Bolawaduen is a collection of mud houses, about a mile long, situated on an eminence at the western base of Emir Dagh.  I went into the bazaar, which was a small place, and not very well supplied, though, as it was near sunset, there was quite a crowd of people, and the bakers were shovelling out their fresh bread at a brisk rate.  Every one took me for a good Egyptian Mohammedan, and I was jostled right and left among the turbans, in a manner that certainly would not have happened me had I not also worn one.  Mr. H., who had fallen behind the caravan, came up after we had encamped, and might have wandered a long time without finding us, but for the good-natured efforts of the inhabitants to set him aright.  This evening he knocked over a hedgehog, mistaking it for a cat.  The poor creature was severely hurt, and its sobs of distress, precisely like those of a little child, were to painful to hear, that we were obliged to have it removed from the vicinity of the tent.

Chapter XXII

The Forests of Phrygia.

The Frontier of Phrygia—­Ancient Quarries and Tombs—­We Enter the Pine Forests—­A Guard-House—­Encampments of the Turcomans—­Pastoral Scenery—­A Summer Village—­The Valley of the Tombs—­Rock Sepulchres of the Phrygian Kings—­The Titan’s Camp—­The Valley of Kuembeh—­A Land of Flowers—­Turcoman Hospitality—­The Exiled Effendis—­The Old Turcoman—­A Glimpse of Arcadia—­A Landscape—­Interested Friendship—­The Valley of the Pursek—­Arrival at Kiutahya.

  “And round us all the thicket rang
  To many a flute of Arcady.”  Tennyson.

Kiutahya, July 5, 1852.

We had now passed through the ancient provinces of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia, and reached the confines of Phrygia—­a rude mountain region, which was never wholly penetrated by the light of Grecian civilization.  It is still comparatively a wilderness, pierced but by a single high-road, and almost unvisited by travellers, yet inclosing in its depths many curious relics of antiquity.  Leaving Bolawaduen in the morning, we ascended a long, treeless mountain-slope, and in three or four hours reached the dividing ridge—–­the watershed of Asia Minor, dividing the affluents of the Mediterranean and the central lakes from the streams that flow to the Black Sea.  Looking back, Sultan Dagh, along whose base we had travelled the previous day, lay high and blue in the background, streaked with shining snow, and far away behind it arose a still higher peak, hoary with the lingering winter.  We descended into a grassy plain, shut in by a range of broken mountains, covered to their summits with dark-green shrubbery, through which the strata of marble rock gleamed like patches of snow.  The hills in front were scarred with old quarries, once worked for the celebrated Phrygian marble.  There was neither a habitation nor a human being to be seen, and the landscape had a singularly wild, lonely, and picturesque air.