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A PEODUCTIVE TERRITORY 147
preserved and are still in use. They are generally
constructed of warm-tinted yellow stone, though brickwork
also may be seen. With their great deep portals
elaborately carved and panelled, their fine blue
tiles, and round tapering minarets, whose sides and
galleries are decorated with panelling and carving,
they are examples of Seljuk art as admirable
as any in the country. Looking at these broken
remains of ancient greatness, you get dim visions of
a Seljuk city in the time of its magnificence, and
suspect that from the Seljuks has come much of the
East's traditional reputation.
From such reflections it is a jarring fall to the
streets of modern Sivas. As matters of enlightened
civic provision, your eye rests upon stepping-stones,
a vard apart, a foot above the surface, by which you
may cross the street dry-footed. You are told they
are of special advantage in the time of melting snow
—which you can well believe — and notice that
vehicles and animals pass them with the easy confidence
of familiarity.
One small characteristic may be observed to the
city's credit in the midst of much that is otherwise
—its smiths have not lost the art of ornamental ironwork.
Many windows that look into the street are
screened with beautiful wrought - iron scroll - work,
which may be bought by weight in the iron bazaar
at prices which seem absurdly low. Watch one of
these smiths making a screen, and he seems to
work by sleight of hand and hereditary skill, so
deftly and rapidly does he give intricate shape to
the metal.
Sivas has not been a great city in the past without
ample and evident cause for its greatness ; for it
possesses the sure foundation of a productive territory.
Around it lies a wide country which, in spite of severe
winters, grows, let us say, whatever a slothful people
endeavour to grow. It is a region noted for its agricultural
and pastoral products. Of wheat and barley,
oats and potatoes, cattle, goats, sheep, it produces