acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

236 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
—two self-evident truisms to any one who goes about
in Asia Minor. From this district onward, as I
travelled to the south and west, the Bagdad Railway
and the Germans were in all men's mouths.
Despite its commerce, Nevshehr was such a wretched
little town that half an hour in its streets the next
morning made that short time seem wasted, and even
the castle could not establish interest. So leaving
the horse here we set out before nine to spend the
day in Nar and Chat, as villages said to be well
worth seeing.
Within a couple of miles Nar appeared unexpectedly.
It opened at my feet, like a vast quarry
in a gently rolling country that allowed no view of
what was coming. I found myself on the edge of a
cliff looking into a valley four or five hundred yards
in width, two or three times as long, and perhaps a
hundred and fifty feet in depth. The village lay
under the farther cliff, white and glistening in the
morning sun, and the intervening space, and all
other spaces in the valley bottom, were filled with
gardens and vineyards and green patches of grass.
A stream that tumbled into the valley was carried
away at once in various channels, for purposes
of irrigation. The impressions given by Nar as I
looked from the edge of the brown and barren plateau,
were of autumn foliage, green grass, and yellow rocks,
the sound of splashing water, and bright warm sunshine
over all.
And when I clambered down the cliff, and crossing
the valley of gardens entered the village, it was even
better than its promise. Clean, narrow, sandy paths
wound about and went up and down among rocks,
and vines, and trees, and quaint buildings, and
running streams, with the unexpected at every turn.
A path, narrow as a goat -track, would take me
round, or perhaps over, a great detached mass of
yellowish rock, and on the other side would be
latticed windows peeping from the surface of this
same rock, for it was in fact a dwelling. Steep