The moon at this time served us for rather more than half of each night, so that even after sunset we could see the solitary peak of Hasan Dagh rising majestically over the plateau's edge to a height of several thousand feet above the plain. As we descended the scarp to our right we lost sight of this landmark; but our course was decided for us, since we soon found ourselves compelled to follow a gradually narrowing valley. For the next three and a half hours we were confined to a steep-sided gorge. A little before this a man mounted on a donkey, and accompanied by a boy, had seen us, and to our disagreeable surprise turned and followed. We had shaken them off, when in the shadow of the gorge we saw a group of several men. It is hard to say whether they were more likely to have been brigands or fugitives like ourselves: one thing seemed certain, they had no business there. At any rate, they let us pass undisturbed, but the impression was forced upon us that this ravine we had entered was a death-trap, and when it veered more and more to the west we decided to make an attempt to get out of it. A clamber up the rocky southern slope, however, only revealed ridge after ridge and valley after valley between us and the plain, so we had perforce to go back into the ravine. Our relief was great indeed when at 1 A.M. the valley opened out, and we debouched on to the desert past a village.
Before we left Yozgad, Nobby had continually impressed upon the party the need of living as much as possible on the country. To aid us in this he had consulted with another naturalist, and prepared an elaborate list of somewhat uncommon but possible foods. Amongst them appeared tortoises, snails, frogs, snakes—these last were especially nutritious, stated this unique document—rodents, and grasshoppers. There were also notes regarding mushrooms, and how to distinguish them from poisonous toadstools. Tortoise we ate at Yozgad, not, we must hasten to add, because we were reduced to it by lack of better nourishment, but with a view to testing its edibility. It proved messy and uninteresting, but at least non-poisonous. We had, however, hardly come across any tortoises during our march, although we had seen many on the journey from Changri to Yozgad four months previously. In fact, the only item of the list we had sampled so far had been the grasshoppers. We had, of course, also placed considerable dependence on being able to eke out our meagre ration by plucking corn as we went along at night, intending either to boil or to parch it the next day. We had discovered that the Turkish soldiers did the latter very quickly and effectively by making a small fire of twigs, placing whole ears of corn on them, then adding more twigs on top. When the fire had died down they took out the corn and separated the grain by the simple process of rubbing it between the hands. Unfortunately for us, although we had passed a good deal of ready-cut crops, there never seemed to be enough grain inside to be worth the trouble of collecting.
On this particular night, however, Nobby was able for once to satisfy his predatory instincts by looting a couple of water-melons, for there was a bed of these outside the village we were now passing. These were cut up and divided out among the party without further ado, and eaten as they continued on their way. As a matter of fact, the melons were far from ripe; but even the rind seemed too good to throw aside, for by this time we were ready to eat anything: but it did not tend to quench thirst, we found, so the rind was sacrificed.
The going was easier, and with one long halt of an hour and a half we plodded on steadily until 5 A.M. It was then, of course, daylight; and as a mile to our west there was a large town, boasting a rather fine-looking white tower, we resolved to lie up in a dry but grassy irrigation channel. A light haze covered the country, but in the direction opposite to the town we could just recognise Akserai built near the foot of the Hasan Dagh peak. Before us stretched the desert plain, bare except for an occasional nomad encampment; there seemed little sign of movement, even around the town near by.
By 10 A.M. this 19th of August, we came to the conclusion that we might as well go on by day. We had practically no water, and if we were to be in the sun it was better to be on the march as well. The next water shown on our map was a river called the Beyaz Sou, or "White Stream," and thither we set forth, once more transformed into Germans by the simple expedient of replacing the fezes we had been wearing by Homburg hats or service dress caps, one or other of which each of the party carried for this very purpose.
In less than an hour we were glad to find ourselves nearing a stream, on the banks of which were a few reed huts and a vegetable patch with some more of those excellent water-melons. This time, however, there were not the same facilities for their removal, and, as we rather anticipated, their wild owners would not part with them, money or no. We therefore proceeded to the stream, which was perhaps a foot deep and twelve feet across. The paddle was refreshing to the feet; the water for drinking purposes less encouraging, for above us were cattle watering and the bottom was muddy. It belied its name of "White Stream," we thought, as we filled up our water-bottles. While doing this and wiping the mud off our feet, a villainous-looking cutthroat came out from a tent close by and drew near for a talk. We told the usual German story, and he asked for no details, but mentioned there was better water in a village farther on; we could see its grove of trees to our left front.
On resuming our march we did not visit it, but kept due south over the scorched prairie land, varied here and there with a bit of plough. The heat was already terrific. At 1 P.M. we halted for an hour within a broken-down enclosure of large sun-dried blocks of mud. Two of these made an excellent fireplace for the dixie, while dry camel thorn and scrub provided fuel in abundance. Here we cooked some rice and cocoa, which, although amounting to only half a mugful apiece, took some time to demolish, for in that temperature the food was long in cooling.
Here a dissertation upon mugs. If an aluminium mug saves an ounce of weight, it makes a ton of trouble: and Looney's was thoroughly unpopular on account of its unpleasant habit of burning the fingers of any one who handled it. Moreover, it shared the failing of instability with Perce's empty ovaltine tin, which did duty for mug after his own had fallen out of his haversack on the very first night. Its small base was a source of anxiety both to its owner and the disher-out of brews. If you ever think of having all your food for a month or so out of a mug, let it be a squat enamelled one.
While we were eating our simple fare, a man passed ahead of us, but took no apparent notice of our little group.
We marched on at about 2 P.M., having as our next objective Mousa Kouyousou, i.e., the Well of Moses: aptly named we thought, for the parched plain before us would need a Moses' wand to make it bring forth water. No treed oasis round this well was to help us in our quest; the map itself wrote the name vaguely across the desert without committing itself to any definite spot. All we could say from the map was that the well should be almost due west of Hasan Dagh. In that case we ought to find it within eighteen miles of the Beyaz Sou, and that as we imagined was now five or six miles behind us. An hour later we unexpectedly came upon a couple of small irrigation canals, at the first of which we halted a few minutes to bathe our scorched feet. The heat and glare of the desert were indeed overpowering; mirage seemed to raise the southern end of the Touz Cheul—the Salt Lake—above the level of the plain, and mocked us with the vision of an arm of water stretching out eastwards at right angles to our course, until we began to wonder where we could best cross it. As we proceeded, however, it became clear that this was in reality but the broad white bed of a dried-up river.