as the afternoon wears on the vapour re-condenses, and the bright sun reappears to cheer the evening. Except for this peculiarity the valley resembles in general many of those innumerable sheltered rifts among the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains, wherein the rigour of winter is recompensed by the bounteous summer, and the scattered population pursues its life, isolated from and almost independent of the moving world. [Illustration: PLATE XX APPROACHING THE CILICIAN GATES FROM THE NORTH (_See p. 46._)] Where this mountain-stream unites with the Chakia Su a bridge carries the track across to the other bank to join equally the main road to the South. This is the historic route leading through the Cilician Gates, the only pass available for traffic through the unbroken rock wall of Taurus. Peoples have passed through it that have formed nations; the armies of conquerors have traversed it in the struggle of continents; religions from the East have made it their channel of approach towards the unthinking West; Paul of Tarsus travelled through it bringing the Cross of Peace; and through it the Crusaders took back in due time the Cross of War. Makers of history—Persian, Greek, and Macedonian; Christian, Jew, and Moslem, all have passed this way. The nicely engineered road, however, with its bridges and embankments, its rock-cuttings and eased gradients, is a work of modern times. At the opening of our story we must look back to the beginnings of the pass in a rough track alongside the rushing stream. Even in early Hittite times, if we pay regard to the disposition of their monuments, it seems probable that the longer but more open route that follows the Tochma Su, and the shorter but rocky track that descends by Kuru-Bel, continued to be the chief lines of communication between the two main branches of their empire.[72] Previous, however, to Persian times the road through the Cilician Gates must have been sufficiently arranged to enable a wheeled cart or chariot to pass that way.[73]