United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The old mud-houses of modern Angora, as we rolled into the city, contrasted strongly with the cyclopean walls of its ancient fortress. After two days in Angora we diverged from the direct route to Sivas through Yüzgat, so as to visit the city of Kaisarieh.
Peet of the American Bible House at Constantinople, we were provided with letters of introduction to the missionaries at Kaisarieh, as well as elsewhere along our route through Asiatic Turkey, and upon them we also had drafts to the amount of our deposit made at the Bible House before starting. Besides, we owed much to the hospitality and kindness of these people.
The most striking feature of the missionary work at Kaisarieh is the education of the Armenian women, whose social position seems to be even more degraded than that of their Turkish sisters. With the native Armenians, as with the Turks, fleshiness adds much to the price of a wife. The wife of a missionary is to them an object both of wonderment and contempt.
The fineness of the hair may perhaps be ascribed to some peculiarity in the atmosphere, for it is remarkable that the cats, dogs and other animals of the country are to a certain extent affected in the same way, and that they all lose much of their distinctive beauty when taken from their native districts. The only important industry is carpet-weaving at Kir-sheher and Kaisarieh.
The camel of Asia Minor does not share that antipathy for the equine species which is so general among their Asiatic cousins; but steel horses were more than even they could endure. A sudden turn in the road now brought us in sight of old Arjish Dagh, which towers 13,000 feet above the city of Kaisarieh, and whose head and shoulders were covered with snow.
Later in the evening imagine my astonishment at learning that I have thus nonchalantly quartered myself, so to speak, not on Mr. Binns' man, but on an Armenian pastor who has acquired his slight acquaintance with my own language from being connected with the American Mission having headquarters at Kaisarieh.
The trunk-line passes by Angora, Kaisarieh, Diarbekr, Mardin, and Mosul; and a loop-line leaves it at Eski Shehr, which, going by Konia, Marasch, and Orfa, rejoins it at Diarbekr. It was said that the strong competition placed the Government in the position of the man in the Eastern story who went to the bazaar to sell an old camel, and a young cat of rare beauty.
"Old unpleasing " He made an upward gesture with his thumb, and a noise between his teeth suggestive of a severed wind-pipe. "If she were good-looking I have heard say they pay high prices in the interior, say at Kaisarieh or Mosul. Once in a harem, who would ever know? The road ahead is worse than dangerous.
But the much needed rest we did not secure, for the suspicions aroused by the first glance at our bed-cover proved to be well grounded. About noon on April 20, our road turned abruptly into the broad caravan trail that runs between Smyrna and Kaisarieh, about ten miles west of the latter city.
Word Of The Day