a regular Gibraltar.  It occupies the summit of a precipitous detached mountain peak, which is accessible only from one point, all the other sides presenting a sheer precipice of rock; it forms a conspicuous feature of the landscape for many miles around, and situated as it is amid a wilderness of rugged brush-covered heights, admirably suited for ambuscades, it was doubtless a very important position at one time.  It probably belongs to the Byzantine period, and if the number of old graves scattered among the hills indicate anything, it has in its day been the theatre of stirring tragedy.  An hour after leaving the frowning battlements of the grim old relic behind, I arrive at a cluster of four rock houses, which are apparently occupied by a sort of a patriarchal family consisting of a turbaned old Turk and his two generations of descendants.  The old fellow is seated on a rock, smoking a cigarette and endeavoring to coax a little comfort from the slanting rays of the morning sun, and I straightway approach him and broach the all-important subject of refreshments.  He turns out to be a fanatical old gentleman, one of those old-school Mussulmans who have neither eye nor ear for anything but the Mohammedan religion; I have irreverently interrupted him in his morning meditations, it seems, and he administers a rebuke in the form of a sidewise glance, such as a Pharisee might be expected to bestow on a Cannibal Islander venturing to approach him, and delivers himself of two deep-fetched sighs of “Allah, Allah!”

Anybody would think from his actions that the sanctimonious old man-ikin (five feet three) had made the pilgrimage to Mecca a dozen times, whereas he has evidently not even earned the privilege of wearing a green turban; he has neither been to Mecca himself during his whole unprofitable life nor sent a substitute, and he now thinks of gaining a nice numerous harem, and a walled-in garden, with trees and fountains, cucumbers and carpooses, in the land of the hara fjhuz kiz, by cultivating the spirit of fanaticism at the eleventh hour.  I feel too independent this morning to sacrifice any of the wellnigh invisible remnant of dignity remaining from the respectable quantity with which I started into Asia, for I still have a couple of the wheaten " quoits” I brought from Yuzgat; so, leaving the ancient Mussulman to his meditations, I push on over the hills, when, coming to a spring, I eat my frugal breakfast, soaking the unbiteable “quoits” in the water.  After getting beyond this hilly region, I emerge upon a level plateau of considerable extent, across which very fair wheeling is found; but before noon the inevitable mountains present themselves again, and some of the acclivities are trundleable only by repeating the stair-climbing process of the Kara Su Pass.  Necessity forces me to seek dinner at a village where abject poverty, beyond anything hitherto encountered, seems to exist.  A decently large fig-leaf, without anything else, would be eminently