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ON THE NOMAD TRIBES OF ASIA MINOR. 537 
turpentine. A deep notch is cut, and the turpentine all flows to this part. 
After a while the tree is cut down, and the wood in the vicinity of the 
notch is used for torches, the only light they make use of. Again, they 
bark the cedars to make their beehives, and for roofing purposes, and are 
the most destructive enemy the forests of Asia Minor have. Luckily, the 
yast extent of forest and the sparsity of inhabitants make the destruc- 
tion of timber less marked; but it is a steady destruction if slow, and 
must in the end ruin the forests of the country. 
In his mountain wanderings the Yourouk has regular visitors at 
stated times. The goat and sheep merchant comes in the spring, pitches 
his tent in a central place, sits with the big men of the tribe around him 
on cushions, smokes his narghili, and has a pot of coffee boiling in the 
embers, and buys from those who are willing to sell. When he has 
amassed as many as he can conveniently manage, he sets off to the nearest 
town to realise a large profit. 
They are great camel-breeders, and produce the valuable sort of mule 
eamel common to Asia Minor, and known as the Toulou camel, a cross 
between the Bactrian and the Syrian; and in spring large Bactrian stal- 
lions are brought round amongst the encampments. This cross produces 
a camel excellent for mountaineering purposes, alike impervious to the 
snows of the mountains and the heat of the plains. 
Then the tax collector comes to gather in the Ashr, or tax on their 
cattle : he also pitches his tent, and is surrounded by the leading men; 
but as often as not he has a lot of trouble, for when they are advised of 
his advent the Yourouks hide a portion of their flocks in out-of-the-way 
caves to avoid the tax. Then comes the travelling tinker—the great im- 
porter of external gossip amongst them—to mend their copper pots ; he 
settles for a few days at each place where-he finds ten or more tents, with 
his bellows and his assistant, and mends with nitre the quaint-shaped 
coffee-pots and household copper utensils which they use, in return for 
which he gets butter and cheese, and with these he returns to the town 
as soon as he has got together as much as his mule cancarry. Visits are 
also periodically expected from the wool merchants, skin dealers, and the 
public circumciser, who initiates the young Yourouks into the first 
mysteries of the Mohammedan faith. 
In food the Yourouks are exceedingly frugal—their bread in times of 
plenty is made of flour, in times of famine of acorns; it is of the oatcake 
type, and baked with great dexterity by women on copper platters over 
a few embers—cakes with vegetable inside, milk cheese, and very rarely 
meat, and no wine. Coffee, however, is essential to them, and often J 
had wondered what these nomads, so unchanged in everything else, did 
before coffee was made known, until one day when coffee ran short an excel- 
lent substitute was provided for us, made of the seeds of a fine species of 
thistle, botanically termed Gundelia Tournefortia, for it was discovered by 
Gundelscheimer and Tournefort, who calls it the ‘ finest plant in the whole 
Levant,’ though he apparently was not aware of its use. It grows in 
dry stony places all over the southern slopes of the Taurus, and is, I 
understand, very plentiful in Afghanistan. The coffee produced by it is 
a little lighter in colour, but more aromatic and bitter than ours; they 
use it also as a stomachic. 
By boiling the cones of the Juniperus drupacea in a large cauldron 
for a long time, a thick, sweet stuff is produced; this they mix with flour, 
and the result is not unlike chocolate cream: they call it pelteh. 
