Soon I meet a boy riding on a donkey, and ask him the postaya distance to Erzingan; the youth looks frightened half out of his. senses, but manages to retain sufficient presence of mind to elevate one finger, by which I understand him to mean that it is one hour, or about four miles.  Accordingly I pedal perseveringly ahead, hoping to reach the city before dusk, at the same time feeling rather surprised at finding it so near, as I haven’t been expecting to reach there before to-morrow.  Five miles beyond where I met the boy, and just after sundown, I overtake some katir-jees en route to Erzingan with donkey-loads of grain, and ask them the same question.  From them I learn that instead of one, it is not less than twelve hours distant, also that the trail leads over a fearfully mountainous country.  Nestling at the base of the mountains, a short distance to the northward, is the large village of Merriserriff, and not caring to tempt the fates into giving me another supper-less night in a cold, cheerless cave, I wend my way thither.

Fortune throws me into the society of an Armenian whose chief anxiety seems to be, first, that I shall thoroughly understand that he is an Armenian, and not a Mussulman; and, secondly, to hasten me into the presence of the mudir, who is a Mussulman, and a Turkish Bey, in order that he may bring himself into the mudir’s favorable notice by personally introducing me as a rare novelty on to his (the mudir’s) threshing-floor.  The official and a few friends are sipping coffee in one corner of the threshing floor, and, although I don’t much relish my position of the Armenian’s puppet-show, I give the mudir an exhibition of the bicycle’s use, in the expectation that he will invite me to remain his guest over night.

He proves uncourteous, however, not even inviting me to partake of coffee; evidently, he has become so thoroughly accustomed to the abject servility of the Armenians about him — who would never think of expecting reciprocating courtesies from a social superior — that he has unconsciously come to regard everybody else, save those whom he knows as his official superiors, as tarred, more or less, with the same feather.  In consequence of this belief I am not a little gratified when, upon the point of leaving the threshing-floor, an occasion offers of teaching him different.

Other friends of the mudir’s appear upon the scene just as I am leaving, and he beckons me to come back and bin for the enlightenment of the new arrivals.  The Armenian’s countenance fairly beams with importance at thus being, as it were, encored, and the collected villagers murmur their approval; but I answer the mudir’s beckoned invitation by a negative wave of the hand, signifying that I can’t bother with him any further.  The common herd around regard this self-assertive reply with open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy,