THE FRINGE OF VERDURE AROUND ASIA 



MINOR 



By Ellsworth Huntington 



WHAT kind of a place is this? 

 Here we've been waiting in 

 Girmeh over an hour and no 

 one will bring us anything, not even 

 bread and grapes and sour milk, al- 

 though we are willing to pay well for 

 them. 



"No good sons of the Prophet would 

 ever treat strangers so. We have trav- 

 eled many moons in Anatolia and never 

 met anything like it. To whom were 

 you saying your prayers so piously when 

 we arrived? Not to Allah, certainly. 

 You think Baulo is a country place way 

 off in the woods, but there they be- 

 haved like good Mussulmans. Here you 

 act like infidels. We'll tell about you 

 at the bazaar, and we'll put you in a 

 book, so that every one will be ashamed 

 to say he is from Girmeh." 



Our strictures went home and there 

 were many apologies. "We are poor," 

 they said, "and have nothing to offer to 

 such distinguished guests." 



"Poor?" we answered. "Do poor men 

 wear such splendid colored gowns as 

 those which you have on? H you were 

 poor coufd twenty of you sit around all 

 day under the walnut trees by the foun- 

 tain at harvest-time with nothing to do 

 but say your prayers? Can men be poor 

 who have such springs of pure water as 

 this, and who own such magnificent 

 orchards and gardens? Look down the 

 mountain-side there and see those vine- 

 yards and all the trees. How many 

 kinds have you? — walnut, fig, mulberry, 

 pear, plum, apricot, 'little red' [a kind 

 of bright red acid plum], and a dozen 

 others. And who owns all those wheat- 

 fields on the terraces along the mountain 

 slope between here and the pine woods? 

 No, you are not poor, but sim.ply rich 

 and lazy." 



"Well," they said, not altogether 

 truthfully, "we might have brought 



some rugs for you to sit on, but all our 

 goods are out in the garden houses, 

 where we live in summer. We've sent 

 a man to get you something to eat." 



The villagers felt that they were 

 wrong, for they knew that they had not 

 acted according to the common practice 

 of Mohammedans. Yet after all they did 

 not care greatly, although they certainly 

 objected to having a rival village praised 

 at their expense, and to having the word 

 go out at the neighboring bazaar town 

 that their village was inhospitable. 



Perhaps there was a tinge of malice 

 in the remark which one man made to 

 our Greek servant : "What big hats these 

 men wear. They must be very great 

 men, but the other foreigners who came 

 here a few years ago were greater, be- 

 cause they had bigger hats." 



Whatever their feelings, the people of 

 Girmeh finally supplied our wants. They 

 were evidently glad, however, when we 

 went on our way westward through the 

 beautiful pine woods on the mountain 

 top, past the ancient and now waterless 

 ruins of Cremna, and down into the 

 barren land on the other side. 



Girmeh lies about 40 miles from the 

 ]\Iediterranean Sea, north of the city of 

 Adalia, which is located at the head of 

 the great bay in the middle of the south 

 coast of Asia Minor. To reach the vil- 

 lage we had spent a hot morning in 

 climbing nearly 3,000 feet westward up 

 a steep slope of white limestone, from 

 the valley of the Ak Su, which flows 

 south through splendid forested hills to 

 the plain of Adalia and ancient Perga- 

 mum, where Saint Paul began his fa- 

 mous journey in Asia Minor. 



Much of the way the sun beat upon 

 us from the bluest of skies, dimmed only 

 by a summer haze which increased the 

 feeling of languor occasioned by the 

 warm, damp air. Often, however, we 



