acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

246 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
the old khan did not last above an hour ; but the
day remained cold and gloomy, and though I was
still skirting the base of Argaeus, nothing of him
could be seen. The road kept to a sandy plain,
with marshes upon the left which soon merged into a
lake. It was the beginning of that sheet of water,
twenty miles in length, which extends along the
western foot of the mountain and receives the rainfall
of a great basin with no outlet to the sea. It
spreads over a wide expanse of country in winter
and spring, and shrinks by evaporation during dry
weather, but at its lowest remains a large lake.
On this dreary plain the road almost disappeared,
and traffic followed the course which individual or
beast preferred. The only vegetation was dead
thistles, standing as bushes with indigo-blue stems
—one of four hundred varieties in this home of all
the thistle kind. Now and then appeared a hurrying
araha, or a string of crawling bullock-carts, or
a caravan slowly plodding its way northwards ; and
scattered over the plain were wandering camels, in
the distance looking like beetles. Without obvious
cause skeletons and carcases of camels and donkeys
seemed more numerous here than elsewhere ; and
vultures were ever in sight, as if they found the
plain a feeding-ground beyond the ordinary. At a
watering-place in the midst of this desolation the
sign-manual of old Rome appeared — one of her
ponderous milestones telling that an important road
had passed near by : the road between old Csesarea
and the Mediterranean ; a highway, in its time, great
and crowded as any in the country. The stone had
been uprooted and still further dishonoured by beinghollowed
into a drinking-trough for animals.
Although Argaeus remained closely hidden, the
outlook on the opposite side of the plain was
better ; for there, during the greater part of the day,
I had before me as visible goal the dark castle of Develi
Kara Hissar, standing in trenchant silhouette against
a gloomy sky, upon its ridge a thousand feet above