"Englishmen are always punctual!" says Suleiman Effendi, looking at his watch; and, upon consulting our own, sure enough we have happened to arrive precisely to the minute. An individual named Mustapha, a blacksmith who has acquired an enviable reputation for skill on account of the beautiful horseshoes he turns out, now presents himself and begs leave to examine the mechanism of the bicycle, and the question arises among the officers standing by as to whether Mustapha would be able to make one; Mustapha himself thinks he could, providing he had mine always at hand to copy from.
"Yes," suggests the practical-minded Suleiman Effendi, "yes, Mustapha, you may have mariftt enough to make one; but when you have finished it, who among all of us will have marifet enough to ride it?"
"True, effendi," solemnly assents another, "we would have to send for an Englishman to ride it for us, after Mustapha had turned it out. "
The Mayor now requests me to ride along the road once or twice to appease the clamor of the multitude until the Vali arrives. The crowd along the road is tremendous, and on a neighboring knoll, commanding a view of the proceedings, are several carriageloads of ladies, the wives and female relatives of the officials. The Mayor is indulgent to his people, allowing them to throng the roadway, simply ordering the zaptiehs to keep my road through the surging mass open. While on the home-stretch from the second spin, up dashes the Vali in the state equipage with quite an imposing bodyguard of mounted zaptiehs, their chief being a fine military-looking Circassian in the picturesque military costume of the Caucasus. These horsemen the Governor at once orders to clear the people entirely off the road-way - an order no sooner given than executed; and after the customary interchange of salutations, I mount and wheel briskly up the broad, smooth macadam between two compact masses of delighted natives; excitement runs high, and the people clap their hands and howl approvingly at the performance, while the horsemen gallop briskly to and fro to keep them from intruding on the road after I have wheeled past, and obstructing the Governor's view. After riding back and forth a couple of times, I dismount at the Vali's carriage; a mutual interchange of adieus and well- wishes all around, and I take my departure, wheeling along at a ten-mile pace amid the vociferous plaudits of at least four thousand people, who watch my retreating figure until I disappear over the brow of a hill. At the upper end of the main crowd are stationed the "irregular cavalry" on horses, mules, and donkeys; and among the latter I notice our ingenious friend, the armless youth of yesterday, whom I now make happy by a nod of recognition, having scraped up a backsheesh acquaintance with him yesterday.
For.some miles the way continues fairly smooth and hard, leading through a region of low vineyard-covered hills, but ere long I arrive at the newly made road mentioned by the Vali. After which, like the course of true love, my forward career seldom runs smooth for any length of time, though ridable donkey-trails occasionally run parallel with the bogus chemin defer. For mile after mile I now alternately ride and trundle along donkey-paths, by the side of an artificial highway that would be an enterprise worthy of a European State. The surface of the road is either gravelled or of broken rock, and well rounded for self-drain- age; it is graded over the mountains, and wooden bridges, with substantial rock supports, are built across the streams; nothing is lacking except the vehicles to utilize it. In the absence of these it would almost seem to have been an unnecessary and superfluous expenditure of the people's labor to make such a road through a country most of which is fit for little else but grazing goats and buffaloes. Aside from some half-dozen carriages at Angora, and a few light government postaya arabas - an innovation from horses for carrying the mail, recently introduced as a result of the improved roads, and which make weekly trips between such points as Angora, Yuzgat, and Tokat - the only vehicles in the country are the buffalo-carts of the larger farmers, rude home made arabas with solid wooden wheels, whose infernal creaking can be heard for a mile, and which they seldom take any distance from home, preferring their pack-donkeys and cross-country trails when going to town with produce. Perhaps in time vehicular traffic may appear as a result of suitable roads; but the natives are slow to adopt new improvements.
About two hours from Angora I pass tbrough a swampy upland basin, containing several small lakes, and then emerge into a much less mountainous country, passing several mud villages, the inhabitants of which are a dark-skinned people-Turkoman refugees, I think-who look several degrees less particular about their personal cleanliness than the villagers west of Angora. Their wretched mud hovels would seem to indicate the last degree of poverty, but numerous flocks of goats and herds of buffalo grazing near apparently tell a somewhat different story. The women and children seem mostly engaged in manufacturing cakes of tezek (large flat cakes of buffalo manure mixed with chopped straw, which are "dobbed" on the outer walls to dry; it makes very good fuel, like the "buffalo chips" of the far West), and stacking it up on the house-tops, with provident forethought, for the approaching winter.
