitting in the shade of its yellow mud walls. The Zaptiehs would stand round us and keep off the dogs until some of the village men would appear and call them away with a half-scared look—for the Zaptieh is the tax-collector, and they suffer from extortion at his hands.

We visited the women in their houses, and found them always interested and friendly. Turkish was becoming more intelligible to us, and the conversation usually took the same form:—

"Who is your father?"

"He is a Pasha in a far country."

"Where are your husbands?"

"We have no husbands."

"How is that?"

"In our country the women are better than the men, and the men are afraid of us."

Then our clothes are fingered all over and the cost of everything on us is asked. We rise to go, and they hang on to us and implore us to come again. But the sun has already begun to dip on his downward course, and we must hurry after him.

Then would follow hours when no attempt at cultivation, or sign of herds and flocks, would be visible, and the desert country was only relieved by wonderful effects of mirage, in which we would chase elusive pictures of mountains and lakes and streams.

One had time to take it all in: the wonderful exhilarating air, the silent stretches, the long, monotonous days of the shepherd boys, marked only by the gathering in of their flocks at night.

How will it be when the Monster comes, roaring and snorting through these silent plains, polluting this clear air with his dust and smoke? At first these haughty, resentful shepherds will stand aloof from the invasion, the yellow dogs will bark in vain at the intrusion. Then slowly its daily appearance will come to them as the sun comes in the morning and the stars at night. Unconsciously it also will become a part of the routine of their lives. They will not cease to look at it with wonder, for they have never wondered. They will accept it, as they accept everything else. But use it? That is a different tale. It will be a long fight; but the Monster has always conquered in the end.

On the third day we rode into Karaman. A medieval castle crowns the town, and is visible at some little distance across the plain.

The old sergeant, Mustapha, startled us by suddenly greeting it from afar:—

"Ah, Karaman, you beautiful Karaman, city of peace and plenty. Ah, Karaman, beloved Karaman!"

And the Zaptiehs, taking up the refrain, made the silent plains ring with "Karaman! beautiful Karaman!"

We pitched our tents on a grass plot in the centre of the town. Constantin began preparing the evening meal, and the natives hung round in groups staring at us, or bringing in supplies of fuel and milk and eggs. A seedy-looking European pushed his way up to our tent and began storming at us in French.

"But it is impossible for you to camp here—it is not allowable; you must come at once to my house. There is nothing to say."

X and I tried to rouse our bewildered minds out of the Eastern sense of repose into which they had sunk through all these days. We concluded that Karaman must possess an urban district council, and that we were breaking some law of the town.

We pressed for further enlightenment.

"But do you not see all these people looking at you? It is not for you to camp here. My house is ready for you. There are good beds and it is dry, but this ..." and he waved his hand at our preparations. "It is not possible; there is nothing to say."

By this time Hassan and Rejeb, into whose hands we had been entrusted for protection, came up and stood over us, looking threateningly at our gesticulating, excited friend.

"I do not understand," I said. "Who says that we may not camp here?"

"But it is I that say it; it is not possible. My house is ready; there is nothing to say."

"Who are you?" I said.

"I am an Austrian," he answered. Then he lowered his voice, in that mysterious manner which we associated with the coming of the Monster. "I am here," he said, in an undertone, "as agent commercial du chemin de fer Ottoman."

"Very good," I answered; "and now tell us why we cannot camp here."

"But it is damp," he said; "look at the mud."

"Oh, is that all?" I said. "We are much obliged to you for the offer of your house, but we always sleep out."

"But I have good beds," he said, "and a dry room at your service. There is nothing to say."

At this point Rejeb could contain himself no longer. He spoke sternly to the Austrian in Turkish.

"What do you want?" he said. "These ladies are under my protection. What are you saying to them?"

The man poured out volumes of Turkish; Rejeb and he had a violent altercation, which seemed to be ending in blows.

"Come, come," I said to the man, "enough of this. We are much obliged to you for your offer of hospitality, but we prefer to remain outside."

He seemed totally unable to understand that this could be the case. "If it is myself you do not care about," he said, in a crestfallen manner, "I can easily move from the house. The beds are clean and they are dry."

We finally consented to spend the evening at his house, and accompanied him through the streets, Rejeb and Hassan following closely on our heels. He showed us into a stuffy little sitting-room. Every corner was crammed with gimcracks; the whole place reeked of musty wool chairbacks.

Then we followed him upstairs; we must at any rate "look at the beds"—he evidently thought the sight of them would prove irresistible.

