acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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302 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
Ak Keupru, passed the German workshops and
quarters, and skirted the little plain or open ground
among the mountains at Rozanti where Cyrus camped
with his army. And here a great commotion began
among the heavy clouds impounded in the gorge.
A strong draught of wind was coming down the
deep valley under Ala Dagh and stirring the embayed
clouds. They broke up into great rounded
masses and floated slowly towards the south, and
though so light by nature, had the ponderous revolving
movement of planets, and even gave the impression
of immense inertia having to be overcome
before they could be set in motion. As they parted
and moved they revealed now and then black crags
and pines and fixed white slopes, not only between
but above them in the startling majesty of four or
five thousand feet of abrupt elevation. Cloud and
precipice and crag together, when the heights are
really great, make the most impressive aspect of all
mountain scenery. A crag or front of precipice
suddenly revealed almost overhead, where you had
thought all clear to the sky, gains a quality of surprise
it never has when seen with all its surroundings
in clear weather. Startling unexpected glimpses of
this kind I had here ; now and then I would see
between the clouds snow-flecked rocks and pine-trees
seemingly standing without base in the sky. And
then the vision would pass, but only to open in fresh
variety in another quarter.
At this point in the plain, just beside Rozanti,
the highway turned sharply towards the south for
the Cilician Gates. Rut the Chakia went forward
towards the east, seeking its gorge, by which, in
some thirty miles, it falls nearly 3000 feet to the
Cilician plain. With the river went also the Ragdad
Railway line. Rut that was aiming for its tunnel,
whence in long curves, and many rock-cuttings, and,
as some said, by a great steel viaduct as well, it
would reach the plain and Adana and be half-way
to Ragdad. In the dull light I saw its embank-