Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 eBook

Thomas Stevens (cyclist)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about Around the World on a Bicycle.

Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 eBook

Thomas Stevens (cyclist)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about Around the World on a Bicycle.
the English language.  One of them is a very small sand indeed, the solitary negative phrase, “no;” nevertheless, during the evening he inspires the attentive auditors with respect for his linguistic accomplishments by asking me numerous questions, and then, anticipating a negative reply, forestalls it himself by querying, “No?” The other “linguist” has in some unaccountable manner added the ability to say “Good morning " to his other accomplishments; and when about time to retire, and the crowd reluctantly bestirs itself to depart from the magnetic presence of the bicycle, I notice an extraordinary degree of mysterious whispering and suppressed amusement going on among them, and then they commence filing slowly out of the door with the “linguistic person” at their head; as that learned individual reaches the threshold he turns toward we, makes a salaam and says, “Good-morning,” and everyone of the company, even down to the irrepressible youngster who was cuffed a minute ago for venturing to twirl a pedal, and who now forms the rear-guard of the column, likewise makes a salaam and says, “Good-morning.”

Quilts are provided for me, and I spend the night on the divan of the khan; a few roving mosquitoes wander in at the open window and sing their siren songs around my couch, a few entomological specimens sally forth from their permanent abode in the lining of the quilts to attack me and disturb my slumbers; but later experience teaches me to regard my slumbers to-night as comparatively peaceful and undisturbed.  In the early morning I am awakened by the murmuring voices of visitors gathering to see me off; coffee is handed to me ere my eyes are fairly open, and the savory odor of eggs already sizzling in the pan assail my olfactory nerves.  The khan-jee is an Osmanli and a good Mussulman, and when ready to depart I carelessly toss him my purse and motion for him to help himself-a thing I would not care to do with the keeper of a small tavern in any other country or of any other nation.  Were he entertaining me in a private capacity he would feel injured at any hint of payment; but being a khan-jee, he opens the purse and extracts a cherik — twenty cents.

CHAPTER XIII.

BEY BAZAAR, ANGORA, AND EASTWARD.

A Trundle of half an hour up the steep slopes leading out of another of those narrow valleys in which all these towns are situated, and then comes a gentle declivity extending with but little interruption for several miles, winding in and out among the inequalities of an elevated table-land.  The mountain-breezes blow cool and exhilarating, and just before descending into the little Charkhan Valley I pass some interesting cliffs of castellated rocks, the sight of which immediately wafts my memory back across the thousands of miles of land and water to what they are almost a counterpart of the famous castellated rocks of Green River, Wyo.  Ter.  Another scary youth takes to his heels

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Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.