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CHANGED PLANS 15
It had been my intention all along to walk from
Samslin accompanied only by a Turkish servant with
a pack-horse to carry the baggage. I had reared
all sorts of pleasant fancies and hopes upon this mode
of travelling. So I should join in the procession of
the Bagdad Road—the beggars, and ox- carts, and
drovers, and caravans, stay at the khans, and
drink at the roadside fountains. And so also I
should be able to turn off the road when the wish
took me. For I desired to follow mountain -tracks
as well—those beckoning tracks which may be seen
in the distance slanting across almost every hillside
and spur in Asia Minor. In this way I saw myself
going into deep gorges ; reaching villages otherwise
inaccessible ; striking across country to look at any
castle that might show itself on a distant ridge ; and
perhaps ascending a mountain or two by the way.
In a word, I saw myself as unfettered in choice of
route and immediate destination as any dervish who
wanders free with collecting bowl and - battle - axe.
These were my hopes, and my fancies had something
in keeping. To be in the fashion of the land, and
also to gratify some liking for a picturesque superstition,
my horse was to have blue beads plaited into
his mane and tail as protection against the Evil Eye,
and wear two or three jingling bells beneath his neck
to give us marching music.
But now when my plans came to execution I found
that they had to be changed. With the season so far
advanced, and winter, as it seemed, already beginning,
my chief hope lay in getting beyond the region of impassable
snow before snow of that kind should come.
To do so it was plain that I must travel faster than
possible for a pack-horse loaded with three hundred
pounds of baggage. And further, there was difficulty
about a man. The stout young Turk who might have
gone with me had slipped away, during the time of
cholera, to his home among the mountains by Shabin
Karahissar ; and I did not think with confidence of
any substitute picked up by chance in the khans or