acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

96 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
evening in the khan at Yeni Bazaar. At the edge
of the Thames, in a corner of smoky, insalubrious
Brentford, not easily found by a stranger, I had
looked sometimes at a monument recording the
doings of the same Caesar. It told that in B.C. 54
he had forced a passage across the Thames by a
ford at that spot, and defeated the opposing British
tribes. And a waterman with whom I once talked
beside the monument had seemed to bring me almost
within sight of Caesar's figure. For him "this chap
Julius Caesar " was very much a man of reality. With
his own eyes the waterman had seen ancient oak
stakes, part of a pallisade built to defend the ford
against Caesar. With his own hands, indeed—so he
averred—he had helped to draw up several of these
stakes on a morning, when dredging or excavation for
some twentieth-century purpose had laid them bare.
In support of his statement he referred me to the
local museum, where I might see the stakes myself
and read their story.
At Yeni Bazaar Caesar became a more universal
figure than ever. From Britain to Egypt, from
farthest Spain to eastern Asia Minor, you come upon
his name inseparably linked with obscure places.
What travelling it all represented ; what voyaging
under sail and oar in primitive craft ; what journeying
on land by horseback, vehicle, and litter ! Of
his six-and-thirty years of military activity between
his first campaign in Mitylene and his death, the
time he spent in actual travelling must have been
no small portion of the whole. Considering his
and that each country's
laborious methods of travel,
natural features must have required his
day after day, it would seem that no one ever acquired
Buch intimate knowledge of so many lands as Caesar.
Had I been travelling with a pack-horse I could
have gone across the mountains to Zilleh in a long
forenoon, but for an araba the road was roundabout,
and there and back meant three days' journey. I got
no nearer to Zilleh than Yeni Bazaar.
closest study,