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CHAPTER XXIV.
Southward from Bayam Dere—Pedestrian traffic—At Yelatin Khan—
News of robbers—Expecting attack Zaptiehs in search—Fundukli
Khan— Bozanti—The Bagdad Railway—German aims—The store
at Ak Keupru—The Cilician Pass—The wine-shop at Tosan Ali.
The one small window of the guest - room being
closely shuttered I breakfasted in lamplight, and
then stepped out into the surprising contrast of a
morning as bright and clear and exhilarating as man
has ever had the blessedness to know. For winter
the 17th of December— it was the perfection of
weather. Brilliant morning sunshine, the sky without
a cloud, a touch of frost, and the air displaying
that peculiar quality which, instead of softening
distant objects, seems to make them sharp and hard,
—it was good to be alive.
In these conditions the great serrated wall of
Ala Dagh, a liquid brown below, red and white
above, stood clear - cut and glistening with the
sparkle of ice here and there along its edges. Although
this side of the range was in shadow, every
lodgment of snow upon its ledges was visible, every
detail of its ice-glazed cliffs and frosty summits.
From the road to the foot of its stupendous precipices
seemed no more than a mile, and yet, when I
looked at the intervening valley bottom, it went
rolling to the mountains in many folds, and a man
who appeared on one of these nearer slopes was small
indeed. With ideas of distance so corrected I thought