The hillsides we rode over were fertile-looking soil, terraced in many places, like the terraces one sees all along the hills of the Italian Riviera, sprinkled with stone-walled orchards and vineyards, the trees now in the copper and bronze of autumn leaf, and dotted among them little villages, small clusters of grey stone houses, and some mud-built huts. The houses were small and primitive-looking, but of a distinctly higher stamp than one sees in many parts of Middle Asia. We passed through one hamlet, and as we rode by the women flocked out of the houses with an old man or two to touch Kyrlos’s bridle and speak to him. Fine-looking women most of them, typical peasantry of undoubted white stock. There were none there as dark as a Southern Italian, and the majority of them had light-coloured hair, while all had light-coloured eyes. With them a swarm of children, flaxen hair and red cheeks, that made me homesick for Sussex. The women were all clad in rough homespun woollen garments, short full skirts, and bodices with short sleeves ending above the elbows. Some were barefooted, but the majority had heavy sandals with wooden soles. For the most part they were bareheaded, their hair coiled in thick plaits on either side of the head, and some--the more well-to-do--wore heavy necklaces of silver and turquoise, a favourite stone in the country. One I noticed had clasps of similar make in her hair. This woman was, I fancy, the wife of the head man of the village, because she did most of the talking with Kyrlos. It was refreshing to see women coming up and talking to men in this way after years spent in countries where the women sit with half-veiled faces in the background as you ride by. They were evidently anxious, from the way they talked--not surprising, for, as we found a little later, we were but five miles from the border of the Brown Sakae. They looked at us curiously, our clothes being obviously unfamiliar. The head woman asked Kyrlos who we were, and he told her that we were the people who had brought Aryenis back. They had heard of her return the evening before, the news having gone through that bit of the country like wildfire, for Aryenis was beloved of every man, woman, and child in the place. They took stock of us unabashed thereafter, and, I think, made remarks on our personal appearances. I asked Stephnos why there were so few men about, and he told me that they had been called up to the fort to which we were riding, to guard the frontier. As we rode on again between the silver birch trees lining the road, he explained to me that they had but a small army for police and frontier work against raiders from other clans. Raids were not infrequent even in peace-time. Small affairs as a rule, however, which were frequently stopped for years together by mutual consent. His father’s regular troops amounted to some two thousand men, including those under his uncle in the northern part of their country.