THROUGH THE TAURUS MOUNTAINS. 37 



Axylon plain, is a tolerably large one of 4000 or 5000 

 inhabitants, occupying houses of sun-dried bricks, which 

 are in many instances surrounded by well -watered 

 gardens and orchards. 



The remark which appears at this point in the route- 

 book of Asia Minor, to the effect that "some care" has 

 been bestowed on the araba-road, will evoke a smile at 

 the humour of the writer or a sigh of regret at the poor 

 return there is to show for the care bestowed, according 

 to the credulity of the reader ! It is, however, possible 

 that my driver took me straight across country to 

 Ulukishla, or that the sentence in the route-book was 

 intended to apply to the road beyond that place, for it 

 was not until we were a mile or more beyond it that we 

 got into anything that could by any possible stretch of 

 imagination be termed a made road.^ 



From this point we entered the Bulgar Dagh, and 

 for the remainder of the way to Tarsus passed through 

 the magnificent mountain scenery afforded by the 

 frowning peaks and precipitous defiles of the rugged 

 Taurus range. The wild grandeur of some of the 

 gorges through which the road passes is striking in 

 the extreme, notably the narrow passage between per- 

 pendicular walls of naked rock which gives access to 

 the vale of Bozanti, and which I have no hesitation in 

 admitting impressed me to a greater extent than did 

 even the world-famed defile known to history as the 

 pass of the Cilician Gates. At the southern end of 



1 It is, as Lord Curzon has remarked, due either to " the poverty or the 

 tyranny of the English vocabulary " that one is obliged to use the word road 

 in describing the communications of the East. Eoads in reality, in our sense 

 of the word, except where introduced by European enterprise, may be said 

 to be non-existent in Asia. Cf. Lord Percy : " The road after passing the 

 Kara Dagh is a marvel even for Turkey. According to Murray's hand- 

 book it is just passable for carriages throughout, but if any vehicle ever 

 accomplished the feat, it must have been at the cost of the lives of its 

 occupants." — Notes from a Diary in Asiatic Turkey. 



