acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

102 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
for instance, which has a typhoid of its own, and
Sinope—but none so bad as this. To pass dryfooted
it became necessary sometimes to go sideways
between Uttle fly-blown shops and pools of fetid blue
liquid, a foot in depth, that the araha was churning.
The peo})le, too, sitting in the wretched kahvelis, were
as depressing and repulsive as their town. They
were shabby and dirty beyond their kind ; they were
languid ; they looked as if malarial fever took them
every week ; and they sat among such swarms of flies
as no one should be asked to credit without seeing.
They sat among these flies uncaring.
I had not gone two hundred yards along the street
before my firm intention of sleeping in Turkhal was
shaken. I would, however, see what the khan was
like. If it should prove as bad as the rest of the
town, I had a notion of getting into the castle and
making shift there for the night. Already I understood
why there had been such a harmony of condemnation
for Turkhal. Already I intended to be among
the worst detractors of Turkhal myself
I mounted the araha at last, and driving to the
only hhan bade Achmet stay outside while I looked
within. It was dirtier than the shops. There were
flies like the fourth plague of Egypt, and their
buzzing made a level unvarying sound that pervaded
the air. Not only were there ordinary house-flies,
large and small, but also those detestable, flat, quickflying
ones which in Asia Minor always accompany
animals. They settle on the human neck sometimes,
and lie so flat and adhere so tightly and persistently,
that they cannot be brushed away but have to be
scraped off, and even then make haste to return.
At this stage I gave up all idea of sleeping in the
town ; nor did the castle appeal to me any longer.
Achmet said he knew of another khan an hour distant.
The idea of another khan was encouraging : that it
was so much as an hour distant from Turkhal seemed
better still.
And yet I should have liked to spend a day in