In keeping with its momentous history, the scenery as the descent continues at once assumes a wild and impressive grandeur, unparalleled in beauty, passing description, to which all that has passed before served but as introduction. Now the keynote is changed, and Nature’s full orchestra breaks forth into a theme of violent and majestic discords, ever changing yet sustained, leaving for ever the impression of its grand harmonies. Here the crags tower up a thousand feet on either side. A myriad trees, their varied tones intensified by the glowing sunlight, clothe with soft colours the heights that hem in the horizon save where it is broken by fantastic peaks. Now the valley is torn by great rifts of red and grey rock, and warning precipices of prodigious character overhang the pathway. Below, on a verdant bed bedecked with flowers and creepers, peaceful glades and vistas disclose the chequered waters of the stream. Another turn, and a broad sweep of virgin forest lines the slopes in an unbroken curve; and ever and again Nature’s panorama changes, attracting the eye to some fresh beauty or surprise. Though seemingly inaccessible, yet up in the wooded heights here and there a small village may be found, its houses nestling among fruit-trees and luxurious wildflowers. The people are very poor, for on these broken hilltops arable spots are scarce and difficult to work. They are also reticent and unsophisticated, and it is impossible to obtain from them any consistent reason as to their choice of dwelling-place while so many miles of corn-land in the interior await man’s labour. And since the bracing mountain air amid the pines, and the unique views all round, which extend beyond Tarsus to the sea, are to them considerations of last importance, we are left to conjecture in this case also that their ancestors found refuge here from the political storms of an unknown date. We are inclined to believe that this was the reason, and that the date was remote, because of the survival amongst them in striking purity of a type of the old Hittite races which, though peculiar, is familiar on the Egyptian monuments. It may indeed have been that of the Cilicians in general: it is strongly mongoloid in appearance except for the nose, which is strong and straight, but fine. The chin is beardless, but there is a thin dark cynical moustache; the cheek-bones are high and the eyes oblique. In the Egyptian sculptures a pigtail usually completes the striking features of the portrait, but this seems not to have survived the Moslem tonsure.