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Updated: May 4, 2025
Unfortunately, the streets and environments of Torbali are in a most wretched condition; to escape sprained ankles it is necessary to walk with a great deal of caution, and the idea of bicycling through them is simply absurd. Nevertheless the populace turns out in high glee, and their expectations run riot as I relieve the kahvay-jee of his faithful vigil and bring forth my wheel.
As if determined to do something agreeable in return for the gratifying interest I seem to be taking in him on account of this profanity, he now disappears, and shortly returns with a young man, who turns out to be a Greek, and the only representative of Christendom in Torbali.
During this profound exposition of my merits and demerits, the wondering people stare at me with an expression on their faces that plainly betrays their inability to comprehend so queer an individual; they look as if they think me the oddest specimen they have ever met, and taking into due consideration my novel mode of conveyance, and that many Torbali people never before saw an Englishman, this is probably not far from a correct interpretation of their thoughts.
The entire distance between Torbali and Keshtobek, where tomorrow forenoon I cross over into the vilayet of Angora, is through a rough country for bicycling.
Once I wander off my proper course for several miles; finding out my mistake I determine upon regaining the Torbali trail by a short cut across the stubble-fields and uncultivated knolls of scrub oak. This brings me into an acquaintanceship with the shepherds and husbandmen, and the ways of their savage dogs, that proves more lively than agreeable.
A couple of miles down grade brings me to Torbali, a place of several thousand inhabitants with a small covered bazaar and every appearance of a thriving interior town, as thrift goes in Asia Minor. It is high noon, and I immediately set about finding the wherewithal to make a substantial meal.
They are the most headstrong, persistent people I have yet encountered; the natural pig- headed disposition of the "unspeakable Turk" seems to fairly run riot in this little valley, which at the point where Torbali is situated contracts to a mere ravine between rugged heights.
Finally, after fording several small streams, giving half a dozen threshing-floor exhibitions, and running the gauntlet of no end of warlike canines, I reach the lost Torbali trail, and, find it running parallel with a range of hills, intersecting numberless small streams, across which are sometimes found precarious foot-bridges consisting of a tree- trunk felled across it from bank to bank, the work of some enterprising peasant for his own particular benefit rather than the outcome of public spirit.
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