As already mentioned, this range is called Tchitchek Dagh, or Flower Mountain, the oak-scrub with which it is covered being in Turkey a near enough approach to flowers to give it that name. On this night we made our first acquaintance with sheep-dogs. Shortly after midnight we heard one barking not far ahead of us, and the tinkle of bells, so we again sheered off a little. The dog, however, was not going to miss a really good opportunity of barking, and it came nearer and nearer in the darkness, making an almost deafening noise. The sheep-dogs are the only ones in Turkey that are well treated; some of them are magnificent animals and ugly customers to meet, especially at night. The brute finally stopped ten yards short of us, and as we moved hastily on he sped us on our way with a series of roars.
Half an hour later, to counteract our general depression due to the events of the last few days and to the heart-breaking country we were traversing, Cochrane found a spring of good water. He had suddenly turned off to the right, saying he smelt it, and sure enough before we had gone fifty yards we came on a spring. Here we had a huge drink and got rid of the putrid water in our water-bottles.
On this march we found that if we drank enormous quantities of water—in fact, if we forced ourselves to drink more than we wanted—we could carry on like a camel for a long time without a drink when the need arose. It may here be said, though a digression, that the fact about camels going for many days without water only holds good if they are trained to it. A friend of ours—a colonel in a Gurkha regiment—had told us that in the attempt to reach Gordon at Khartoum the camels with the relieving force were marched for a few days along the Nile and were watered twice daily. They naturally became used to drinking only a little at a time, and when they were suddenly taken across the desert it needed but two or three days without water to kill most of them.
We moved on from the spring in very much better spirits. At 2.30 A.M. we rested for an hour till daylight, for we were now at the summit of the range, and might only involve ourselves in unnecessary difficulties if we went on without being able to see the country. Sleep, however, was impossible. It was exasperating, indeed, to find that by night it was too cold to sleep, and too hot by day. It seemed there was some truth in the saying—
"As a rule a man's a fool:
When it's hot he wants it cool;
When it's cool he wants it hot,—
Always wanting what is not."
At daylight we marched on for another two and a half hours. The whole mountain range was covered with the oak-scrub, which practically hid us as we walked along the bed of a valley. At 6 A.M. we turned up a small ravine off the main valley we were in, and hid in pairs in the scrub. As we climbed to our hiding-places we disturbed a pair of huge eagle-owls. With these birds we were acquainted at Yozgad. "Patters," one of the naturalists with whom Johnny went out that Sunday morning, had kept a tame one. Whilst out hunting he had found a nest in a precipice, and, with the aid of a rope and two assistants, had managed to reach it. The nest contained two baby owls, one of which he brought back to the camp with him. It was at that time only a week old, and merely the size of a fowl, but in a few weeks it became a fine upstanding bird, guaranteed to implant terror within the most resolute breast. At the age of three weeks it would swallow with consummate skill any dead sparrow that might be thrown to it: nothing remained to tell the tale except a few straggling feathers attached to his majesty's beak and a satisfied leer in his eyes. Mice, of course, were as easy for him to gulp down as sugar-coated pills would be to a sword-swallower. One day the youngster and a full-grown gander were placed face to face a few feet apart. Panic-stricken, they eyed each other for a few breathless seconds, then both turned tail and fled.
But to return to our story. While in hiding in the scrub we did not dare to move, though it was agony lying at a steep angle, one's hip on a pointed rock. We hardly spoke a word all day, which was very creditable; but none of us had any desire to be caught again by brigands. By reason of the cover it afforded the Flower Mountain was obviously very suitable for what the Turk calls a "Haidood." From this word, which means "outlaw," we coined an expressive adjective, and were wont to talk of a "haidoodish" bit of country. Towards sunset we felt justified in having been so cautious, for we saw five armed men driving half a dozen cows over the crest of an opposite ridge, and the haste with which they were moving made it seem very probable that they were cattle-lifting.
We left our hiding-place about 7 P.M. and retraced our steps down the valley to a pool where we had seen a little water in the morning. On reaching it we found that nothing remained except some moist earth trampled by cattle, a herd of which must have been there during our absence. An hour after sunset we were back again at the foot of the slope where we had hidden all day, and now commenced a long march. It took us two and a half hours to get clear of the Tchitchek Dagh. It was very up and down, but fairly smooth going. After this the country opened up a little, but once again it became very difficult, with all the valleys running transversely to the southerly course we were steering. These valleys and two villages, to avoid which we had to make detours, cut down our speed in a useful direction to about one mile an hour. During the night we halted in order to get some sleep, but once more the cold was too great. Even during the five minutes' halts at the end of each hour we were chilled to the bone, and it was an effort to get moving again. On these short halts it was a waste of precious resting-time to remove our packs, though we had done this at the start. We now used to lie on our backs without taking anything off, and with our legs up a slight slope, so that the blood could run away from our feet. At 4 A.M. we resumed our march, meaning to go on for the first hour of daylight, then to find a hiding-place and stop there. Unfortunately an hour's marching found us stranded in unpleasantly open cornland and surrounded by villages and harvesters working in the fields.
There was no hope of concealment, so we had to carry on. Coming over a rise, we found ourselves forced to march boldly through a village which, by the headgear of the women, we took to be Turcoman, though this part of Asia Minor is rather out of the Turcoman's beat. Along the road we passed scores of people, mostly women, riding on donkeys. Having once started, however, the only thing to do was to follow a track leading as much as possible in the desired direction, and to pretend to have some business there. Grunt, with his head bandaged, looked like a wounded soldier, and the rest of us might have looked soldiers of a sort.
On the far side of the village we marched across a broad valley, in which were more women working at the crops and some men tending cattle. After plodding on for four more hours, the last three in broad daylight, we at length reached a range of bare hills, at the foot of which we saw a dozen splendid wild geese, but these potential dinners flew leisurely away at our approach. Painfully climbing half-way up a rocky and winding ravine, we threw down our packs. We had started marching over thirteen hours before, and, except for one and a half hours rest, had been on the move all the time, so we were very weary. The daily ration had been about twelve ounces of food—not very much, when one was carrying a heavy load and marching many miles a day over mountainous country.