acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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362 ACROSS ASIA MINOR OX FOOT
After we had been in the khan about half an hour
an Armenian youth attached himself to us as selfappointed
guide for about ten minutes, and did nothing
in that time that justified his office. But when on
leaving I gave him two piastres, on the score of our
nationality rather than of any gratitude for his services,
he tlung the money to the ground and loudly
demanded more. In a little while he was joined by
other Armenians, all shouting like himself and supporting
his demands ; and now, thinking his prospects
good, he picked up the money and thrust it upon me
as a trifle not to be accepted by him. At that I
pocketed the coin, and we came away leaving the illconditioned
tribe cursing frantically, and providing a
notable contrast in behaviour to that of a Moslem
woman we had just seen inside the klictn. She was
baking bread, and when I wished to buy one of her
loaves, offered it with readiness, and vehemently
refused payment.
Dusk was coming on when we recrossed the bridge,
and going a mile or so up the river-side reached the
ruined stadium of ancient Mopsuestia. Masses of concrete,
thirty or forty feet in length, stepped into the
form of seats, were still to be seen, but now by subsidence
or violence tilted out of their original position.
No dwelling or human being was in sight ; asphodel
grew in the openings between the blocks, and thistles
on the hillside ; and from a tall, ivy-covered fragment
of tower an owl was hooting. Yet a thousand years
ago the city was great and wealthy, a rival of Tarsus,
and adorned with bronze gates in emulation of that
more celebrated place ; they shared the same fate, too,
for they were carried off by the Byzantines and set up
as trophies in Constantinople.
As we returned the river was reflecting a crimson
light from the evening sky ; across this expanse of
flaminor water stretched the bridge, its nearer side in
darkness, its archways glowing like furnace doors
and on the farther bank, beyond the bridge, was a
cluster of date-palms, sheltering a low white mosque.
In this Cilician evening scene were recorded many