A mountain-track, leaving the road at Bayal, leads southward over a series of parallel ridges of increasing height and grandeur[71] directly for Bulghar-Madên. The silver mines, to which the place owes its name and probably its being, seem to have been considerably worked in ancient times. The village is found deep in a valley under the Bulghar Dagh, a chief range of Taurus, nearly nine thousand feet in height. The stream rises far up the ridge, from the opposite side of which a branch of the Kodja Su flows down towards Ivrîz and Eregli. Its course is eastward, and as it dashes down its rocky bed it is already, when passing Bulghar-Madên, nearly three thousand feet below the snow-splashed crags along the base of which it flows. From there the valley, though narrow and steep-sided, assumes the verdant and enchanting beauty that ever dwells by mountain-streams, lending character to a large portion of the Hittites’ country. But to the traveller following in summer-time the track that winds down the left bank of the river, this beauty and enchantment is intensified here by the vast setting of the picture, by its fulness and variety of detail and rich contrasts of colours, combined with the movement and variegated costumes of the people that mingle in the scene. The banks are fruit-gardens, and wildflowers of varied sorts carpet the ground with splendour. Vines and mulberries are in profusion; and ripe cherries may be plucked even from the saddle, their bright clusters mottling everywhere the dark green foliage. Below, the swirling waters, seen at intervals, contribute also their harmonious changes, being white and gleaming where played on by the bright sunlight, and again clear green in the deeper pools and shaded places. From among the trees, the bright colours prevailing in Turkish costumes, reds and blues, yellow and white, add to the effect; for the whole population of the scattered hamlets, men and women, boys and girls, are in the gardens or beneath the trees. At one place may be seen an aged couple bending side by side at their work upon their tiny plot of land. Below, under a spreading tree, against the stem of which he leans, a bare-legged boy is piping his reed flutes, as Marsyas did, while boys and girls stand near in groups talking and at play. Beyond, out of sight of these, upon a sand-and-pebble beach two little boys, quite naked, are dancing merrily by themselves to the distant music. In the background rises the immense wall of mountain: its lower slopes are thickly wooded with larch and pines, giving way in the middle heights to scrub oak, which continues to struggle upward until the bleak rock appears. Overhead a curious phenomenon tempers the heat of noon-day in this happy valley, especially on windless days when its beneficence is most appreciated. Towards mid-day a mist, arising probably from the melting of the snows upon the ridge, spreads over the valley like a canopy, and so it remains until