acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

434 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
while he went to Diarbekr on business.
He returned
a day or two after the Urfa massacre and found
the house partially destroyed, blood on the floors,
and all the inmates missing. Thereupon he remembered
that half in jest, half in earnest, with the
ceaseless forethought in these matters which has
grown common in his race, he and his wife had
spoken of taking refuge, in case of need, in the
ancient rock-hewn tombs existing near the town.
So he ran to the tombs, and went among them in
the evening light, calling loudly, as he said, " for
Zabel, my wife." He never found her, never learnt
what fate had overtaken her, but examining the house
again at last discovered her hand, and that poor relic,
he added, he still possessed after all these years.
For the four days' journey from Aleppo to Alexandretta
the Consul thought I should have a zajJtieh.
The country was excited against Italians, and however
readily an inland Turkish population might receive
me as English, such friendly discrimination could not
be relied upon from Arabs and Turks of the coast.
The Consul therefore requisitioned for a zaptieh to
accompany me to Alexandretta. The regulations,
however, forbade an officer being sent such a distance
from his station, so the arrangement was
made that I should travel along the mail route and
be supplied with a fresh zaptieh at each postingstation.
It was nearly eleven before my party, in charge
of a Turkish zaptieh named Mehmet, a native of
Killis, passed through the Antioch gate. We soon
left the road and took to the stony hillside, following
the horse track as the shortest way to the sea. It
went through an undulating barren country of green
and grey, for between the loose stones grew grass
and wild flowers, and many bunches of tulip -like
sprouting leaves, each leaf deep purple inside and
green without. The weather, which had been warm
and sunny during morning, turned to squalls of hail
and rain during afternoon, and from the bare plateau