with the work of spreading the Gospel in Asia Minor; and coming into the room where I am engaged in the interesting occupation of returning the salaams and inquisitive gaze of fifty ceremonious visitors, in slow, measured words he asks, “Have you any words for these people?” as if quite expecting to see me rise up and solemnly call upon the assembled Mussulmans, Greeks, and Armenians to forsake the religion of the False Prophet in the one case, and mend the error of their ways in the other.  I know well enough what they all want, though, and dismiss them in a highly satisfactory manner by promising them that they shall all have an opportunity of seeing the bicycle ridden before I leave Angora.

About ten o’clock Mr. Binns arrives, and is highly amused at the ludicrous mistake that brought me to the Armenian pastor’s instead of to his man, with whom he had left instructions concerning me, should I arrive after his departure in the evening for the vineyard; in return he has an amusing story to tell of the people waylaying him on his way to his office, telling him that an Englishman had arrived with a wonderful araba, which he had immediately locked up in a dark room and would allow nobody to look at it, and begging him to ask me if they might come and see it.  We spend the remainder of the forenoon looking over the town and the bazaar, Mr. Binus kindly announcing himself as at my service for the day, and seemingly bent on pointing out everything of interest.  One of the most curious sights, and one that is peculiar to Angora, owing to its situation on a hill where little or no water is obtainable, is the bewildering swarms of su-katirs (water donkeys) engaged in the transportation of that important necessary up into the city from a stream that flows near the base of the hill.  These unhappy animals do nothing from one end of their working lives to the other but toil, with almost machine-like regularity and uneventfulness, up the crooked, stony streets with a dozen large earthen-ware jars of water, and down again with the empty jars.  The donkey is sandwiched between two long wooden troughs suspended to a rude pack-saddle, and each trough accommodates six jars, each holding about two gallons of water; one can readily imagine the swarms of these novel and primitive conveyances required to supply a population of thirty-five thousand people.  Upon inquiring what they do in case of a fire, I learn that they don’t even think of fighting the devouring element with its natural enemy, but, collecting on the adjoining roofs, they smother the flames by pelting the burning building with the soft, crumbly bricks of which Angora is chiefly built; a house on fire, with a swarm of half-naked natives on the neighboring housetops bombarding the leaping flames with bricks, would certainly be an interesting sight.