acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

;
150 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
here one morning to make this point my farthest
on the great road and to see the bridge which
has a curious name — Egri Keu2)ru, or Crooked
Bridge—and is said to have been built by King
Senekherim's daughter. It is constructed in plan as
an obtuse angle, with the apex in mid-stream pointing-
aofainst the current. Much ice comes down the
river in winter and spring, and sometimes piles high
against the bridge, which has been given its curious
form in order to resist the pressure.
Sivas is the capital of a vilayet and residence of a
Vali, whose position is that of the Sultan's Viceroy.
He is a man of immense importance in office. In
effect he has powers of life and death. He rules
personally, and in the Eastern fashion is accessible
to all, so between a good Vali and a bad the vilayet
soon finds all the difference in the world. The present
Vali was called colourless,—for the vilayet had lately
possessed an able ruler not many years before, and
remembering him judged others by his measure.
The able Vali, after a long struggle against influences
which sought to undermine his position, was
translated to the less difficult and more comfortable
position of Ottoman Ambassador at Vienna.
It is told that v/hen this Vali first came to Sivas
the vilayet had acquired an exceedingly bad name for
robbery on the road. Not merely the work of footpads
and highwaymen of the ordinary kind, but of organised
bands whose operations were directed by persons
of high position, both in the vilayet and outside it, by
whom large profits were made. The Vali set himself
to repress this form of lawlessness, as something reflecting
peculiar ignominy on the State. His vilayet
was large — perhaps 20,000 square miles in area— and
bordered on Kurdish districts, where the law counted
for less than lawbreakers, and w^hence these could ride
out with honour upon their excursions and return to
comfortable refuge. However, the Vali did his best
he captured and imprisoned—having no death penalty
in the legal code—but he also contrived to get much