On calmer reflection the beds were, doubtless, no worse than the ordinary type to be found in commercial country inns; but to us, coming out of the sweet and wholesome atmosphere of the yet untainted plain, they seemed to be the very embodiment of stuffiness and discomfort. The windows, which had evidently not been opened for some time, were heavily draped, so as to effectually exclude all light and air even when open.

"There, now do you see? It is clean, it is dry. There is nothing humid here; but out there it is exposed, it is damp, it is not allowable."

We waived the question for the moment, reserving our forces for a later attack, and returned to the sitting-room, where a native woman was preparing the evening meal. We questioned our host on the arrival of the railway. He admitted being there to tout for trade in case it came; but who could tell, in a country like this, what would happen? Mon Dieu! it was a God-forsaken country, and all the inhabitants were canaille; there was no one he could associate with. He counted the days till his return. "When would that be?" "Ah," then he became mysterious once more and looked round at the door and window: "Ah, God knows; might it come soon!"

The serving-woman appeared and said that our men wished to see us; they had been sitting on the doorstep ever since we entered the house and refused to go away. The Austrian went out to them; high words ensued, and we looked through the door. The Austrian, crimson with rage, was gesticulating violently and pouring out torrents of unintelligible Turkish. Rejeb stood in front of him, hitting his long riding-boot with his whip and answering with some heat. Above him towered Hassan, very calm and very quiet, slowly rolling up a cigarette and now and then putting in a single word in support of Rejeb.

The Austrian turned to us. "Can you not send these men away, ladies? It is an impertinence. They refuse to leave you here unless they themselves sleep in the house. They say they have orders never to leave you, but surely they can see what I am!"

We calmed him down as best we could, and insisted on our intention of returning to our tents. He could not understand it, and I should think never will. But we got away, Rejeb and Hassan one on each side of us. When we were out on the road in cover of darkness both men burst into loud roars of laughter.

"Have we not done well, Effendi?" they said. "We have rescued you from the mad little man. The great doctor in London, has he not said, 'You shall sleep in the tent every night'?"

And, gathering round our camp-fire in the damp and the mud, we rejoiced with Hassan and Rejeb over their gallant assault and our fortunate escape.

Two days' further ride brought us to Eregli. We approached it in the dusk, riding during the last hour through what appeared to be low copse wood. The place seemed low and damp; we rode past the door of the khan, and the men besought us to go there instead of camping outside. Constantin said he was ill, the arabajis said their horses would be ill. But Rejeb and Hassan took our side and we had the tents pitched on a spot which seemed dry in the darkness. Next morning we awoke to find ourselves encircled by a loop of the river and in a dense white mist. It was so cold that the milk froze as we poured it into the tea. We ate our breakfast with our gloves on, walking up and down to keep warm.

Constantin said that he was still ill; the arabajis said their horses were now ill; but that was because the khan was comfortable. We decided, however, to give them a day's respite and ride out ourselves to Ivriz in search of the Hittite inscription at that place.

Hittite Bas-relief and Inscription. Ivriz.

An hour's ride took us clear of the mists, and the sun came out hot and strong. Our road lay up a gorgeous richly wooded river valley. For the first time on our journey we realised what the absence of water and trees had meant. Our horses' feet crackled over brown and red autumn leaves; autumn smells, crisp and fresh, filled the air; brown trout darted from under dark rocks in the stream. Away through gaps in the low encircling hills we got sudden visions of two gigantic white-topped mountain peaks, the first suggestion of our approach to the Taurus barrier.

Ivriz is a good three hours' ride from Eregli, and lies high on one of the lower hills. We left our horses in the village and climbed on foot to the spot where the river, rushing suddenly out of the bowels of the earth, has formed a cave in the limestone cliff. Below this the stream had cut its way through the rock, leaving steep sides of bare stone which tell a tale of untold geological age. At one point the ground shelved out on a level with the bed of the stream, and the waters here swept round a corner, so that the face of the rock overlooking them was almost hidden from any one on the same shore.

It is on this face that the Hittite inscription is carved. A god, with a stalk of corn and a bunch of grapes in his hands, stands over a man who is in an attitude of adoration before him.

There it stands, hidden from the casual observer, visited by no one but the native who comes to cure his sickness in the sacred waters of the cave above.

Away in the desolate hills, off the track of man, the god has looked down on the waters of the river through all those æons since the days of the Hittites, which count as nothing in the time which it took this same river to carve its bed out of the eternal hills. How much longer will its solitude be left unviolated? The "agent commercial du chemin de fer Ottoman" is established at Eregli as elsewhere. When the iron Monster comes bellowing into Eregli his shriek will be heard in these silent hills, and following in his footsteps countless hordes of tourists will invade this sacred spot.