pall of night descends, and I am gathered into the arms of Morpheus.  Toward morning it grows chilly, and I am but fitfully dozing in the early gray, when I am awakened by the bleating and the pattering feet of a small sea of Angora goats.  Starting up, I discover that I am at that moment the mysterious and interesting subject of conversation between four goatherds, who have apparently been quietly surveying my sleeping form for some minutes.  Like our covetous friends beyond the Kara Su Pass, these early morning acquaintances are unlovely representatives of their profession; their sword-blades are half naked, the scabbards being rudely fashioned out of two sections of wood, roughly shaped to the blade, and bound together at top and bottom with twine; in addition to which are bell-mouthed pistols, half the size of a Queen Bess blunderbuss.  This villainous-looking quartette does not make “a very reassuring picture in the foreground of one’s waking moments, but they are probably the most harmless mortals imaginable; anyhow, after seeing me astir, they pass onl with their flocks and herds without even submitting me to the customary catechizing.  The morning light reveals in my surroundings a most charming little valley, about half a mile wide, walled in on the south by towering mountains covered with a forest of pine and cedar, and on the north by low, brush-covered hills; a small brook dances along the middle, and thin pasturage and scattered clumps of willow fringe the stream.  Three miles down the valley I arrive at a roadside khan, where I obtain some hard bread that requires soaking in water to make it eatable, and some wormy raisins; and from this choice assortment I attempt to fill the aching void of a ravenous appetite; with what success I leave to the reader’s imagination.  Here the khan-jee and another man deliver themselves of one of. those strange requests peculiar to the Asiatic Turk.  They pool the contents of their respective treasuries, making in all perhaps, three medjedis, and, with the simplicity of children whose minds have not yet dawned upon the crooked ways of a wicked world, they offer me the money in exchange for my Whitehouse leather case with its contents.  They have not the remotest idea of what the case contains; but their inquisitiveness apparently overcomes all other considerations.  Perhaps, however, their seemingly innocent way of offering me the money may be their own peculiar deep scheme of inducing me to reveal the nature of its contents.  For a short distance down the valley I find road that is generally ridable, when it contracts to a mere ravine, and the only road is the bowlder strewn bed of the stream, which is now nearly dry, but in the spring is evidently a raging torrent.  An hour of this delectable exercise, and I emerge into a region of undulating hills, among which are scattered wheat-fields and clusters of mud-hovels which it would be a stretch of courtesy to term villages.  Here the poverty