acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

34 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
may see them also if a Moslem peasant receives you in
his house for the night. But in general you travel
through a womanless world, and by so much find your
comfort and not a little of the charm of travelling
gone.
While I sat in the drivers' common-room next
morning, waiting for the araba to be got ready, the
attendant occupied himself in a leisurely manner
by roasting and pounding coffee. The berries were
spread on a sheet of thin iron placed over a slow
charcoal fire in a square brazier. From time to
time he moved the beans, took off those sufficiently
roasted, and added fresh. With a large handful of
berries roasted and ready he began pounding, using
a heavy, ancient-looking, well-moulded brass mortar
and pestle which I coveted exceedingly. Pounding
is a slow process, for these Turkish experts in
coffee -making are not satisfied with the gritty fineness
produced by a coffee-mill. They demand that
the berry shall be reduced to impalpable dust even
finer than flour. There is, too, a sort of ritual in the
brewing, without which a Turk does not get the
coffee he likes. So now, when I called for coffee, the
man poured about two egg-cups of water into a small
brass jezveh—a vessel like a mug with a long handle
—and added a teaspoouful of coffee dust and a lump
of sugar. Then he pushed the jezveh into the edge
of the embers and watched it closely. When the contents
rose in froth he drew the vessel back. Three
times he slowly pushed the jezveh into the dull embers
and drew it back as the froth rose. After the third
frothing the coffee was ready. You may think the
coffee of Paris best of all, or the coffee of Vienna, as
some do ; but in Turkey you will find better, and
whether it be taken black, or converted into cafe' au
lait, as the sort preferred, you will declare that this
is coffee and the others are not.
From Khavsa, the inland road turns down a narrow
rocky gorge along which flows the Tersikan Su—the
Flowing Backwards river. It rises in Ladik lake, on