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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



eat. We are sorry that our fare is so 

 poor. Come, let us look at your wares." 



Great as was the poverty of this sim- 

 ple village and hard as the villagers 

 worked, one felt that they were truly 

 hospitable. Strangers were sent to 

 them by Allah and were to receive the 

 best that they had, and especially stran- 

 gers who actually had nothing to sell 

 and therefore must be great officials, 

 perhaps on a secret mission. The old 

 woman was simply delighted with a tin 

 box and some sweet crackers that we 

 gave her. The pleasure which she 

 showed at the prospect of spending our 

 present of a dollar in bargains for the 

 children at the weekly bazaar proved 

 how womanly she was, even though she 

 did say her prayers like a man and rule 

 the household with the hand of a tyrant. 



The villages of Girmeh and Kuzzililar 

 are typical of the two chief divisions of 

 Asia Minor, both in scenery and in the 

 character of the inhabitants. One divis- 

 ion embraces the coastal region and the 

 other the plateau. On all sides of the 

 peninsula of Asia Minor, both on the 

 Black Sea and the Mediterranean, moun- 

 tains rise more or less abruptly to 

 heights of from 4,000 to 10,000 feet. 

 Their outer slope is comparatively well 

 watered, because winds from the sea 

 blow inward and are obliged to deposit 

 their moisture by reason of the cooling 

 which they suffer in the process of ex- 

 pansion due to rising. The case is ex- 

 actly like that of Palestine and Lebanon, 

 or like the mountains of California. 

 Along the seaward slope there is a good 

 amount of vegetation, and in many 

 cases, where the mountains are of suffi- 

 cient height, splendid forests form a belt 

 from 5 to 30, or 40 miles wide. Beyond 

 the crest of the mountains, where the 

 inflowing air descends and therefore be- 

 comes warmer, the rainfall rapidly de- 

 creases and the country becomes dry and 

 barren. 



Hence the interior of Asia Minor, the 

 great plateau some 3,000 feet above the 

 sea, resembles the Syrian desert east of 

 Mount Lebanon and the basin region of 

 Nevada and Utah east of the Sierra 



Nevada in being much drier and less 

 productive than the seaward slope of the 

 country and in being practically devoid 

 of forests. 



During the visit of the Yale Expedi- 

 tion of 1909 to Asia Minor we saw an 

 excellent example of the contrast be- 

 tween the coastal region and the interior 

 immediately upon entering the country. 

 We followed the famous route which 

 leads from the northeastern corner of 

 the Mediterranean Sea up through the 

 narrow gorge of the Cilician Gates to 

 the terminus of the Bagdad Railway at 

 Eregli, on the southern side of the pla- 

 teau of Anatolia. 



Close to the sea lies the populous del- 

 taic plain of Cilicia— warm, moist, and 

 enervating — the product of hundreds of 

 thousands of years of alluvial deposition 

 by the rivers Sihun and Jihun. There 

 are no more luxuriant grain fields, more 

 fruitful vineyards, or richer gardens in 

 all Turkey than those of Cilicia. The 

 population is dense and comparatively 

 prosperous, although not energetic. Fac- 

 tories of considerable size have recently 

 been established, but it is interesting to 

 note that it is not local initiative which 

 keeps them up. The owners are largely 

 men from Europe or Constantinople, 

 and the employees are in good measure 

 Armenians and others who come down 

 from the poorer but more invigorating 

 regions of the plateau to the north. 



We visited Cilicia some ten weeks 

 after the barbarous massacres of the 

 spring of 1909, when 20,000 Christians, 

 more or less, were slaughtered by fanati- 

 cal Moslems at the behest of the former 

 Sultan, Abdul Hamid II. In Tarsus and 

 Adana, in the Armenian quarters, we 

 saw street after street which had been 

 reduced to a mere lane of ruined walls 

 of mud and stone, seared by flame^ and 

 blackened by smoke. 



Within the open inclosures that once 

 were houses a few miserable refugees 

 were cowering under the open sky, en- 

 during for a time in the hope that the 

 reformed government of Turkey or the 

 charitable Christian nations of Europe 

 and America would aid them to build 



