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ON A FLAT EOOF 345
of Ala Dagh and Anti-Taurus in the north and northeast
; to the nearer green hills of Jebel Nur in the
east ; and in the south-east, across the Gulf of Alexandretta,
to the Amanus mountains, ending abruptly
in the 5000 feet of Jebel Khansir standing above
ancient Antioch. On this high flat roof I spent manyhours
in the clear air of the Cilician spring, as any
visitor so fortunate as myself would do.
From this point of vantage you also looked over
other flat roofs and might notice the people's habits.
Each roof had its heavy roller of stone, sedulously
used by the responsible householder after a shower
to consolidate the surface of gravelly clay and ensure
water- tightness. On many roofs were beds, with a
cotton screen stretched round the high posts of each,
for sleeping on house-tops is an Adana custom. Children
played upon these parapeted roofs by day as in
a safe nursery ;
young boys of one roof would throw
stones at boys upon another, careless of intervening
spectators ;
girls played a game of the country— keeping
a ball bounding by striking it with the open hand,
—and on these high airy flats above the street
families gathered in the cool of the evening. From
roof to roof in days of massacre men had sniped
at each other, and firing downwards when occasion
offered had been able to make the streets impassable.
And on them, too, as singular portent, before massacre
broke out, Moslems had appeared, all dressed in white.
Asked by an American from his roof what this white
raiment meant, a Moslem neighbour had answered
that affairs were toward — aff'airs of no concern to
the interlocutor, — and advised him to remain at
home.
At Adana one gets a clear idea of how those
responsible for the Bagdad Railway have judged the
future. They have countenanced no makeshift or
half measures in the laying out here. The Mersina
Railway, constructed and once owned by an English
company, but now acquired by the Bagdad Railway
—with which line it is linked—comes in on the west