Barring such accidents the terrace fields are fertile enough, if they have a sufficiency of water; but this again has to be supplied them artificially by leading the irrigation channels from the main stream (often along precipitous faces of rock) and maintaining them carefully when built. Millet and rice are the staple crops; the former furnishing food both for man and beast, for its long stalks are excellent fodder. Its grain is very sustaining as food, as we know from experience, but it is not attractive. In fact bread made from it rather suggests that your host has run short of flour, and has eked matters out with an equivalent weight of sawdust! Even so, however, "it is better to eat millet bread and carry a gun, than to be an unarmed _rayat_ under the Ottoman" under present conditions. Roads are of course unknown in the land, and there is no such thing as a wheeled vehicle from one end of Hakkiari to the other. Tracks scramble up the gorges along the slopes of shale, and climb by what are known as _stangi_ over and round projecting noses of precipice. A _stanga_ is a built up track; the stones being often held in place, by their own weight only, on branches of trees stuck in crevices of the rock, and projecting out over the torrent. Mules can get along these roads fairly well, being to the manner born; and sheep and goats do well enough also. But certain villages have a happy immunity from the attentions of the raider, owing to the fact that no quadruped can be driven along the tracks that lead from them. Such cattle as they possess were either born on the land, or were carried up in the days of their calfhood on men's backs. As for horses, it is a tradition that they cannot be got through the gorges at all, and nobody but a mad Englishman ever thinks of attempting such a thing. It has been done twice, however; once by the writer, and once by a military Consul from Van. Of course the horses were not ridden; and in fact had each of them two men to look after their needs, one at the head to lead them, and the other at the tail to hold them on to the track when it went round sharp corners at a steep angle. This secured that when the poor beast slipped at such a place, he did not fall into the river, but onto the track; after which a man held his head down to prevent his struggling to rise (which would have meant disaster), till all the men who could get a hold of him were gathered round. Then came the signal, "Are you ready--lift!" and the astonished horse found himself raised with a straight hoist upwards, like a baby, and so set on his feet once more. Thus they were got through; but they all left their shoes behind!