Cappadocia, and I determined to seek among its ruins evidences of the age that had preceded the early Christian. The Armenian priest, whose guest I was, was eager to relate to me the anxieties through which he and his congregation had passed during the last two months. Tomarza lay just beyond the zone of the recent outbreak, but at Shahr, the village which occupies the site of Comana, there had been a “masaleh” (an incident), though he did not enter into particulars as to its character. It was evident that he regarded my interest in antiquities as a mere cloak wherewith to cover a political purpose, and since I was not at the pains to undeceive him--if indeed it had been possible to make my aims clear to him--the announcement of my intention to visit Comana gave him yet stronger grounds for his conviction. By all Tomarza I was regarded as an itinerant missionary collecting evidence with regard to the massacre. The proximity of missionary schools was attested in varying degrees by the acquirements of the population. As I walked through [Illustration: FIG. 222.--TOMARZA, WEST DOOR OF NAVE, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA.] [Illustration: FIG. 223.--SHAHR, DOORWAY OF SMALL TEMPLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 224.--FATTÛḤ.] [Illustration: FIG. 225.--ON THE ROAD TO SHAHR.] the streets I was met by a young man who accosted me in French. “Vous parlez français?” said he. “Mais oui,” said I. “Vous parlez bien?” he continued. “Très bien,” I answered unblushingly, and he was obliged to take my word for it, for when I inquired whether he were a native of Tomarza, he could not understand until I repeated the question in Turkish. My next interlocutor was a boy who spoke English, which he had learnt, and learnt well, in an American college where he had taken his degree. He asked if he might know my name, and when I had obliged him in this particular, he begged that he might be told my object in coming to Tomarza. But I, being at the moment too busy with the ruins of the church to answer so many questions, replied that I had no object, and reduced him to a discomfited silence. The springs of action are different in American colleges.