with cucumbers for desert.  The managers and employees of the, quarry make their cucumbers tasteful by rubbing the end with a piece of rock-salt each time it is cut off or bitten, each person keeping a select little square for the purpose.  The salt is sold at the mine, and owners of transportation facilities in the shape of pack animals make money by purchasing it here at six paras an oke, and selling it at a profit in distant towns.

Two young men seem to have charge of transacting the business; one of them is inordinately inquisitive, he even wants to try and unstick the envelope containing a letter of introduction to Mr. Tifticjeeoghlou’s father in Yuzgat, and read it out of pure curiosity to see what it says; and he offers me a lira for my Waterbury watch, notwithstanding its Alla Franga face is beyond his Turkish comprehension.  The loud, confident tone in which the Waterbury ticks impresses the natives very favorably toward it, and the fact of its not opening at the back like other time-pieces, creates the impression that it is a watch that never gets cranky and out of order; quite different from the ones they carry, since their curiosity leads them to be always fooling with the works.  American clocks are found all through Asia Minor, fitted with Oriental faces and there is little doubt but the Waterbury, with its resonant tick, if similiarly prepared, would find here a ready market.  The other branch of the managerial staff is a specimen of humanity peculiarly Asiatic Turkish, a melancholy-faced, contemplative person, who spends nearly the whole evening in gazing in silent wonder at me and the bicycle; now and then giving expression to his utter inability to understand how such things can possibly be by shaking his head and giving utterance to a peculiar clucking of astonishment.  He has heard me mention having come from Stamboul, which satisfies him to a certain extent; for, like a true Turk, he believes that at Stamboul all wonderful things originate; whether the bicycle was made there, or whether it originally came from somewhere else, doesn’t seem to enter into his speculations; the simple knowledge that I have come from Stamboul is all-sufficient for him; so far as he is concerned, the bicycle is simply another wonder from Stamboul, another proof that the earthly paradise of the Mussulman world on the Bosphorus is all that he has been taught to believe it.  When the contemplative young man ventures away from the dreamy realms of his own imaginations, and from the society of his inmost thoughts, far enough to make a remark, it is to ask me something about Stamboul; but being naturally taciturn and retiring, and moreover, anything but an adept at pantomimic language, he prefers mainly to draw his own conclusions in silence.  He manages to make me understand, however, that he intends before long making a journey to see Stamboul for himself; like many another Turk from the barren hills of the interior, he will visit the Ottoman capital;