Before we left Yozgad, Nobby had continually impressed upon the party the need of living as much as possible on the country. To aid us in this he had consulted with another naturalist, and prepared an elaborate list of somewhat uncommon but possible foods. Amongst them appeared tortoises, snails, frogs, snakes--these last were especially nutritious, stated this unique document--rodents, and grasshoppers. There were also notes regarding mushrooms, and how to distinguish them from poisonous toadstools. Tortoise we ate at Yozgad, not, we must hasten to add, because we were reduced to it by lack of better nourishment, but with a view to testing its edibility. It proved messy and uninteresting, but at least non-poisonous. We had, however, hardly come across any tortoises during our march, although we had seen many on the journey from Changri to Yozgad four months previously. In fact, the only item of the list we had sampled so far had been the grasshoppers. We had, of course, also placed considerable dependence on being able to eke out our meagre ration by plucking corn as we went along at night, intending either to boil or to parch it the next day. We had discovered that the Turkish soldiers did the latter very quickly and effectively by making a small fire of twigs, placing whole ears of corn on them, then adding more twigs on top. When the fire had died down they took out the corn and separated the grain by the simple process of rubbing it between the hands. Unfortunately for us, although we had passed a good deal of ready-cut crops, there never seemed to be enough grain inside to be worth the trouble of collecting. On this particular night, however, Nobby was able for once to satisfy his predatory instincts by looting a couple of water-melons, for there was a bed of these outside the village we were now passing. These were cut up and divided out among the party without further ado, and eaten as they continued on their way. As a matter of fact, the melons were far from ripe; but even the rind seemed too good to throw aside, for by this time we were ready to eat anything: but it did not tend to quench thirst, we found, so the rind was sacrificed. The going was easier, and with one long halt of an hour and a half we plodded on steadily until 5 A.M. It was then, of course, daylight; and as a mile to our west there was a large town, boasting a rather fine-looking white tower, we resolved to lie up in a dry but grassy irrigation channel. A light haze covered the country, but in the direction opposite to the town we could just recognise Akserai built near the foot of the Hasan Dagh peak. Before us stretched the desert plain, bare except for an occasional nomad encampment; there seemed little sign of movement, even around the town near by.