Just as darkness is beginning to settle down over the landscape I arrive at one of these unpromising-looking clusters, which, it seems, are now peculiar to the country, and not characteristic of any particular race, for the one I arrive at is a purely Turkish village. After the usual preliminaries of pantomime and binning, I am conducted to a capacious flat roof, the common covering of several dwellings and stables bunched up together. This roof is as smooth and hard as a native threshing-floor, and well knowing, from recent experiences, the modus operandi of capturing the hearts of these bland and childlike villagers, I mount and straightway secure their universal admiration and applause by riding a few times round the roof. I obtain a supper of fried eggs and yaort (milk soured with rennet), eating it on the house-top, surrounded by the whole population of the village, on this and adjoining roofs, who watch my every movement with the most intense curiosity. It is the raggedest audience I have yet been favored with. There are not over half a dozen decently clad people among them all, and two of these are horsemen, simply remaining over night, like myself. Everybody has a fearfully flea- bitten appearance, which augurs ill for a refreshing night's repose.
Here, likewise I am first introduced to a peculiar kind of bread, that I straightway condemn as the most execrable of the many varieties my everchanging experiences bring me in contact with, and which I find myself mentally, and half unconsciously, naming - " blotting-paper ekmek" -a not inappropriate title to convey its appearance to the civilized mind; but the sheets of blotting-paper must be of a wheaten color and in circular sheets about two feet in diameter. This peculiar kind of bread is, we may suppose, the natural result of a great scarcity of fuel, a handful of tezek, beneath the large, thin sheet-iron griddle, being sufficient to bake many cakes of this bread. At first I start eating it something like a Shanty town goat would set about consuming a political poster, if it - not the political poster, but the Shanty town goat - had a pair of hands. This outlandish performance creates no small merriment among the watchful on-lookers, who forthwith initiate me into the mode of eating it a la Turque, which is, to roll it up like a scroll of paper and bite mouthfuls off the end. I afterwards find this particular variety of ekmek quite handy when seated around a communal bowl of yaort with a dozen natives; instead of taking my turn with the one wooden spoon in common use, I would form pieces of the thin bread into small handleless scoops, and, dipping up the yaort, eat scoop and all. Besides sparing me from using the same greasy spoon in common with a dozen natives, none of them overly squeamish as regards personal cleanliness, this gave me the appreciable advantage of dipping into the dish as often as I choose, instead of waiting for my regular turn at the wooden spoon.
Though they are Osmanli Turks, the women of these small villages appear to make little pretence of covering their faces. Among themselves they constitute, as it were, one large family gathering, and a stranger is but seldom seen. They are apparently simple-minded females, just a trifle shame-faced in their demeanor before a stranger, sitting apart by themselves while listening to the conversation between myself and the men. This, of course, is very edifying, even apart from its pantomimic and monosyllabic character, for I am now among a queer people, a people through the unoccupied chambers of whose unsophisticated minds wander strange, fantastic thoughts. One of the transient horsemen, a contemplative young man, the promising appearance of whose upper lip proclaims him something over twenty, announces that he likewise is on the way to Yuzgat; and after listening attentively to my explanations of how a wheelman climbs mountains and overcomes stretches of bad road, he solemnly inquires whether a 'cycler could scurry up a mountain slope all right if some one were to follow behind and touch him up occasionally with a whip, in the persuasive manner required in driving a horse. He then produces a rawhide "persuader," and ventures the opinion that if he followed close behind me to Yuzgat, and touched me up smartly with it whenever we came to a mountain, or a sandy road, there would be no necessity of trundling any of the way. He then asks, with the innocent simplicity of a child, whether in case he made the experiment, I would get angry and shoot him.
The other transient appears of a more speculative turn of mind, and draws largely upon his own pantomimic powers and my limited knowledge of Turkish, to ascertain the difference between the katch lira of a bicycle at retail, and the hatch lira of its manufacture. From the amount of mental labor he voluntarily inflicts upon himself to acquire this particular item of information, I apprehend that nothing less than wild visions of acquiring a rapid fortune by starting a bicycle factory at Angora, are flitting through his imaginative mind. The villagers themselves seem to consider me chiefly from the standpoint of their own peculiar ideas concerning the nature of an Englishman's feelings toward a Russian. My performance on the roof has put them in the best of humor, and has evidently whetted their appetites for further amusement. Pointing to a stolid-looking individual, of an apparently taciturn disposition, and who is one of the respectably-dressed few, they accuse him of being a Eussiau; and then all eyes are turned towards me, as though they quite expect to see me rise up wrathfully and make some warlike demonstration against him. My undemonstrative disposition forbids so theatrical a proceeding, however, and I confine myself to making a pretence of falling into the trap, casting furtive glances of suspicion towards the supposed hated subject of the Czar, and making whispered inquiries of my immediate neighbors concerning the nature of his mission in Turkish territory. During this interesting comedy the "audience" are fairly shaking in their rags with suppressed merriment; and when the taciturn individual himself - who has thus far retained his habitual self-composure - growing restive under the hateful imputation of being a Muscov and my supposed bellicose sentiments toward him in consequence, finally repudiates the part thus summarily assigned him, the whole company bursts out into a boisterous roar of laughter. At this happy turn of sentiment I assume an air of intense relief, shake the taciturn man's hand, and, borrowing the speculative transient's fez, proclaim myself a Turk, an act that fairly "brings down the house."