acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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40 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
stiffly upon his rights, or going without his due of
water. For instance, All, when his time of watering
comes, may find no water at all in the public
channel ; or perhaps the flow is small and insufficient.
Whereupon Ali goes up-stream, anger
in his eye. He has known this sort of thing before
; knows, too, how to deal with it. He has
to go, perhaps, some distance before he finds that
a certain fellow named Abdul has dammed the
channel and is feloniously diverting water. Without
much waste of time in expostulation Ali kicks
away the dam of earth and grass. From this stage
it may be a short one to the next — perhaps only a
step,—and Ali and Abdul pass from mere words to
hasty shooting, being men who carry arms. Thereupon
results another case for the Mission hospital
or very likely two, for the range is short and both
opponents filled with purpose.
Notwithstanding that Marsovan is so meanly built,
and has nothing to tell of a past better than the
present, there are a few substantial stone buildings
which go back for nearly three hundred years.
They provide glimpses revealing that the people had
it in them to create towns distinctive in style, and
satisfactory, and failed of so doing by very little.
You perceive that with a slight increase of motive
to set industry and energy going, perhaps with no
more than a chanofe of one or two theoloa^ical beliefs,
these Moslems would have built towns comparable
with any of the time.
Such a glimpse is that of a tall, massive, old
stone wall enclosing a mosque yard. In the wall is
a heavily arched doorway, through which is got a
hint of railed tombs, of a fountain canopy supported
by columns, and of oriental figures in bright colours
coming and going. Above the wall appears the
mosque, banded in parti - coloured stones, and an
ancient plane-tree, whose huge contorted trunk and
limbs seem disproportionate even to the great height
and spread of foliage. Without the old wall is a