if the man were removed from his office, it would fall on a private individual, and not on the state. From Angora we came to the village of Balygazar, thence to Zarekuct, next to Zermeczii, after which we arrived at the bank of the river Halys (Kizil Irmak). As we crossed the country towards the village of Algeos, we had a distant view of the mountains near Sinope. They have a red appearance from the red chalk which takes its name from Sinope. Here is the famous Halys, once the boundary between the kingdoms of Media and Lydia, about which the ancient prophecy said that ‘Crœsus, if he crossed the Halys to make war on the Persians, would destroy a mighty realm’—but he did not know that the realm he was to destroy was his own. On the bank was a copse of trees, which at first excited our attention, as we thought we had discovered a new kind of fruit tree; but we soon became aware that it was the liquorice tree, and gorged ourselves with the juice from its roots. It happened that a country fellow was standing there, so we asked him through an interpreter whether there were plenty of fish in the river, and how they were caught. His answer was, that there were plenty of fish, but that it was impossible to catch them. When we expressed our surprise at this intelligence, the man explained the matter thus: ‘Well, if anyone tries to put his hand on one of these fish, they jump away, and will not wait for him to catch them.’ On a former occasion, when we met with some birds of a species unknown to us, and asked how they could be caught, another fellow declared that ‘it was impossible to catch them, because, when anyone tried to lay hold of them, they flew away.’ One of my colleagues, Francis Zay, had with him nets, which he ordered to be unpacked with a view to fishing. Amongst other fish, we caught the common Danube shad. There are also crabs in the Halys in large numbers, which, if they are not sea crabs, are, at any rate, very like them. The Turks, who stood by, were amazed at the great pains we Christians took in fishing. ‘How so,’ you will say, ‘are there no fishermen in Turkey?’ Well, there are some, but in those districts they are very rare. I remember, in another place, we were greeted with roars of laughter when we drew off the water of a stream and captured a quantity of gudgeons. They were greatly amused at our fishing for anything so small, and could not make out what gain or advantage we expected to get from them. The foolish fellows did not understand that a large supply of these little fishes enabled us to prepare big dishes of stew sufficient to dine a great many people.