In four hours’ ride, by an easy path up the right bank of the Tokhma Su, we reached our camp, pitched near the village of Kötü Ḳal’ah, which takes its name from a small ruined fort on the rock above it,[221] and another four hours brought us next morning to Derendeh.[222] The town is scattered among gardens for close upon an hour’s ride along the valley. Towards the upper end a ruined castle stands upon a bold promontory of rock overhanging the stream.[223] A staircase, hewn in the precipice, gave the defenders access to the water; on the further side the hill slopes down more gently, and the ruins of a former Derendeh lie about its foot. We marched three hours further and camped at Yazi Keui, upon the grassy margin of the stream. The bare valley, with its ribbon of cultivation along the water’s edge, gave us delightful travelling, but of archæological interest there was nothing to be found, and when a native of Yazi Keui brought us information of ruins at some distance from our path, I engaged him joyfully to conduct us thither on the following morning. He led us into the hills to the north of the river by a fairly good road (it is the direct caravan road from Sivâs to Albistân, and much frequented) and on to a wide pasturage, an hour and a half from Yazi Keui. The snows of Nurshak Dagh, south-east of Albistân, were visible from the huts of this alpine yaila. At its northern end we found a considerable quantity of shapeless ruins, mere heaps of unsquared stones, and among them three small tombs, half-buried in the earth ([Fig. 219]). They varied from 2 to 2·50 m. in length, by 1·20 to 2·20 m. in width, and were built of carefully dressed stones. Each had a door in one of the short sides, and each had been covered by a stone vault. In another hour and a half we came down to the Tokhma valley opposite the village of Tikmin; we passed through Telin and reached the khân of Görün in two hours more. There we halted to pick up fresh zaptiehs, and were greeted by the news that the zaptiehs were not ready and that the caravan had gone on unescorted. I had no mind to be parted from my tents upon an unknown road, and, abandoning my intention of visiting a Hittite inscription in the gorge above Görün, I posted after the muleteers with Jûsef at my heels. The path leaves the valley here and crosses some high ground, upon which, after an hour’s hard riding, we caught up the caravan and were ourselves caught up, while we paused to lunch, by the zaptiehs. After we had passed a large chiflik belonging to the Sultan, we descended once more into the valley of the Tokhma Su at Osmândedelî.[224] We pitched camp above the village in a flowery meadow, through which hurried the Tokhma Su, a tiny flashing brook. On a rocky point above us were the ruins of a fort with a Greek cross in a wreath cut upon the fallen lintel of its door.
We had now before us the roughest stage of our journey, for we had reached the hills that part the waters tributary to the Euphrates, from those that are tributary to the Saiḥûnthe Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean. I cannot recommend the way we took across them, except for the beauty of the high and desolate pass.[225] As soon as we had climbed out of the valley of Osmândedelî we found ourselves on a wide upland, swept by cold airs and ringed about with mountains. The wheat was scarcely up, the grass sodden with newly melted snow, the peaks all white. In the midst of these fields lay Küpek Euren, a small hamlet near a mound which was covered with the building stones of an earlier time, while upon the slopes that closed the western end of the plateau was the village of Bey Punar. Having passed the latter, we climbed into the hills by a shallow gorge down which flowed the head-waters of the Tokhma Su. Our way was decked with flowers. Daphne and androsace, veronica and dianthus grew among the rocks, and purple primulas edged the channel of the stream. The gullies were still full of snow. So we came to the water parting, 2,040 to 2,070 metres above sea-level, according to Kiepert, and bidding farewell to the last source of the Mesopotamian rivers, rode down into the basin of the Mediterranean. The long gently-sloping meadows were rich in grass, but no flocks grazed there, and no summer villages were to be seen among the juniper-bushes. The lonely beauty of these alpine pastures, where nature spreads out her fairest bounty, e beata si gode, fell upon us like a benison, and once again I offered up praise to all mountains. The water-runnels gathered together into a small clear stream which rippled away from its birthplace in the green hollows and plunged, we following it, into a pine-clad valley. The path grew steeper and more rocky as we descended, the valley narrower, until there was no place left free from pine and berberis and juniper but the boulder-strewn bed of the river. At length we were able to pull our horses up an exceedingly steep track through the pine-woods, by which we emerged on to a grassy hill-side. Here by good fortune we found a party of Circassians, who were hauling their bullock wagons, heavily loaded with timber, over ways which we reckoned to be hard going even for our baggage animals. They directed us to Boran Dereh Keui. Before we had gone far we rounded a spur and the snowy peaks of Mount Argæus swam into our ken, set in the midst of the Anatolian plateau.
