acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

104 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
to Asia Minor at all. It had the deep wistful
peace of the English countryside, but under a soft
translucent light which never fell in that favoured
land. Considering this sight and how exceptional it
was in the country, one felt that men who spent
most of their time in other parts would seek to
acquire estates and live in these parts. It was the
soft un-Asiatic peacefulness and verdure of the district
that brought emperors and others to old Ibora.
Achmet's recollection of a khan an hour's distance
turned out to be a pardonable mistake. A little
way beyond the tekhe a man on the road told us that
no khan existed nearer than Jelat, to reach which
would take three hours' travelling,—a prospect not
unpleasant on this evening of wonderful beauty, with
bright moonlight to follow. At sunset the wide undulating
country, ringed about by mountains, was
bathed in violet. No mere suggestion of colour such
as is given by distance, but so vivid as to cause
wonderment—so potent that it was seen on slopes
and rocks only a few hundred yards away. Beneath
it the black tents of Yuruk nomads near the road
became deep purple. And these dim tents, with their
dancing fires and moving figures seen in the otherwise
vacant plain against a sunset sky, represented
well, it seemed, the Asiatic invaders before whom
Byzantine civilisation fell.
A bright moon lighted us into the Circassian village
of Jelat, standing a mile or two off the main road.
The khan was crowded, and men, wrapped in rough
cloaks, had already settled themselves to sleep under
their bullock-carts in the road. The Circassian host,
a tall, thin man wearing a dagger in his belt, received
me with hesitation. His difKculty seemed to be that
he had no room—at least not of the sort he supposed
I should require. With his belted cloak and dagger,
and tousled head of hair, he cut a wild picturesque
figure in the uncertain light, and his way of speaking
harmonised with his looks. When I saw him by
lamplight his oddness of speech w^as explained, but his