acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

—
400 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
sometimes led over roofs. I crawled and scrambled
over flat roofs of many diti'erent levels, and passed
among little chimneys, assured by my guide that I
was upon the regular road to the place I sought.
And when in wandering about the Kale I reached
an airy, well-lighted room, and was invited to look
from the window, I found that there I was supported
far beyond the precipice, with a drop of two hundred
feet to a little stone- walled orchard below. Thev
delight in this sort of building in Zeitun, and when
such a projecting room shows signs of falling down,
as many do,—are satisfied to prop it from the rock
below with a slim pole or two.
Now and then, through mist and cloud, I had sight
of a low sinister outline upon a ridge beyond one of
the ravines, and found no need to ask what that flattened
shape was looking down upon the town. It
was no medieval castle, but the modern fort, armed
with modern guns to hold in awe the turbulent
folk of Zeitun ; and yet, as Zeitunlis proudly boast,
they captured it a generation ago.
That capture produced the afl'air of " The Bridge,"
with which, one gathers, Zeitunlis are as well pleased
in their hearts as with the taking of the fort. I
went to this bridge—a wooden bridge, rickety and
narrow, spanning a ravine whose torrent is a hundred
feet below— as every visitor does sooner or later, for
there the women of the town once showed the spirit
that was in them. There are various bridges in
Zeitun, but this is " The Bridge," the bridge of
Zeitun's pride, and notable beyond all others, for
upon it was enacted the tragedy of the Jerusalem
battalion. Captured in the fort, these Moslems were
left prisoners in the hands of Zeitun women while
the men went out to further battle. What combination
of hatred, revenge, and doubtful expediency
impelled the women to the action they took would
be hard to judge. They led the prisoners to the
bridge, — thoroughly well bound, one must suppose,
— and flung them man by man into the chasm with