acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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252 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
dragging pace that I found it hard to keep warm, and
my man himself was blue and chattering with cold.
Evidently we could depend on doing little travelling
in such weather ; in time of falling snow we must
stop ; and to be snow-bound from time to time before
reaching the Mediterranean seemed now a happening
likely enough.
The kahvehs of Enighil were packed to overflowing
with donkey-men and horse-drivers when we arrived.
After looking into several of these places I had to
revise
my ideas of how many people could be crowded
into a room of twelve by twelve. On pushing the
door ajar a little— it could not be opened wide
I would see, through a cloud of tobacco-smoke, the
floor so paved with the heads and faces of men squatting
cross-legged, that the idea of another person
entering became fanciful. After finding all these
places full, Ighsan bethought him of the village
headman, whom he knew, and who would find us
quarters if they w^ere to be had at all. The headman
proved to be a comfortable -looking Turkish shopkeeper,
who immediately shuttered his little shop and
took us to the house of a fellow-Moslem who kept the
village guest-room.
Many European travellers prefer guest-rooms to
khans, but for my part I have always found the
hospitality of Turkish peasants trying. Your host is
mortified unless you eat the food he so lavishly sets
before you, and there is no saying what you will be
required to eat. He may, as a special dish, give you
boiled eggs broken up in a pint or so of melted sheeptail
fat, and the trouble is that the fat is the delicacy,
and not so much the eggs. As a really appreciative
guest you will eat the eggs first, and then delightedly
consume the fat. A roasted fowl may be good in itself,
but is torn into pieces by the bare hands of your
host, who shows a carver's skill—and more—in the
adroitness of his tearing, and the compactness with
which the fragments come apart. And then when
the ^:)i7a/ arrives, it too is likely to give trouble. It is