acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

—
91
CHAPTER IX.
Market-folk at Amasia—Many races—Rock-dwellers—Begging children
A professional
Bazaar Khan—Zilleh and Julius Caesar.
beggar—Wayside shop—A swaggering Kurd— Yeni
LEFT Amasia on a morning when country-folk were
I
coming to market, and for miles I travelled against
a stream of peasants and animals. In every land
market-day provides the finest opportunity for studying
the people ; but in Asia Minor, with its successive
hordes of conquerors and invaders, and hostile
faiths which prevent the mingling of blood, the
crowded market-places make history visible.
It may
be questioned whether in an equal area and under
one government so many different races can be found
elsewhere.
On market-day in any Anatolian town you see a
people of such varied origin that no one type can be
said to predominate. You could not even generalise
and say that on the whole they were a dark people
or a fair, or a blend of dark and fair. They are of
every sort who ever came here, for blending is incomplete.
On the road this morning I passed seven
or eight hundred countrymen in an hour, and saw
a people as diverse as history makes their origin.
There were ruddy men with light-brown hair, redhaired
men, albinos, rnen almost black, and others
who were merely dark. In feature, too, was as much
variety as in complexion. Some faces reminded of
hawks, others were heavy and ill-formed, a few so