The Cydnus River runs through and around Tarsus in a dozen branches, all of which do the quadruple service of mill races, drinking troughs for man and beast, washing places for man and beast and carriage and clothes, and irrigation ditches. There is plenty of water and it runs so fast that there is always time for it to get clean for the user below. Tarsus is full of mills: cotton, sesame, flour and sawmills. One of the largest cotton-mills--for ginning and weaving both--is on the Mersina road. Here we stop to watch and tease the turtles in the mill-race. They are lined up on the bank, generation after generation of them--like a family group for a photograph in New England (of the old days only, alas!). The timid ones flop into the water at our approach. Most of them, however, are insolently indifferent. Our idea is to make them all "vamoose." We throw pieces of sugar-cane at them, and Herbert, everlasting kid, is not satisfied until only ungraceful claws, wildly waving above the surface of the water, reveal where the sprawling creatures have taken refuge. Not a head dares appear: for Herbert is near baseball days, and sugar-cane is heavy enough to carry straight. In the wider water beyond the mill, we frequently see long shapeless ridges of brown-black shifting lazily about, moving just enough to show that they are not mud-banks. A rude cart stands on the edge of the stream and on its pole is fastened a double-yoke. Those ridges are the buffaloes that belong to the cart. The lumbering beasts sway back and forth through the streets dragging incredibly high and heavy loads of cotton-bales to the railroad. Occasionally they are unhitched and allowed to get into the water for a rest and a bath. There they lie in the gray mud, absolutely relaxed, languidly flapping their ears to splash water on their heads. Our walk ends at the bridge half a mile beyond the cotton factory. West of the bridge the Adana-Mersina road enters the great Cilician Plain once more after the long break of Tarsus and its suburbs. Half a dozen broken places in this bridge are a constant menace to horse and camel. It keeps getting worse and worse. An enormous traffic passes over it: but does any one think of mending it? They will wait until it falls down. The motto of this country is every man for himself. There is no public spirit--no idea of the common weal. One is moved only by what affects him directly, and acts only for what he believes is his interest. But none sees farther than _immediate interest_. To-morrow is in God's hands. The Young Turk régime, on which we see the American newspapers and magazines publishing extravagant eulogies--how will it succeed? The governing classes in Islam cannot be regenerated until Islam is imbued with a different spirit--self-sacrifice, initiative, thought of the future.