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172 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
of tizek or dried cow-dung was made, and a loaf of
bread offered me—as a rite of hospitality, for it could
be seen that I had bread in plenty.
We had not been here long before Mehmet got
into a quarrel with two Armenians. His alleged
grievance was the inferior accommodation provided
for his horses ; the real cause was that he found
himself in Kara Geul ag-ainst his will. He became
vehement and insulting, and carried himself and
spoke as a bullying master might to slaves. At this
point I ordered him to be silent. We had stillness
for a minute while he nursed his accumulated
wrongs ; then he started up, seized his harness, and
declaring he would stay in the room no longer, and
to-morrow would return to Sivas, went out in a
towering passion. The Armenians presently found
he had gone to the horses, and there, for all I knew
or cared, he remained. As my hosts said they could
let me have a pack-horse if necessary, I was careless
now what course he might take. Besides, he
was unpaid, and therefore unlikely to go off and
forfeit his money.
With Mehmet out of the room the manner of the
Armenians changed : in his presence they had been
cheerful, they now became like people over whom
hangs great trouble. They groaned and sighed
while the schoolmaster gave me the recent history
of Kara Geul, a story of alarm at early morning,
and of pillage and burning and massacre that
followed.
" Of the people eighteen were killed, and some
were hurt, and the others went to the hills," he said
simply, as if speaking of rain, or any other natural
and ordinary event not to be avoided. He added
in the same resigned manner that the villagers went
in daily fear of these scenes being repeated.
The outrage had been done by Circassians from
the Uzun Yaila, under a noted valley-lord of that
district of Circassian immigrants. And now that
Italy, a Christian Power, was seizing Tripoli, the