540 REPORT—1890. 
Taurus is wild and romantic in the extreme. Deep gorges cut the slopes 
of the mountains, through which streams find their way to the sea 
through cliffs of calcareous limestone, sometimes 2,000 feet high—a dis- 
trict rich in deposits of the Miocene period, often full of fossils. Then 
there are the great caves, or rather depressions, caused by the action of 
underground streams, known in Asia Minor by the name of dudens. 
The best known of these is the anciently famed Corycian cave, which we 
thoroughly investigated, and added a large number of inscriptions which 
had been previously unknown. Adjoining this is a cave of the same 
nature, called Purgatory by the nomads, into which no one can descend, 
as the sides slope inwards. Five miles from these is the Olbian cave, 
three-quarters of a mile round and 200 feet deep. 
This country was in ancient days called Olba, and was ruled over by 
priest-kings of the Tencrid dynasty, as Strabo tells us. We discovered 
the capital of Olba at a place called Uzenjaburdj, 5,850 feet above the 
jevel of the sea, and many inscriptions which quite agree with Strabo’s 
statement. In ancient Greek days this district was covered with towns 
and villages. Now it is given up to the nomads, and with difficulty one 
makes one’s way through rocks and brushwood where once the grape grew 
in abundance, and the wild olives and caroubs are the descendants of the 
ancient cultivation which made this district one of the most favoured 
eorners of the globe, until the advent of these nomads, who have ruined 
and devastated it. 
Our second point of observation this winter was amongst the Ansairee 
fellaheen who dwell in and around Tarsus, and who are a branch of the 
race who dwell in the mountains to the north of Latakich, and who 
practise a secret religion which has been a subject of great discussion 
amongst travellers. 
Tarsus forms a particularly favourable point for studying this people, 
inasmuch as they live here amidst an alien population ready to spy on 
their mysteries and impart what they know. Some years ago an Ansairee 
youth named Suleiman abjured his faith and wrote an account of it, 
which was translated and published by Prof. Salisbury in a number of 
the American Asiatic Society’s Journal. This assisted us much in making 
our researches. 
Last year, when travelling in the mountains of Media, near Lake 
Urumea, we investigated the religious tenets of a race existing there 
called by the Persians Ali-Ullah-hi, or people who call God Ali. These 
people also practise a secret religion, and the results of our inquiries I 
set forth in my report last summer to the Anthropological Section of the 
British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 
On studying the Ansairee of Tarsus, we were not a little surprised to 
find that their religion was precisely the same as that practised by the 
tribe in the North of Persia, and from this coincidence we were able to 
make valuable anthropological deductions as to the extent of this religion 
and the number of its devotees. 
First, the village in the mountains of Media, which we visited, and 
which is the headquarters of the sect of the Ali-Ullah-hi, is called Baba 
Nazere, and they affirm that a certain individual called Nazere was the 
founder of their sect. Now the Ansairee of Tarsus, or the Nasaree, as the 
Arabs call them, claim as the founder of their religion a man who lived 
early in the eleventh century, who is styled in their books as ‘the old 
tman of Nazere,’ giving us the reason for the name Baba, or old man, 
