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A LAND OF TKOGLODYTES 21'7
himself, threw his head back and cocked it jauntily
from side to side. Like this he had looked when
young, he said—something like a lion ; he had gone
where he chose, and never known fear.
When this curious scene was over — and it had
more human nature in it than is set down here,
as the old man's tears may indicate — I examined
the country immediately before me. From time immemorial
this part of Cappadocia has been a land
of troglodytes. Over an area measuring perhaps
fifty miles or more in each direction, the cliffs and
rocks are bored with strongholds and villages, still
swarming with people who live of choice in the old
way.
The panorama was so crowded with strange shapes
and features that it conveyed an impression of unreality.
An illustrator of fairy tales would have
found ideas in it for authentic fairyland. It was
a district unknown to those who wrote romances
of chivalry, or assuredly Amadis of Gaul, Don Bellianis,
Florismarte, and many others, would have been
sent a- wandering here. I sat in the sun in a
sheltered corner for half an hour looking at this
curious land which had such strange detail and gave
rise to such curious impressions.
It was a country broken into countless small hills
and glens and escarpments, and because the sun
was getting low these made a bewilderingly complicated
display of alternating high light and deep
shadow. And yet for some time I saw the country
as pale jade -green in colour, and only presently
found this to be an illusion. What I saw at first
was the general blend of many colours — of light
and shade upon patches of brown and red and
yellow and green and white, in which the green of
vegetation really amounted to little. I was looking,
in fact, upon bare volcanic rock and sand of many
colours in which grey-green and yellow predominated.
Here and there were white patches which by no
length of gazing became anything but warm white