Wheeling down the gentle declivity of a broad, smooth road that almost deserves the title of boulevard, leading through the vineyards and gardens of Nalikhan’s environments, at quite a rattling pace, I startle a quarry of four dears (deers) robed in white mantles, who, the moment they observe the strange apparition approaching them at so vengeful a speed, bolt across a neighboring vineyard like the all-possessed.  The rapidity of their movements, notwithstanding the impedimenta of their flowing shrouds, readily suggests the idea of a quarry of dears (deer), but whether they are pretty dears or not, of course, their yashmaks fail to reveal; but in return for the beaming smile that lights up our usually solemn-looking countenance at their ridiculously hasty flight, as a reciprocation pure and simple, I suppose we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The evening at Nalikhan is a comparatively happy occasion; it is Friday, the Mussulman Sabbath; everybody seems fairly well-dressed for a Turkish interior town; and, more important than all, there is a good, smooth road on which to satisfy the popular curiosity; on ’this latter fact depends all the difference between an agreeable and a disagreeable time, and at Nalikhan everything passes off pleasantly for all concerned.  Apart from the novelty of my conveyance, few Europeans have ever visited these interior places under the same conditions as myself.  They have usually provided themselves beforehand with letters of introduction to the pashas and mudirs of the villages, who have entertained them as their guests during their stay.  On the contrary, I have seen fit to provide myself with none of these way-smoothing missives, and, in consequence of my linguistic shortcomings, immediately upon reaching a town I have to surrender myself, as it were, to the intelligence and good-will of the common people; to their credit be it recorded, I can invariably count on their not lacking at least the latter qualification.  The little khan I stop at is, of course, besieged by the usual crowd, but they are a happy-hearted, contented people, bent on lionizing me the best they know how; for have they not witnessed my marvellous performance of riding an araba, a beautiful web-like araba, more beautiful than any makina they ever saw before, and in a manner that upsets all their previous ideas of equilibrium.  Have I not proved how much I esteem them by riding over and over again for fresh batches of new arrivals, until the whole population has seen the performance.  And am I not hobnobbing and making myself accessible to the people, instead of being exclusive and going straightway to the pasha’s, shutting myself up and permitting none but a few privileged persons to intrude upon my privacy .  All these things appeal strongly to the better nature of the imaginative Turks, and not a moment during the whole evening am I suffered to be unconscious of their great appreciation of it all.  A bountiful supper of scrambled eggs fried