We have left the peak El Divan far behind. It is 4900 feet, so we must have climbed some 3000 feet above Angora. The country has now changed again to the more barren higher hills. A thunder shower surprised us on the top of one, but it cleared the air immensely. Then our cart broke down, and they repaired the pole with a pine tree growing near.
My wonder at these carts increases daily. Rattling and loosely bolted and wobbling, they appear to be on the point of breaking down every minute. Sometimes three of the tyres of our cart simultaneously were almost off, and the pole hung between the body of the cart and the tree often quite detached. If the wheel slips off they bash it on with a rock or lump of wood, and, like Turkey itself, it just goes on.
At 3 p.m. we reached the small town of Changrai, the only place of any importance between Angora and Kastamuni. We were frightfully done, but luck ordained it that we were bivouacked by a stream and under some trees quite close to the town.
Changrai is a pleasant little town with ten mosques on the steep hillside, heights all round, and many green orchards all about. We got honey, apples, and apricots, fairly cheap. I saw the Angora goat at close quarters. He is a classy little fellow, small, and prettily shaped, with fine bright eyes and carrying the most spotless silken white fleece in the world.
July 26th.—We left Changrai about 9 a.m. I had managed to change to another broken cart which would support me. It was more comfortable, and I travelled alone with the choush, enjoying my own thoughts and amusing myself by watching the antics of the goats or weaving romance around the feet of every goatherd. I could stretch my limbs, and I thanked God I was left to enjoy the peace of the mountain heights alone with a pipe. My cart being broken we were far in the rear of the column. At the hills I drove, and so escaped walking, the driver, a huge fellow, walking to watch his cart, and perhaps not unduly strain his repairs. As for me, my weight had fallen from ten stone twelve pounds to considerably under nine stone, so this came in convenient just now. In the afternoon we followed a track fringed by deep precipices crossed only by goat tracks. We camped in a gully near a village, to which we were not permitted to go. A few loaves arrived for us. We were very hungry in this spot, and the cold night sharpened up one's craving for food. We made some cocoa and soup, and after a spot of cognac like nothing quite else on earth we slept—for a time—until we discovered we were on ant-hills. I have since decided to back a squadron of red ants on the war-path against two battalions of Angora bugs. It was very cold, but the ants kept us moving.
July 27th.—We made an early start just after the dawn. We went down, down, down for 2000 feet, and then gradually up again over hills and gullies. We passed some well-worn Hittite caves, like watch-keepers of the valley below. These quaint people that sprinted about among primæval dews, and about whom so little is known, must have had a queer life of it in those high detached and lonely caves. They selected inaccessible places, like the eyrie of the eagle.
We rested at midday from eleven till one. Two goats were killed, but as we had no money we did without. The note is of no value in the country, and of little value in the town. No change can be got for any, however big the note is. Two of our officers we had to leave behind at Changrai sick with fever. We subscribed some cash for them. I was glad to be able to keep going still, although I often felt fearfully nauseous and weak, with a thundering headache, at which time the cart generally started some of its gymnastic tricks. Malaria was still on me.
The big climb now lay ahead of us. We pushed on. The scenery became much more interesting. The forest thickened, and instead of chestnut and beech appeared the pinus insignis and the mountain fir. We went up and up. Again I was reminded of Thüringen in Germany, and this time it was much more like it. The road grew steeper, the ravines larger, and the courses of winter's mountain torrents were now dry rocky boulder paths. The mountain fir with its drooping branches stood erect in marshalled battalions on the mountain slopes in the valleys, the tops swaying to the eternal music of the mountains. We quenched our thirst at excellent falls and springs on the way. It grew from chilly to very cold. Our blood was in a very poor condition, and the biting wind bit clean through one. We were now at the last climb of (Mount) El Ghaz Dagh, 5481 feet high, the ridge of which we were to cross being 4500. At five o'clock other horses gave out, and ours were taken, so I cramped up in another vehicle with the choush, from whom I understood by signs that we had in our turn invested Kut. Our heavy guns will soon shake it to pieces if we do invest it.
It was slow work to the top of the peak, but once over we descended rapidly in the face of an icy wind for two hours. Tiny log-built hamlets lay clustered up together for warmth on the sides of the valleys. We followed the main valley until the stream widened at a saw-mill. There we lit fires and made ourselves warm and cooked some soup. We slept inside dark empty rooms in the mill, and here struck a new pest. They were swarms of lice and fleas, and we did a shikar for them most of the night. I arose early feeling a rhythm of returning health. The cold bracing air of the mountains had undoubtedly done me a lot of good, and I felt stronger, although colitis and malaria still troubled me, and everything we ate was followed by sharp abdominal pains—a legacy of the siege. I washed in the icy stream by the light of dawn. What a magnificent morning it was! The last mists of night floated away, and left the terraces of bronze-green firs shimmering in the morning sun and climbing up to the blue of heaven on the white sheets of El Ghaz Dagh. This would make an excellent trout stream. My last tin of milk and sugar which had kept me going so far was finished. My own cart had appeared in the night, and I left in it at 7 a.m. After a few miles of fern-edged brooks that tumbled along quite New Zealandy, we reached the plain again, and followed a road among scantily cropped stretches until three o'clock, when my driver pointed away to the right and said the one word. "Kastamuni!" Turning around I beheld far away in a treeless basin a reddish-brown patch which proved to be the clay tiles of houses. In the distance it appeared as a brown-carpeted dip sunk down beneath the almost treeless grassy plain. This, then, was my first glimpse of our immediate bourne.
We were divided into two columns outside the town—evidently intended for different houses. I now learnt that in previous columns the officers of British regiments, including the R.F.A., my own regiment, had gone to Yozgard, due east from Angora. This was rather bad luck in a way, as among them were most of the officers I knew best.