my departure, wheeling along at a ten-mile pace amid the vociferous plaudits of at least four thousand people, who watch my retreating figure until I disappear over the brow of a hill.  At the upper end of the main crowd are stationed the “irregular cavalry” on horses, mules, and donkeys; and among the latter I notice our ingenious friend, the armless youth of yesterday, whom I now make happy by a nod of recognition, having scraped up a backsheesh acquaintance with him yesterday.

For.some miles the way continues fairly smooth and hard, leading through a region of low vineyard-covered hills, but ere long I arrive at the newly made road mentioned by the Vali.  After which, like the course of true love, my forward career seldom runs smooth for any length of time, though ridable donkey-trails occasionally run parallel with the bogus chemin defer.  For mile after mile I now alternately ride and trundle along donkey-paths, by the side of an artificial highway that would be an enterprise worthy of a European State.  The surface of the road is either gravelled or of broken rock, and well rounded for self-drain-age; it is graded over the mountains, and wooden bridges, with substantial rock supports, are built across the streams; nothing is lacking except the vehicles to utilize it.  In the absence of these it would almost seem to have been an unnecessary and superfluous expenditure of the people’s labor to make such a road through a country most of which is fit for little else but grazing goats and buffaloes.  Aside from some half-dozen carriages at Angora, and a few light government postaya arabas — an innovation from horses for carrying the mail, recently introduced as a result of the improved roads, and which make weekly trips between such points as Angora, Yuzgat, and Tokat — the only vehicles in the country are the buffalo-carts of the larger farmers, rude home made arabas with solid wooden wheels, whose infernal creaking can be heard for a mile, and which they seldom take any distance from home, preferring their pack-donkeys and cross-country trails when going to town with produce.  Perhaps in time vehicular traffic may appear as a result of suitable roads; but the natives are slow to adopt new improvements.

About two hours from Angora I pass tbrough a swampy upland basin, containing several small lakes, and then emerge into a much less mountainous country, passing several mud villages, the inhabitants of which are a dark-skinned people-Turkoman refugees, I think-who look several degrees less particular about their personal cleanliness than the villagers west of Angora.  Their wretched mud hovels would seem to indicate the last degree of poverty, but numerous flocks of goats and herds of buffalo grazing near apparently tell a somewhat different story.  The women and children seem mostly engaged in manufacturing cakes of tezek (large flat cakes of buffalo manure mixed with chopped straw, which are “dobbed” on the outer walls to dry; it makes very good fuel, like the “buffalo chips” of the far West), and stacking it up on the house-tops, with provident forethought, for the approaching winter.