acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

228 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
apart near by me appeared a glimpse of cones in
hundreds in the distance, standing like tents.
In general the cones resembled sugar -loaves in
shape, but some were double, and a few showed three
or even more on a single base. Some were ten feet
in height, others a hundred ; the greater number,
however, did not exceed forty or fifty feet. But it
was the multitude of them, the jostling array of
them, which chiefly impressed the beholder. Nowhere
did you see merely dozens, for tJie glance took
in by hundreds at a time ; they must, indeed, have
run to thousands ; nor could you say exactly where
they ceased. They seemed to choke the valley in the
distance, and in places were so closely set that if
passing with outstretched arms it was possible to
touch two at once and yet be on a level path.
The larger cones were hollowed out as dwellings,
or for other purposes of human use, and held hundreds
of inmates. There were ancient chapels with rude
paintings on the walls. At least one cone was a
shop. Another was a kahveh, outside of which men
sitting over their coffee in morning sunlight found me
a deal more surprising than anything else in the
valley when I halted and took coffee myself, to taste
the drink of a strange world. I asked what this
village was called, and a man said it was Matyan,
and carefully repeated the name several times.
I heard the name with a shock. There had been
a bishopric of Matiane in these parts in old days, and
the notion of a prelate as troglodyte was not to be
absorbed quickly nor without difficulty. But this no
doubt was the place which had given its name to the
see, and nothing here could ever have been greatly
different to what it was now. It was necessary,
therefore, to think that the bishops had accommodated
themselves to their surroundings. Did the
bishops of Matiane live in a hollowed cone ? One
has no doubt that they did ; that in one of these
cones they transacted the business of their office,
ruled a clergy similarly housed, and kept an eye