acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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249
CHAPTEE XXIII.
The caravan track to the Mediterranean—Heavy snow at last—The guestroom
at Enighil—Eobbers before us—Circassians at Kavluk Tepe
—A Turkish burying-ground—A place of memories for Ighsan
Under Ala Dagh — The guest-house at Bayam Dere — A morning
visitor challenged.
There could be no doubt of the season when I turned
out of the khan at Develi Kara Hissar to resume my
southward road. The sky was overcast and threatening,
the wind bitterly cold, and all the north was
piled with masses of rounded leaden clouds, scarcely
visible in the general obscurity except for a steely
grey light about their edges. Snow, you would say,
and much of it, was close at hand.
I had cherished some hope of turning westward
again from this place, and reaching another part of
the cave-dwellers' country ; but the weather, and the
touch of fever which had not yet altogether gone,
dissuaded me from any new detour. Depression, also,
was abroad this morning. Dust came flying in clouds
down the village street, and with it a few scurrying
flakes of snow. The forlorn country, the mud-built
khan, across the way a dilapidated orchard wall of
sun-dried bricks topped w^ith a thatching of dead
twigs,—all made a picture from which the glamour
of travel had disappeared. And yet I was about to
enter the finest portion of the journey, the part
to which I had looked forward with the greatest
anticipation. By evening I should be in the long,
narrow, mountain-enclosed valley which leads down