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134 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
the part of the Circassian population to have it
both ways and be sure of something if possible. If
massacre and plunder were taking place, or likely to
take place, at Yeni Khan, some of the clan must
be in it ; to stand aside would be unheard-of blindness
to opportunity. But with the attitude of the
authorities uncertain, as shown by the story of troops
and gendarmes marching in suppression, there would
also be the wish to prove that all responsible men
of the village had remained quietly at home. Perhaps
this motive, working dimly in their minds,
caused six or eight of these picturesque fellows to
stand awkwardly in line while I photographed them.
They were not exactly v»^illing subjects, but allowed
themselves to be persuaded. They knew nothing
of photographs, the camera, indeed, may have been
some devil's glass, but they were seen by a passing
Englishman, and that fact might be useful.
By one o'clock I was seated in the shelter of
spindling pines at the top of the pass—for the wind
was cold—eating lunch and looking back over the
way I had come. In the clear air every furlong of
the road from Kurt Dag-h seemed to be in view.
Here and there a smudge of rising dust showed
traffic. Here and there also appeared villages, but
in all the brown plain, though several hundred square
miles of country were in sight, I could not count
more than half a dozen.
This apparent absence of inhabitants must have
struck many travellers in various districts of Anatolia.
If the whole country is to be judged by the
portions of it visible from the roads, one is likely
to think the population of Asia Minor greatly overstated.
But the question has another side, one not
apparent to those who keep only to the highways.
The fact is that villages are built out of sight as
a matter of elementary precaution. In days when
armed bands and lawless soldiery scarcely distinguishable
from marauders passed along the main roads
and these are unchanging routes fixed chiefly by