The majority of this Turkish population finds a congenial home on the Anatolian upland. Their ancestors beheld here an environment in which the physical characteristics of the plateaus of central Asia were reproduced. They took to it naturally. The table-land is a rolling expanse mournfully devoid of vegetation, save for rare clusters of stunted trees. Scanty plots of grass, surrounding sickly pools or streams, resemble holes in a ragged garment spread over its surface. Sun-baked in summer, chilled in winter, with a climate too deficient in moisture for the favorable development of human societies, the land could only appeal to Asiatic sons of semi-arid areas. In recent years, the tendency of Turks to retire to this region is observable wherever the industry of Christian populations of the encircling coastland has rendered life too arduous for Turkish love of ease. The penetration of this table-land by nomads from the heart of Asia goes on today as in the past, albeit with abated intensity. It is no rare occurrence in Asia Minor to meet Tatars or Turkomans who have been on a slow westerly march for periods of from five to ten years at a time. Most of them come from the Kirghiz steppes. A vague desire to change their residence from a Christian to a Mohammedan country impels their wanderings, according to their own accounts. Constantinople looms as an objective nebulously impressed in their minds. But the goal is rarely attained. In reality their migration is as unconscious as that of their forefathers and merely carries them out of sheer necessity from pasturage to pasturage in the manner it affected former generations. MOHAMMEDAN IMMIGRANTS Ever since the establishment of Turkish authority in western Asia the policy of the Sultan’s officials has been directed towards attracting Mohammedan settlers from foreign countries to the unpopulated districts of Turkey. Particularly at the end of unsuccessful wars, special efforts are made to induce Moslem inhabitants of lost provinces to return within Turkish boundaries, where land often exempt from taxation is assigned to them. Widely distributed Circassian, Tatar and Turkoman settlements owe their origin to this Turkish method of increasing the Mohammedan element in the country. The Bithynian peninsula, where Cretaceous limestones and sandy Eocene beds provide excellent soils, is a region favored by immigrants.