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;
ON THE SOUTHWARD ROAD 123
ment of other days. Who now in train or motor-car
is so alive to the goodness of a fine morning as was
the traveller by horse-drawn wheels ; to the charm of
a fair countryside on a slumberous afternoon
; to the
welcome of old inns ; to the food and liquor and
chance intercourse of pleasant lands ? There was
zest and surprise in foreign travel seventy years
ago hard to recapture now.
But at Tokat I found most of these pleasures, and
in full degree ; for I was a traveller doing even better
than on horse-drawn wheels. I had got back to a
still earlier stage ; I was that lordly being of leisure
and independence and capacity for enjoyment, a
moneyed tramp in a large romantic country where
any turn in the road might hold adventure.
With a stage before me called only six hours it was
nearly eleven o'clock before I left the khan. After
passing through the town and orchards my road
entered a wooded glen, with a bright stream rushing
along the bottom, and began to ascend the range of
Kurt Dagh. Long-distance caravans and vehicles had
left by early morning, but the road was crowded now
with local traffic, the daily commerce of Tokat. There
were charcoal-burners' donkeys loaded with two sacks
of charcoal apiece ; firewood-sellers' donkeys carrying
roots and stumps, and faggots corded to pack-saddles
horses with bales of tobacco - leaf and panniers of
maize ; bullock-carts piled with sacks of grain ; and
now and then a few camels. There were also Kurdish
and Circassian riders, aristocrats of the road,
proud of their horses and weapons ;
peasants on foot
wearing goatskin charoohs, and peasants travelling
more delicately on asses. Slowly pacing, with slung
rifles, were two blue-uniformed mounted zaptiehs on
watch against tobacco smugglers.
For tobacco smuggling is a calling which has many
followers in Turkey -in -Asia, being profitable and
held in honour. It all arises from the tobacco trade
being a rigorously preserved State monopoly vested
in a private company. Tobacco is grown under