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The road continues of excellent surface, but rather hilly for a few miles, when it descends into the Valley of the Delijeh Irmak, where the artificial highway again deteriorates into the unpacked condition of yesterday; the donkey trails are shallow trenches of dust, and are no longer to be depended upon as keeping my general course, but are rather cross-country trails leading from one mountain village to another.
>From the Koordish encampment my route leads over a low mountain spur by easy gradients, and by a winding, unridable trail down into the valley of the eastern fork of the Delijah Irmak. The road improves as this valley is reached, and noon finds me the wonder and admiration of another Koordish camp, where I remain a couple of hours in deference to the powers of the midday sun.
From this point we made a very rapid descent, crossed the Kizil Irmak for the third time by an old ruined bridge, and half an hour later saw the “stars and stripes” flying above the U. S. consulate. In the society of our representative, Mr.
Crossing the Yeldez Irmak Eiver, on a stone bridge, I follow along the valley of the head-waters of our old acquaintance, the Kizil Irmak, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, roll into Sivas, having wheeled nearly fifty miles to-day, the last forty of which will compare favorably in smoothness, though not in leveluess, with any forty- mile stretch I know of in the United States.
Before long I enter a region of low hills, dales, and small lakes, beyond which the road again descends into the valley of the Kizil Irmak.
At the base of Kosse Dagh, which stands upon the watershed between the two largest rivers of Asia Minor, the Kizil Irmak and Yeshil Irmak, our road was blocked by a mountain freshet, which at its height washed everything before it.
Reaching the expected village about eight o'clock, I breakfast off ekmek and new buffalo milk, and at once continue on my way, meeting nothing particularly interesting, save a lively bout occasionally with goat-herds' dogs the reminiscences of which are doubtless more vividly interesting to myself than they would be to the reader until high noon, when I arrive at another village, larger, but equally wretched- looking, on the Kizil Irmak River, called Jas-chi-khan.
They seem to do these things with impunity in Asia. The grade and the wind are united against me on leaving Jas-chi-khan, but it is ridable, and having made such a dismal failure about getting dinner, I push on toward a green area at the base of a rocky mountain spur, which I observed an hour ago from a point some distance west of the Kizil Irmak, and concluded to be a cluster of vineyards.
The Yeshil Irmak, which we crossed just before reaching Kara Hissar, was above our shoulders as we waded through, holding our bicycles and baggage over our heads; while the swift current rolled the small boulders against us, and almost knocked us off our feet. There were no bridges in this part of the country. With horses and wagons the rivers were usually fordable; and what more would you want?
Herodotus appears to have been of opinion that all these tribes, or at any rate all but the Colchians, were at this time brought under by Cyaxares who thus extended his dominions to the Caucasus and the Black Sea upon the north, and upon the east to the Kizil Irmak or Halys.
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