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Five miles from the bottom of the pass and three hours from Geiveh I reach a small postaya-khan, occupied by one zaptieh and the station-keeper, where I halt for a half hour and get the zaptieh to brew me a cup of coffee, feeling the need of a, little refreshment after the stiff tugging of the last two hours.
After this performance, a respectable-looking man beckons me to follow him, and he takes me not to his own house to be his guest, for Geiveh is too near Europe for this sort of thing to a khan kept by a Greek with a mote in one eye, where a "shake down" on the floor, a cup of coffee or a glass of vishner is obtainable, and opposite which another Greek keeps an eating-house.
Here I meet with a piece of good fortune in a small way, in the shape of a leg of wild goat, obtained from a native Nimrod; a thin rod of iron, obtained from the serai-jee, serves for a skewer, and I spend the evening in roasting and eating wild-goat kabobs, while a youth fans the little charcoal fire for me with the sole of an old geiveh.
At Geiveh, the last station on the Trans-Bosporus Railway, where we left the track to follow the Angora highway, the “ships of the desert” are beginning to transfer their cargoes to the “land steamer,” instead of continuing on as in former days to the Bosporus.
By a round dozen of men, who penetrate into my room in a body ere I am fairly dressed, and who, after solemnly salaaming in chorus, commence delivering themselves of expressive pantomime and gesticulations, I am led to understand that the road from Geiveh to Tereklu is something fearful for a bicycle.
Since leaving Geiveh we had been attended by a mounted guard, or zaptieh, who was sometimes forced upon us by the authorities in their anxiety to carry out the wishes expressed in the letters of the Grand Vizir. On emerging from the door of an inn we frequently found this unexpected guard waiting with a Winchester rifle swung over his shoulder, and a fleet steed standing by his side.
The soil around Geiveh is a red clay that, after a shower, clings to the rubber tires of the bicycle as though the mere resemblance in color tended to establish a bond of sympathy between them that nothing could overcome, I pass the time until ten o'clock in avoiding the crowd that has swarmed the khan since early dawn, and has been awaiting with Asiatic patience ever since.
About five o'clock in the afternoon I cross the Sackaria on an old stone bridge, and half an hour later roll into Geiveh, a large village situated in the middle of a triangular valley about seven miles in width.
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