All payments should be considered as being made in kind, not in money; for coin is scarce in Turkey, and not very generally used.[6] Even if it were more plentiful it is but a fluctuating security; for the coins in common use are the silver ones, and these are never current at their face value.[7] The gold £1 Turkish, nominally worth 100 piastres, fetched at the time of our visit from 102 piastres at Mosul to 114 at Aleppo; and the value of Mejidies (nominally 20 piastres), and of 5 piastre-pieces, varied also in different degrees. This is not all the fault of the Government; for while home trade and industry must be sorely hampered by such eccentricities, the Constantinople banks (which are run by European syndicates) are not altogether displeased. They can make a profit on the deal, for they hold most of the bullion: and when any particular coin has much appreciated anywhere, they can unload their stock of it at that particular place. Eastward from the Euphrates our track leads over rather lower country, an open undulating heathland which melts gradually into alluvial plain. Here and there, dispersed about the surface, are wide patches of stony ground; and where the track chances to skirt them it is usually found that many of the stones have been piled up into little pillars, five or six one upon the other making a column about two feet high. Each patch will contain twenty or thirty of these little pillars. They are set up by casual wayfarers as a sort of votive memorial, just as the Patriarch Jacob set up his pillar at Bethel. A similar habit prevails in the mountain districts; but there it is more customary to insert the votive stone in the forked branch of a tree. Cairns also are frequently seen at the sides of the paths in the mountains; but these are generally erected to mark the site of some murder, and it is usual for each passer-by to add his stone to the pile. If you were a friend of the victim you deposit your offering gently; if you were his enemy you hurl it on vindictively. Thus the pile grows apace any way, and it is to be presumed that his _manes_ are appeased. Near the village of Seruj we reach the outskirts of the great plain of Mesopotamia. Its levels stretch away southward as far as the eye can see. But our track edges still to the left and presently enters the hill country, the first and lowest undulations of the great mountain range towards the north. It must have been on some of these spurs that the wrecks of Crassus' army found refuge after their great defeat by the Parthians in the year 53 B.C. Carrhae, which gave its name to the battle, lay in the midst of the plains some twenty-five miles to the southward, and the actual scene of the fighting was some distance further south still: but the beaten troops made for the mountains, their only asylum from their pursuers; and here the last cohorts were surrounded and forced to lay down their arms.