acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

270 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
reflected the uew landlord's unpleasant character. It
still stood among sighing woods, with pine branches
brushing the roof, and water and fuel were good and
abundant, but youvhah took the place of bread ; as for
yoghourt and soup, one might as well have asked for
ale, and the host was a churl. The accommodation,
too, was of the simplest, though doubtless no worse
than in the past. A windowless cell dug out of the
bank was my sleeping-place, and Ighsan coiled himself
away in a little hutch that in the daytime served for
shop. Despite their dirt and vermin, the warm khans
of the Bagdad road, with their plentiful food and
many rooms, were fast growing into pleasant memories
for me.
We now were drawing near to the immemorial
Cilician hio^hroad between the Mediterranean and
the interior, and to the Bagdad Railway as well, where
both traverse the Taurus mountains by the Cilician
Pass. Only eight miles south from Fundukli was
Bozanti, where the path by which we travelled came
in on the flank of the famous highroad. And ten or
twelve miles south of Bozanti was the mountain cleft
known as the Cilician Gates, by which the road
dropped to the Cilician plain and the Mediterranean
coast.
Before going down to the sea, however, I proposed
to follow the Cilician road inland from Bozanti ; I
wished to go along its forty miles of ravine through
the Taurus to Ulu Kishla, and thence take the train
to Konia.
We left Fundukli early, knowing that by sunset we
should be among scenes of another kind. But chiefly
we hoped for food, having been on short commons
since leaving Enighil ; and for two days Ighsan, who
would not touch tinned meat, had been living on
youvhah and water. It was his proposal now to leave
our path and take to the Bulgar Dagh and follow
a westward mountain-track known to him, by which
we should save ten miles, and get bread the earlier.
He soon found the byway after leaving Fundukli, a