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—
ANOTHEK GREEK MEECHANT 235
of quarters that would at least be warm and dry.
But having entered I had no wish to go out again,
so called extravagantly for two braziers of charcoal
—the cell being intolerably wet—and while these
were preparing looked round the hhan that advertised
a railway. It combined the accommodation
usually provided in a travellers' khan with that of
a commercial khan. The "Agence Commerciale" was
on the ground floor. On the floor above, one side of
the courtyard was occupied by rooms like mine, the
other by offices like miniature warehouses, for they
were packed with bales and boxes of goods, both
native and foreign, some even from Chemnitz. A
foreign atmosphere pervaded the place, and I had
not returned to my room before a Greek merchant,
who occupied one of the offices, spoke to me, and
assumed that I was a German. Discovering his mistake,
he explained that he had seen similar Germans
in these parts. At Urgub my nationality had been
misjudged in the same manner. Evidently I had
reached the shadow of the Bagdad Bailway, and
was in the German sphere of influence.
After learning that I was English and had come
from the Black Sea, the Greek merchant's inquiries
he was inquisitive as a child—reflected the gossip
and ideas of these parts. Was I an English engineer
exploring for an English line of railway ? Was it
true that after all the English proposed to build
railways in Anatolia ? Was it true the English had
bought the Bagdad Railway? Whoever owned the
railways of Anatolia would own the country. A
further summarised view was that the English were
too late, that the future lay with the Germans, and
that although he personally liked the English, yet,
as he put it, they only looked at gold and never at
silver—which I took to mean that the English cared
only for large trade opportunities and not for small.
He closed his remarks by saying that the trade of
Anatolia would be very great when the country possessed
railways, and that this trade would be German