At 4.15 the next morning, before it was light, we were in the motors and away again. There followed, as usual, a wild scramble and fearful scrumming around the lines, as we were not awakened until five minutes before leaving. This journey was decidedly bumpy, and we had to grip hard to stick inside the four walls of the thing at times. The country became wilder and rockier with only a few boulder pines climbing up the heights. Along the face of these limestone bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun. Then there were caves and water-worn caverns, said to have been once the homes of the Hittites. Many Turkish and others worked on the road, and dishevelled troops passed us _en route_ for the Mosul or Palestine front, via Aleppo. At last, two great tall upstretching tongues of rock, almost meeting, filled the mouth of the converging valley, and rendered any attempt to cross into that valley by any other way than between them almost impossible, except for an Alpiner. These were the famous Cilician Gates through which passed Alexander in the fourth century, B.C., on his way to Syria. Darius had lain in waiting somewhere near Islahie on the other side of the Anti-Taurus mountains, and when Alexander had got safely down between the seacoast and the Anti-Taurus, Darius and his army scampered over the mountains, probably, the very way we had come, and cut Alexander off from his communications. But Alexander turned on the Persian king and smashed him at Tarsus. Five hundred years before that, Shalmanaser II., the great Assyrian king, had crossed and recrossed this very pass on his way to and from his victories. After Alexander, the hordes of Barbarossa, and in fact, every ancient army on its way east had had to pass through them. Some old Hittite inscription was on the outer face of the rock, and on either side of the road a Roman altar cut out of the flat rock by the roadside testified to the military importance conceded to this Gate by Roman Generals, locking the way to the Orient. In those days the pathway was a few feet wide only, and now cannot be more than five yards. Heavy blasting, however, widened the way along which we came. A few miles further on we reached the rail-head again at Bozanti from where they were tunnelling the Taurus. Here we saw many British soldiers at work. They were mostly from the Dardanelles and some of them seemed quite fit, but the tunnelling was heavy work, and they said that the men from Kut there could not stand it--and had died. For some hours we were shoved in a stable with billions of flies. Many officers were very indignant at being put alongside horses. Being a field artilleryman it didn't worry me in the least after what we had gone through. We bought a few stores and a German presented me with a bottle of beer, as he found I spoke German!