acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

202 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
native food daily, if he can get it, than a Europeaa
does of his.
On this last evening in Kaisariyeh I was preparing
a meal when the Z'Aorn- keeper entered in obvious
excitement. Another Englishman had just arrived,
he said, and was now in the room next to mine—two
Englishmen in one khan he seemed to find a surprising
occurrence. Great news though this was, it did
not account altogether for the Ma?i-keeper's manner.
But when he went on to explain that the other
Englishman was tall—very tall—and illustrating the
height with his raised hand made it something like
seven feet, I began to understand and share the
Mem-keeper's awe, and hastened to see who this newcomer
might be. I went into the next room, past
a strange servant cooking on the flat roof outside,
and saw a very long fair man stretched on a travelling
bed, apparently asleep.
He looked like a raw-boned Yorkshireman, but as
he sat up his square-cropped hair came into view
and suggested nothing but a German. He proved to
be a friendly Austrian, however, who had drifted
hither on some unstated business. His chief concern,
he said, was to get away from this place aa
soon as possible. As a hospitable man, and one
who travelled with a cook and a case of wine, he
invited me to be his guest at the meal now almost
ready. But I, also, had a meal in preparation,
and being my own cook thought well of it, particularly
of the soup ; so I begged leave to contribute
this course to the repast, as something not unworthy.
As the two European waifs of Kaisariyeh we
eventually pooled our victuals, and found that, with
a little licence in the counting, they made out a
dinner of five courses. My host had all the Austrian
prejudice against Jews, finding in that race the cause
of half the trouble of the world. He discovered the
hand of the Jew in every political move and change
in every capital. In lesser matters, so he asserted,