Boran Dereh Keui is a Muhâjir village, that is to say, it is peopled by Circassian immigrants from the Caucasus. They have filled the valley of the Zamantî Su, and though they are not liked by the indigenous population, their coming has raised very sensibly the level of civilization. Forty years ago the Zamantî valley was innocent of any settled habitation; the nomad Avshars drove their flocks up to it in the summer, sowed scanty crops, and left before the first winter snows. Now it is all under the plough, and the Circassian villages, with their osier beds and neat vegetable gardens, are scattered thickly along it. Nomad life dies out in a cultivated country, and the Avshars are settling into villages, though their houses are not so well built, nor their gardens so well kept as those of the Circassians. The chief town of the district is ’Azîzîyeh. There we changed zaptiehs, and I sat in the konak while the necessary arrangements were being made and drank coffee with the officials. Presently there appeared one who was half a negro and told me his tale in the strong, guttural Arabic of the desert. He was a native of the Ḥejâz; he had wandered up into this country before there were any villages in it and had remained as a merchant.
“It is very beautiful here,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “but the desert is different. I have not seen it for forty years.” And I understood what was in his heart.
Behind the konak a plentiful spring bursts out from under the cliffs. I walked up to it and saw men digging up old walls in quest of cut stones. Fragments of columns and rude mouldings pointed to the former presence of a church, and perhaps an earlier shrine hallowed, in true Anatolian fashion, the abundant source.[226] From ’Azîzîyeh we turned our faces to Mount Argæus and travelled along a well-laid road to Ekrek.[227] Among the hills at some distance to the right of the road stands the castle of Maḥmûd Ghâzî, magnificently placed upon a peak. My zaptieh told me that in spite of its name it was a Christian fortress, for he had seen crosses carved upon the lintels, and only the distaste for further excursions that follows upon long stages of mountain travel, prevented me from going up to it. I have a shrewd suspicion that it must be the Tsamandos of the Byzantine historians.[228] Ekrek, where we pitched camp, is built in the bottom of one of the deep valleys which are typical of the district about Argæus. The lava with which the plain is covered forms a sharp cliff on either lip of these gorges, and in places the formation of the volcanic beds is so distinct that the lava can be seen lying like a solid pavement upon the soil, broken off at the edges of the valley and scattered down the slopes in huge slabs. Before I got into camp I turned off to see a small ruined church of no very great interest, and within the town there are several larger churches, all remodelled by the Armenian inhabitants.[229] The early Christian architecture of the eastern side of Cappadocia was unknown to me except from books, and finding myself in St. Basil’s own country, I seized the opportunity of visiting some of the buildings which sprang up with the monastic impulse which he implanted. Instead of making straight for Cæsarea I rode next day under the slopes of the Köleteh Dâgh to the ruins of the Panagia above the village of Köpekli,[230] and so to Tomarza, where there is one of the finest of the Cappadocian ruins ([Fig. 220]). Both these buildings exhibit the Anatolian type of the domed cruciform, which was already familiar to me, but the decorative details, the engaged pilasters upon the outer walls, the elaborate mouldings, the string-courses carved over doors and windows, are not to be found in the churches that lie further to the west. I sat that night in the Armenian monastery where I was lodged, and pondered over the artistic tradition which these things revealed, and the mingling of occidental with oriental themes which they implied. Not far to the south-east of Tomarza stands among the hills the famous shrine of Comana, sacred to the goddess Ma. With its ancient Asiatic cult and its temples constructed or reconstructed in the Imperial period, Comana was one of the great meeting-places of the culture of East and West; its buildings must have exercised a strong influence over the architecture of eastern Cappadocia, and I determined to seek among its ruins evidences of the age that had preceded the early Christian.
The Armenian priest, whose guest I was, was eager to relate to me the anxieties through which he and his congregation had passed during the last two months. Tomarza lay just beyond the zone of the recent outbreak, but at Shahr, the village which occupies the site of Comana, there had been a “masaleh” (an incident), though he did not enter into particulars as to its character. It was evident that he regarded my interest in antiquities as a mere cloak wherewith to cover a political purpose, and since I was not at the pains to undeceive him—if indeed it had been possible to make my aims clear to him—the announcement of my intention to visit Comana gave him yet stronger grounds for his conviction. By all Tomarza I was regarded as an itinerant missionary collecting evidence with regard to the massacre. The proximity of missionary schools was attested in varying degrees by the acquirements of the population. As I walked through