acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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250 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
to the Cilician Gates and the Mediterranean ; and
the sea itself, by this path, was only a week of
travel away. With these thoughts for encouragement
I gave the magic \vord '' Haide." '' Haide,"
Ighsan repeated to the horse, fetching it at the
same time a whack with his staff, and at that we
went out into the dust and wind.
Soon after leaving the khan we left the highway
which kept to the plain—and entered the hills to
make a short cut. Emerging on their southern side
about midday we rejoined the road where it forked
at Araplu village. To the south-west the main road,
leading to the Bagdad Railway at Eregli, and thence
to Konia and Constantinople, went along the plain
and skirted the northern slopes of the Bulgar Dagh
or Taurus. The other road, no more than a horsetrack,
struck due south into the mountains, aiming
directly for the Cilician Gates and the sea. This
insignificant-looking track was, indeed, the caravan
route by which the wide central district of Asia
Minor lying around Kaisariyeh communicates with its
port, Mersina, and the Cilician plain. No vehicles can
travel by this path. They have to use the Konia
road, and go by way of Eregli, which adds a hundred
miles to the journey between Araplu and the Cilician
Gates.
This horse -track was one of the goals of my
journey ; report credited it with traversing some of
the grandest mountain scenery in the country ; for
sixty or seventy miles it was said to follow a narrow
valley between the two 10,000-feet ranges of Ala
Dagh and Bulgar Dagh. In Kaisariyeh I had heard
much about this road. Every one knew something
about it ; every one advised me to follow it if I
would see the country ; and a Greek urged me to
go by araha if I would go quickly and with comfort
he was positive that arahas could pass this way. As
a matter of fact I never found any one, except Ighsan,
who could speak of the road from personal knowledge.
For one thing, it still had a name for robbers, men not