and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back to the threshing-floor like a culprit.  But the mudir himself is not such a blockhead but that he realizes the mistake he has made.  He is too proud to acknowledge it, though; consequently his friends miss, perhaps, the only opportunity in their uneventful lives of seeing a bicycle ridden.  Owing to my ignorance of the vernacular, I am compelled to drift more or less with the tide of circumstances about me, upon entering one of these villages, for accommodation, and make the best of whatever capricious chance provides.  My Armenian “manager " now delivers me into the hands of one of his compatriots, from whom I obtain supper and a quilt, sleeping, from a not over extensive choice, on some straw, beneath the broad eaves of a log granary adjoining the house.

I am for once quite mistaken in making an early, breakfastless start, for it proves to be eighteen weary miles over a rocky mountain pass before another human habitation is reached, a region of jagged rocks, deep gorges, and scattered pines.  Fortunately, however, I am not destined to travel the whole eighteen miles in a breakfastless condition-not quite a breakfastless condition.  Perhaps half the distance is traversed, when, while trundling up the ascent, I meet a party of horsemen, a turbaned old Turk, with an escort of three zaptiehs, and another traveller, who is keeping pace with them for company and safety.  The old Turk asks me to bin bacalem, supplementing the request by calling my attention to his turban, a gorgeously spangled affair that would seem to indicate the wearer to be a personage of some importance; I observe, also that the butt of his revolver is of pearl inlaid with gold, another indication of either rank or opulence.  Having turned about and granted his request, I in turn call his attention to the fact that mountain climbing on an empty stomach is anything but satisfactory or agreeable, and give him a broad hint by inquiring how far it is before ekmek is obtainable.  For reply, he orders a zaptieh to produce a wheaten cake from his saddle-bags, and the other traveller voluntarily contributes three apples, which he ferrets out from the ample folds of his kammerbund and off this I make a breakfast.  Toward noon, the highest elevation of the pass is reached, and I commence the descent toward the Erzingan Valley, following for a number of miles the course of a tributary of the western fork of the Euphrates, known among the natives in a general sense as the “Frat;” this particular branch is locally termed the Kara Su, or black water.  The stream and my road lead down a rocky defile between towering hills of rock and slaty formation, whose precipitous slopes vegetable nature seems to shun, and everything looks black and desolate, as though some blighting curse had fallen upon the place.  Up this same rocky passage-way, eight summers ago, swarmed thousands of wretched refugees from the seat