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SAVAGE DOGS 165
no doubt the shepherds set them on—a well-known
trick of Turkish shepherds when a foreigner is passing
—but I also more than half suspected Mehmet of
somehow prompting the shepherds.
There never was a foreign traveller in Turkey who
did not long to shoot dogs. To do so, however, is
almost out of the question, for Turkish law, and
still more Turkish custom, effectually protect these
monstrous beasts. In theory you are entitled to
defend yourself against them, even to the point of
killing ; but in practice may not do so, except at
great subsequent personal risk. At law it is said
to be hard to justify the killing of a dog ; the law,
however, may be faced lightly compared with the
rough-and-ready measures of the countryside. A cry
like a jodel goes from hill to hill for a shot dog,
and brings the country-folk out with firearms. They
do not stop to argue, but open fire upon you as a
public enemy. If mounted you may gallop for life
and escape, though having to run the gauntlet for
miles. And if coming back you take care not to
return this way, and even avoid the road indefinitely,
for memories against you are not only bitter but long.
So as a pedestrian I went in hatred of country
dogs, all the more for the enforced respect I had to
show them. Nothing in Turkish travelling, indeed,
—neither filthy khans nor universal dirt, nor risk of
disease, nor chance of robbery,—equals in unpleasantness
this plague of savage dogs.
If attacked by dogs once on the road beyond
Kayadibi, I was attacked a dozen times in the day.
After three or four undignified skirmishes, in which
the beasts, bounding into the air and flinging foam,
kept just outside the reach of my heavy steel-pointed
stick, I climbed into the araha whenever a flock of
goats or sheep appeared ahead. I hoped Mehmet
would not attribute this new way of travelling to
my dislike of dogs. Sometimes I thought the faintest
trace of smile appeared on his face when I
waited for the vehicle, but I attributed the idea to