I04 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



patterns of the works of art which they slowly pro- 

 duced, seemed as incongruous and out of harmony 

 with their environment as would be a cluster of beau- 

 tiful wild flowers growing in the street of a London 

 slum. It is beyond me to explain clearly how these 

 carpets are worked; but they are made entirely by 

 hand, and each carpet is composed of thousands or 

 millions of knots, tied in various coloured wools, on 

 cross threads stretched on a frame. Several women 

 are employed on each carpet, and they sit in a row be- 

 fore the frame, and work from a small painted pattern 

 hung up in front of them. The quickness with which 

 these women work, and the wonderful accuracy of 

 hand and eye and sense of colour, required to imitate 

 the coloured designs before them, must be seen to be 

 fully appreciated. The finished carpet, which although 

 it has been made by several women all working inde- 

 pendently, and all tying countless little knots of wool 

 of every shade of colour, looks, until carefully ex- 

 amined, as though it were the work of a machine, and 

 is undoubtedly a real work of art. For my part, I 

 came to the conclusion that, at the price at which they 

 were sold, Turkish hand-made carpets are the cheapest 

 products of skilled labour in the whole world. 



Ouchak is, I think, one of the largest towns in 

 the interior of Asia Minor and has a population of 

 twenty thousand inhabitants. With the exception 

 of the mosques, of which I counted thirteen, and a 

 very few other buildings, the entire town is built of 



