of the soil, or of the water-supply, is heralded to every observant eye by the poverty-stricken appearance of , the villagers.  As I wheel along, I observe that these poor half-naked wretches are gathering their scant harvest by the laborious process of pulling it up by the roots, and carrying it to their common threshing-floor on donkeys’ backs.  Here, also, I come to a camp of Turkish gypsies; they are dark-skinned, with an abundance of long black hair dangling about their shoulders, like our Indians; the women and larger girls are radiant in scarlet calico and other high-colored fabrics, and they wear a profusion of bead necklaces, armlets, anklets, and other ornaments dear to the semi-savage mind; the younger children are as wild and as innocent of clothing as their boon companions, the dogs.  The men affect the fez and general Turkish style of dress, with many unorthodox trappings and embellishments, however; and with their own wild appearance, their high-colored females, naked youngsters, wolfish-looking dogs, picketed horses, and smoke-browned tents, they make a scene that, for picturesqueness, can give odds even to the wigwam-villages of Uncle Sam’s Crow scouts, on the Little Big Horn River, Montana Territory, which is saying a good deal.  Twelve miles from my last night’s rendezvous, I pass through Keshtobek, a village that has evidently seen better days.  The ruins of a large stone khan take up all the central portion of the place; massive gateways of hewn stone, ornamented by the sculptor’s chisel, are still standing, eloquent monuments of a more prosperous era.  The unenterprising descendants of the men who erected this substantial and commodious retreat for passing caravans and travellers are now content to house themselves and their families in tumble-down hovels, and to drift aimlessly and unambitiously along on wretched fare and worse clothes, from the cradle to the grave.  The Keshtobek people seem principally interested to know why I am travelling without any zaptieh escort; a stranger travelling through these wooded mountains, without guard or guide, and not being able to converse with the natives, seems almost beyond their belief.  When they ask me why I have no zaptieh, I tell them I have one, and show them the Smith & Wesson.  They seem to regard this as a very witty remark, and say to each other:  “He is right; an English effendi and an American revolver don’t require any zapliehs to take care of them, they are quite able to look out for themselves.”  From Keshtobek my road leads down another small valley, and before long I find myself in the Angora vilayet, bowling briskly eastward over a most excellent road; not the mule-paths of an hour ago, but a broad, well-graded highway, as good, clear into Nalikhan, as the roads of any New England State.  This sudden transition is not unnaturally productive of some astonishment on my part, and inquiries at Nalikhan result in the information that my supposed graded wagon-road is nothing less than the bed of a proposed railway, the preliminary grading for which has been finished between Keshtobek and Angora for some time.