The Turkish method of driving a cart is to gallop 200 yards and then crawl. At 2 a.m. we stopped three-quarters of the way up and, without unpacking our valises, slept on the ground. Before dawn we were away again, and every one had to walk except those crippled with sprained ankles and so on. I found it a most dreadful climb in my condition. I was trembling through weakness, and the well-belaboured mules went at a very fast walk up the steep gradient, so that I had to hustle to keep up. Deep ravines fell away from the road, but the hills were not high enough to grow the mountain fir. Other scrub and dwarf pines grew thickly. We walked for two and a half hours, the perspiration dripping from our clothes. I was in acute pain for some of the time with ravages of old complaints. There were plenty of clear, running streams from springs, and at each of these we soused our hands and heads in the cool water. We walked up the steep inclines. Near the top the wretched drivers galloped away to prevent our getting in, but I caught a belated one after going a mile farther, while some still toddled away astern. The driver tried to turn me out, but his mules required most of his attention, so I stayed up. The whole trip was to be about twenty-four miles. These mountains were being pierced by tunnels, as yet only recently begun from the western slope, a switchback ride being nothing to it. Without brakes of any kind, but only trusting to the collars and pole chain of the mules, the drivers, with loud shouts, galloped their animals down; now and again a wheel going over the edge of the ravine or the pole fetching up in the cutting, or in the back of some fellow sitting in the rear of the cart ahead. The carts were the usual four-wheeled, groggy thing we had got used to. Several times our cart got away, we tipping another cart over into a hole, and on another occasion we raced to pass another at awful speed before reaching a narrow corner. We did it by inches, but hit the corner, the second cart getting its pole into the kit I sat on, and hoisting me feet uppermost into the air. One collision happened, injuring a mule, smashing a cart, and just missing Colonel Cummings, who said things in English to all whom it might concern. As it was, his servant was sent flying over the _khud_.