"Well, sir, this is a Jordan of a road," remarked my servant Radford, referring to some popular song, as the horse he rode fell down for the fifth time that morning. "That cemetery in Constantinople, where we tried the 'osses, was a bad place for riding, but it was nothing to this. Mohammed, he don't seem to take any account of it whatever. I never see such fellows as these Turks; they don't seem to be able to muster a grumble amongst them, no matter what they may have to undergo! Why, sir, some of them soldiers as we saw at Sivas had not received a day's pay for twenty-five months, and they seemed quite content and happy like; whilst, as for rations, it is true that the men fill themselves to bursting when they have the chance, but when they have to go without their grub they don't grumble! I wonder, sir, what our soldiers at Aldershot would say if they had not received a ha'p'orth of pay for two years, and had to march sometimes from morning to night, with nothing inside them save a whiff or so of tobacco?" Radford was right in his remark about the track being a Jordan road—that is, if a Jordan road is the quintessence of everything that is stony and disagreeable. We had to lead our horses. Hour after hour sped by; we still seemed to be no nearer to any signs of Arabkir. Now we were up to our waists in snow and quagmire, and then we were lying between our horses' heels, the result of a slip from some half-hidden boulder. At last we arrived at a spot close to the town. Here the rocks were of a crimson hue, their sides were covered with pebbles of ebon blackness. We mounted our horses, and, riding along a precipice-bounded path which leads into the long straggling city, presently halted at the house of an Armenian gentleman, who was kind enough to offer us a lodging for the night. My host was a silk-merchant. He had started in business a very few years previous. This district being suitable for breeding silk-worms, he had speedily amassed a fortune. He was now one of the wealthiest men in the province, and not only supplied the Arabkir district with textures of his manufacture, but sent them by caravans to the limits of Asia Minor. He was very much respected by the Mohammedans in the town, and was on the best of terms with the Caimacan. The latter, when he heard of my arrival, called, and, after salaaming my host, told him that he should stay to dinner. The apartment set aside for my use was hung round with engravings of all the sovereigns in Europe. A book-shelf in one corner was filled with French books, none of which my host could read. "Do you know French?" I inquired. "No!" "Then what is the good of those volumes to you?"