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BEILAN PASS AND VILLAGE 443
the day. All were Moslems of a sort, but more lighthearted
and boisterous than Turks or Circassians or
Kurds. Some strain of lightsome blood was theirs
at Beilan has ever been a mountain race holding itself
apart and following its own customs, and the difference
that was in this people showed itself here in
their mad whooping gallop and uproarious laughter.
Our road now went climbing easily by long loops
upon bold swelling spurs, with beech and oak scrub,
grey with dust beside the road, covering the slopes.
Beilan is an easy pass—it is a good thousand feet
lower than the Baghche Pass, its approaches are
altogether easier, and it gives much less of mountain
travelling. Could the influence of this low saddle
upon the rise and fall of cities, and even upon wider
history, be disentangled, it would prove to be much
greater than is generally recognised. Beilan Pass is
not the one inevitable way, like the Cilician Gates,
nor has it aflected areas so great ; but it has subtly
influenced Aleppo and Antioch and the movements
of armies, and so has made history, and may make
it again.
I reached the summit before noon, and then came
down to Beilan village, which is built in terraces of
flat- roofed houses on both sides of a narrow ravine
coming up from the Mediterranean.
No great seaward view is to be had either from the
pass or village, but a little farther on the road emerges
somewhat from the enclosing spurs, and then on a clear
day there is much to consider. To make the view
wider still I now climbed the spur on my right, and
thence looked down on the blue Gulf of Alexandretta,
almost to its northern end, and across it to Cilicia,
and in the south-west to the horizon of the Mediterranean
; and so gazing it seemed that before me was
a scene charged with destiny for my own country.
For I was here before the war, when it appeared
that this region had passed under German control
indefinitely, and that German preparations for the
future might reach completion undisturbed.