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A ZAPTIEH ON PATROL 383
The world heard of the Adana massacre, but
for every victim in that there were probably three in
surrounding districts.
At the summit of the pass, some distance above
the road, stands a white guard-house, still occupied
by zaptiehs as a check against robbers once more
busy here than now. It looks over heaving pinecovered
mountains, and as a post must be lonely
as a lighthouse. One of the zaptiehs, mounted on a
white horse and carrying a slung rifle, came down
to the road as we passed ; he was going on patrol
to El Oghlu, he said, and would return the same
evening. Sometimes I think that zaptieh really came
out to exhibit himself, for he was never far from us
during the next two hours. He would disappear,
then come into sight again, scrambling his Vv'hite
horse up the side of a hill, on the top of which, if
it were bare, he stood against the sky looking out
and scanning the country like a mounted vedette.
When we were sure the last had been seen of him,
he would be discovered once more cantering now
through an open glade. And yet again he appeared,
after long absence, galloping this time to a ridge,
down the nearer side of which he came like one
pursued—his rifle swinging wildly in its sling, his
horse taking the slope in leaps, himself standing in
the stirrups. He passed near us, and if not upon a
display of horsemanship I could make no guess of
his
purpose.
The pass may be called a double one, for beyond
the guard-house the track goes down several hundred
feet into a valley, and in a couple of miles rises
steeply to a second ridge, covered hereabouts with
stunted oak-trees draped in long grey moss. Seen
as I saw the trees through a pufl" of wet mist, they
looked like forlorn and dripping ghosts. At the edge
of the path on this mountain-top, among the dreary
trees, was a man completing a newly-made grave.
He had buried a body, heaped earth upon it, and
topped the mound with a few pieces of stone, and