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12 PROLOGUE
which separates Europe from Asia in the neighbour
hood of Constantinople; and once landed on the
other side your field of operations is practically
unlimited, extending even into the adjoining continent
of Africa; for any one who could step across the
Bosphorus could also step across the Suez Canal.
But having once settled on the particular continent,
our ideas were somewhat vague. How indeed can
they be otherwise if you propose travelling in a
country which has not yet been ticketed and docketed
for the tourist ? This product of a modern age can,
thanks to Messrs. Cook and Lunn, already tell, in
the corner of his own fireside, the exact hour at which
he will be gazing at the dome of St. Sophia on any
particular day, or at which he will be eating his
dinner, with the number of courses specified, in the
hotel the outside appearance of which is already
depicted on the itinerary. But it was not to be so
with us. What we should eat and what we should
gaze upon was still wrapt in the mystery of the great
unknown.
X took a pencil and marked a straight line from
Constantinople across the Anatolian Plateau and the
Taurus Mountains to Tarsus. " That looks a good
point to make for," she said. "Alexander led an
army over the Taurus." Then, having stopped
within measurable distance of the sea, she drew her
pencil eastwards across the Euphrates to a point
on the Tigris high up in the Kurdistan mountains;
from here she drew another line following the Tigris
to Baghdad. At this point we were coming danger
ously near the sea, so turning back she marked a line
PROLOGUE 13
in the contrary direction across the Syrian desert to
Damascus.
" That will do for a start," she said ; " we can fill
in the details when we get there."
Now this method of undertaking a journey might
have its disadvantages in what is known as a
civilised country ; for here we are all such servers
of time that unless we arrange everything before
hand, as everybody else does, we are apt to get
pushed aside ; you must, therefore, take your place in
the general hustle and secure your bed and your
dinner and your right to look at sights by ticket long
before you are in need of them. In short, you must
make a plan. But in the untravelled parts of the
East you reign supreme ; there is no need to go about
securely chained to a gold watch which metes out
with inexorable exactitude the dictates of railway time
tables, steamers, diligences and table cfhote sum
monses. Ignore Time, and he is at once your servant;
treat him with respect, and he at once becomes your
master. In those countries where Time has become
master he develops a system of locomotion to which
you must conform or lose its benefits; it will not
accommodate itself to you. But in the East, do you
but recognise the principle of making Time your own
and at once plans become unnecessary. Systems of
locomotion, for instance, spring up in answer to a pre
liminary wish in your brain ; and their existence being
solely due to you, it is possible to use them when and
where you will. You want to get from one point to
another; your wish is passed on, and a mule or an araba
appears at your door ; and whether it be punctual, or