The country continues much the same as yesterday, with the road indifferent for wheeling.  Reaching the expected village about eight o’clock, I breakfast off ekmek and new buffalo milk, and at once continue on my way, meeting nothing particularly interesting, save a lively bout occasionally with goat-herds’ dogs — the reminiscences of which are doubtless more vividly interesting to myself than they would be to the reader — until high noon, when I arrive at another village, larger, but equally wretched-looking, on the Kizil Irmak River, called Jas-chi-khan.  On the west bank of the stream are some ancient ruins of quite massive architecture, and standing on the opposite side of the road, evidently having some time been removed from the ruins with a view to being transported elsewhere, is a couchant lion of heroic proportions, carved out of a solid block of white marble; the head is gone, as though its would-be possessors, having found it beyond their power to transport the whole animal, have made off with what they could.  An old and curiously arched bridge of massive rock spans the river near its entrance to a wild, rocky gorge in the mountains; a primitive grist mill occupies a position to the left, near the entrance to the gorge, and a herd of camels are slaking their thirst or grazing near the water’s edge to the right — a genuine Eastern picture, surely, and one not to be seen every day, even in the land where to see it occasionally is quite possible.

Riding into Jas-chi-khan, I dismount at a building which, from the presence of several “do-nothings,” I take to be a khan for the accommodation of travellers.  In a partially open shed-like apartment are a number of demure looking maidens, industriously employed in weaving carpets by hand on a rude, upright frame, while two others, equally demure-looking, are seated on the ground cracking wheat for pillau, wheat being substituted for rice where the latter is not easily obtainable, or is too expensive.  Waiving all considerations of whether I am welcome or not, I at once enter this abode of female industry, and after watching the interesting process of carpet-weaving for some minutes, turn my attention to the preparers of cracked wheat.  The process is the same primitive one that has been employed among these people from time immemorial, and the same that is referred to in the passage of Scripture which says:  “Two women were grinding corn in the field;” it consists of a small upper and nether millstone, the upper one being turned round by two women sitting facing each other; they both take hold of a perpendicular wooden handle with one hand, employing the other to feed the mill and rake away the cracked grain.  These two young women have evidently been very industrious this morning; they have half-buried themselves in the product of their labors, and are still grinding away as though for their very lives, while the constant “click-clack " of the carpet weavers prove them likewise the embodiment of industry.  They seem