not accept any direct payment, no doubt thinking my having provided them with the only real entertainment most of them ever saw, a fair equivalent for their breakfast; but it seems too much like robbing paupers to accept anything from these people without returning something, so I give money to the children.  These villagers seem utterly destitute of manners, standing around and watching my efforts to eat soft-boiled eggs with a pocket-knife with undisguised merriment.  I inquire for a spoon, but they evidently prefer to extract amusement from watching my interesting attempts with the pocket-knife.  One of them finally fetches a clumsy wooden ladle, three times broader than an egg, which, of course is worse than nothing.  I now traverse a mountainous country with a remarkably clear atmosphere.  The mountains are of a light creamcolored shaly composition; wherever a living stream of water is found, there also is a village, with clusters of trees.  From points where a comprehensive view is obtainable the effect of these dark-green spots, scattered here and there among the whitish hills, seen through the clear, rarefied atmosphere, is most beautiful.  It seems a peculiar feature of everything in the East — not only the cities themselves, but even of the landscape — to look beautiful and enchanting at a distance; but upon a closer approach all its beauty vanishes like an illusory dream.  Spots that from a distance look, amid their barren, sun-blistered surroundings, like lovely bits of fairyland, upon closer investigation degenerate into wretched habitations of a ragged, poverty-stricken people, having about them a few neglected orchards and vineyards, and a couple of dozen straggling willows and jujubes.

For many hours again to-day I am traversing mountains, mountains, nothing but mountains; following tortuous camel-paths far up their giant slopes.  Sometimes these camel-paths are splendidly smooth, and make most excellent riding.  At one place, particularly, where they wind horizontally around the mountain-side, hundreds of feet above a village immediately below, it is as though the villagers were in the pit of a vast amphitheatre, and myself were wheeling around a semicircular platform, five hundred feet above them, but in plain view of them all.  I can hear the wonder-struck villagers calling each other’s attention to the strange apparition, and can observe them swarming upon the house-tops.  What wonderful stories the inhabitants of this particular village will have to recount to their neighbors, of this marvellous sight, concerning which their own unaided minds can give no explanation!