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REACH GULEK BOGHAZ KHAN 317
was near, and road and torrent below were in deep
gloom. The spirit of an immeasurable antiquity
seemed to pervade the scene, an influence making
known its presence and nature and yet subtle as
the difl'usion of reflected light. This indefinable surviving
influence—as one likes to think it is—may
be perceived wherever men have lived throughout
long ages with stirring and striving of mind and
body, with strong hopes and fears, with vivid consciousness
of success and failure. For millions who
had passed this way the Gates marked definite exit
or entry ; they came in anticipation, with dangerous
purpose before them, or a sense of safety happily
reached ; they had fears and hopes, and left, by long
succession, a subtle impress of their feelings. At
least, if one can hold some such theory of the long
dead past influencing present scenes, one travels in
old lands with added pleasure.
The road went winding in and out down the
gorge, crossing from one side to the other by old
stone bridges. Black pine-trees overhung the way,
great leafless planes grew beside the stream, their
topmost branches level with my feet. In evening
light I saw crag and precipice of the highest, and
snow of the whitest, and pines of the darkest confronting
each other across the ravine all the five
miles down to Gulek Boghaz Khan.
There I found a room with a roaring fire of arduch
roots—a little room reached by an outer step-ladder.
It looked to the west, across the river which went
tumbling by, and thence over a mighty pine-covered
spur rising to the main range. The sky was clear
and frosty, filled with the light of sunset that
silhouetted the trees along the crest of the spur, and
revealed slow-rising spirals of smoke from the hidden
From
village of Gulek Boghaz on the reverse slope.
the shoulder of that same spur, just above the village,
I was told that I might see the Mediterranean next
morning if I chose.