had a plate, knife, fork, and spoon, the three former being seldom, and then with great difficulty, used by my vis-à-vis. When the soup, which stood in the middle, was uncovered, my host, having arranged a napkin over his breast and pulled up his sleeve, set the example of dipping into the tureen, and then I did the same, wishing that it was nearer to me. After each dish he saluted me by passing his hand to his breast, mouth, and forehead,-indicating the devotion of heart, lips, and head to my service: the eldest son, who waited most humbly upon us, watched my movements as closely as a dog expecting its share of every mouthful. A dish of brain-fritters succeeded; chickens, birds (which we had shot), pelaf, and sweets followed. When our formal meal was over, the son brought a basin, having a false bottom like an inverted colander, at the top of which lay a piece of soap;

also a water-ewer, and a towel handsomely embroidered with gold. The basin was first presented to me, and the son continued to pour water through my hands; my host made a longer ceremony of it. In the operation of washing is seen a strong instance of the delicacy of this nation; so great is their horror of anything unclean, that by the contrivance above referred to they avoid even the sight of the

soiled water into which among other nations the hands are repeatedly dipped. In the fonts at the mosques the water always trickles through the hands from the tap of a cistern, thus avoiding the inconvenience of the former mode, which requires the assistance of a servant in washing the hands. After we had completed our meal, two of the sons, the child, and my servant ate theirs at the lower part of the room, attended by numerous servants. The sons alone are privileged to wait upon their father, filling his pipe, presenting his coffee, and sitting looking at him for hours together; and they never all leave the room while he remains. A servant seldom or never enters the apartment unless to attend to the fire.

The cooking is excellent, and nothing objectionable is met with in it; no garlic of Italy, sour greens of Germany, or unknown compounds of France. The kymack is excellent here, and is fully an inch thick; I see it sold in the bazaars in plates, as our cream-cheeses are, scantily scattered over with carraway seeds. The bread is all good, but the common bread is peculiar in appearance, being as thin and soft as a Derbyshire oat-cake: meat, eggs, etc. are brought to table wrapped up in it, in the manner in which fish is folded in a napkin; its taste is the same as that of the other bread, being made of pure wheaten flour. I observe that many persons here form this bread into a kind of cone, which serves as a spoon or fork in eating their almost liquid food, thus keeping their fingers clean.

On Tuesday, March 27th, I left Kootaya for Altuntash. The road was toward the south, and very like the one to Æzani, there being not the slightest change in the nature of the soil or its produce. We passed over various hills, descending frequently to cross a rapid river, whose course showed that we were gradually attaining a higher elevation; and at thirty miles' distance we entered the extensive plain in which the few huts of Altuntash stand. This perfectly level plain

must be at least fifty miles long and twenty wide, and these extensive flats occur perhaps six thousand feet above the sea. The spring has not yet arrived; a few men are at work ploughing, but the country has at present the appearance of the Downs at Brighton during the winter, there being not a tree to be seen.

Birds of endless variety, many of them unknown to me in England, form the only objects of interest to the traveller. I observed partridges with black heads, wings, and legs, brownish backs, and white breasts; another bird with a forked tail (probably the pratincole); a species of plover, very different from the one common with us, which also is here seen in myriads; a little bird with white body and black wings and head*; the red duck, and flocks of geese, ducks, snipes, and other water-fowl. I found here the common cuckoo at an earlier season and in colder weather than it meets on its visits to England. I counted a hundred and eighty storks fishing or feeding in one small swampy place not an acre in extent. The land here is used principally for breeding and grazing cattle, which are to be seen in herds of many hundreds.

The village of Altuntash consists of a number of large flat-roofed huts and cattle-sheds, on the tops of which are placed stacks of provender, in the form of large haycocks. The people sit and indeed spend much of their time upon the tops of the buildings, probably on account of the frequent floods and the dampness of the ground, as well as because from this slight elevation they can command a view of the whole plain with their herds of cattle. Here I had the usual present of kymack, in the middle of which was an excellent honeycomb. My servant went out to shoot birds, and at breakfast-time brought back six starlings for dinner, and three rare birds, which he has since skinned for Muscicapa leuconotus, or White-backed Flycatcher. + Ciconia alba.

stuffing; among them are the spur-winged plover* and a grey hawk.

March 28th.—The road for thirty-six miles beyond this village was only varied by being still more dreary; we have scarcely seen a single tree, and not a flower. The stalks of last year's opium crops and the brown grass covered the earth, partly concealing the stratum of opaque agate-stone, which, on some of the most elevated parts of the hills varied to veins of a hard, burnt, slaty substance. On entering the village of Sichanleé all the walls are of grey scoria or lava, the same as I observed near Léfky and Oneóenoo; here are also rocks rising with crags, formed by the perpendicular strata, such as I noticed on quitting the range of Olympus. I am now on the range of Taurus. My route has hitherto been directly across this table-land, entirely of volcanic production, for above one hundred miles, besides travelling thirty miles east, and as far west, without seeing its bounds. Sichanleé is another village consisting only of a few cattlesheds, and has its plain of thirty miles in width extending before it.

March 29th.-Another day's ride of forty-four miles has been still more dreary, with not a flower and scarcely a tree in the whole distance. For the first ten miles I passed a series of hills formed of a variety of loose stones, principally of grey lava, then a long plain with no vegetation at present springing, the land being used only for rearing cattle and growing poppies for opium. The town of Sandookleé stands at the end of a plain, backed by the high and now snow-covered mountains of the Taurus range. The branches of the chain which have crossed our road are of a spurious kind of granite very similar to that at Pergamus, which country also I judged to be volcanic, after having seen it from the range of mountains at the back of the city looking

* Charadrius cristatus, or Crested Plover.

towards the north-east. I have mentioned finding at Enáe many basaltic columns, and that the agates used in the straw-cutting machines were brought from the neighbourhood or from the other side of the mountain, which I know to be granite; this may probably bring Ida also into the range bounding to the north-west the immense tract of volcanic production. I shall be heartily glad to leave it, and to reach a climate more genial both to vegetable and animal life.

I am now writing in a room in Bállook, the most dreary of villages. Tomorrow I shall descend, and expect to find a great difference in the season; a month ago the trees were bursting into leaf in the west country, and above two months since at Syra the corn was beginning to show the ear, whilst here they have only in a few places now begun to plough and sow.

I am at this moment sitting at dinner, stared at by fourteen Turks, all complimentary visitors, who have watched every mouthful I have taken, and are now secretly looking at and talking of me. I was so much annoyed at Altuntash the night before last by this custom of the country, and by the repetition of it by the people again appearing the next morning early with cream and honey as an excuse for remaining to see me dress, that I determined to put a stop to it, at the risk of offending them, rather than have a number of men waiting to see me turn out of my bed; and I gave directions to my servant accordingly. On inquiring afterwards how he had kept them out, I found that he had represented me as unwell, and not able to bear the talking; and thus both I and my servant were left to pursue our occupations undisturbed. These people are so sociable that no one is ever alone, and I believe that I must occasionally represent myself as an invalid, in order to get time for writing and the other occupations of a traveller.

March 30th, Catchíburloo (meaning Goat-country).—I