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CHAPTER XXVIII.
Return to the Cilician Gates—A short stage to Yeni Khan—A sacred
tree—Yeni Khan—A quarrel with knives—Enghsh country— In the
myrtle scrub—Oleander and asphodel— Conscripts on the road—
scrimmage with Arabs—Rain and mud by night on the Tarsus
road—Lights of the jingaan—Tarsus.
I HAD reached the Cilician Gates too late in the afternoon
to see all that I wished, so the next morning,
with Ighsan mounted on his horse, I went there again
from Gulek Boghaz Khan. Frozen snow was crisp
underfoot, the sunlight radiant, the air clear ;
greater
grandeur there might be, but nowhere would you find
perfect weather, historical interest, and rare beauty
of scene combined in such degree as they were this
January morning along the immemorial Cilician Road.
To-day the caravans were all coming down to the
Mediterranean. The winding; road, overhunof with
pine - trees, was dotted with strings of Bactrian
camels ; they filed slowly across old ivy-covered stone
bridges ; their swaying bells filled the gorge with a
musical beating. Thus the caravans must have come
in the times of Darius and Alexander, and thus they
have come ever since ; but a year or two hence this
picturesque ancient traffic will be no more, for goodstrains
of the Bagdad Railway will have taken its
place.
By noon we had got back to
Gulek Boghaz Khan;
an hour later the horse was loaded, we had eaten, and
were on the road once more. We were to make a