mine host then comes forward, shakes hands, gives me the letter to Mudura Ghana, and permits me to depart.  He has provided two zaptiehs to escort me outside the town, and in a few minutes I find myself bowling briskly along a beautiful little valley; the pellucid waters of a purling brook dance merrily alongside an excellent piece of road; birds are singing merrily in the willow-trees, and dark rocky crags tower skyward immediately around.  The lovely little valley terminates all too soon, for in fifteen minutes I am footing it up another mountain; but it proves to be the entrance gate of a region containing grander pine-clad mountain scenery than anything encountered outside the Sierra Nevadas; in fact the famous scenery of Cape Horn, California, almost finds its counterpart at one particular point I traverse this morning; only instead of a Central Pacific Railway winding around the gray old crags and precipices, the enterprising Sivas Vali has built an araba road.  One can scarce resist the temptation of wheeling down some of the less precipitous slopes, but it is sheer indiscretion, for the roadway makes sharp turns at points where to continue straight ahead a few feet too far would launch one into eternity; a broken brake, a wild “coast” of a thousand feet through mid-air into the dark depths of a rocky gorge, and the “tour around the world” would abruptly terminate.  For a dozen miles I traverse a tortuous road winding its way among wild mountain gorges and dark pine forests; Circassian horsemen are occasionally encountered:  it seems the most appropriate place imaginable for robbers, and I have again been cautioned against these freebooting mountaineers at Sivas.  They eye me curiously, and generally halt after they have passed, and watch my progress for some minutes.  Once I am overtaken by a couple of them; they follow close behind me up a mountain slope; they are heavily armed and look capable of anything, and I plod along, mentally calculating how to best encompass their destruction with the Smith & “Wesson, without coming to grief myself, should their intentions toward me prove criminal.  It is not exactly comfortable or reassuring to have two armed horsemen, of a people who are regarded with universal fear and mistrust by everybody around them, following close upon one’s heels, with the disadvantage of not being able to keep an eye on their movements; however, they have little to say; and as none of them attempt any interference, it is not for me to make insinuations against them on the barren testimony of their outward appearance and the voluntary opinions of their neighbors.