acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

JELAT KHAN 105
appearance became even wilder. His mouth had been
injured by a blow, which knocked out his front teeth
while leaving the others, and in place of lips appeared
now an unclosable void, an ever-open hole from which
issued sounds. After some delay and a show of disinclination
a room was found for me at last. It was
in the roof, and had a ceiling of interlaced pine-twigs,
and the window was an opening in the outer wall.
Pigeons used the room as loft, and I had trouble in
drivino- them out ; and when I was shaving; before the
window in the morning one of the dispossessed birds
entered in flight and cannoned against my head. I
doubt whether man or bird was the more startled.
When I left Jelat at eight the next morning the
heat was already so great that it seemed more proper
to August than November. And when I reached the
wide treeless valley of the Iris, which goes up to
Tokat, it became indeed the heat of summer, and that
upon a land already baked and hot. There are two
parallel roads in the valley, not a mile apart, the one
scarcely a hundred feet above the other ; but that
slight separation is said to make all the difference
They call the upper the Summer Road,
in the world.
and say it is used to escape the flies and insects which
render the lower road impassable in the hot season.
I went by the lower road, scoffing at the idea that
roads so close together could differ much in this
respect. I soon wished that I had followed the native
custom. Hornets, wasps, ticks, grasshoppers, beetles,
and flies of all sorts abounded ; they kept near the
river, it seemed, and the upper road therefore lay
beyond their wanderings.
On this northern side of the valley dry watercourses
crossed the road frequently ; they showed every sign
of sudden flood, and on the hills from which they came
not a village, not a tree or bush, and scarcely a sign
of grass, could be seen. On the southern side of the
valley, however—the side which sloped away from the
unfriendly sun instead of toward it,—was pasture,
with trees and scrub in parts, and several villages.