on the following morning, for I have found it a desirable thing to escape from town ere the populace is out to crowd about me.  Tifticjeeoghlou Effendi’s better half has kindly risen at an unusually early hour, to see me off, and provides me with a dozen circular rolls of hard bread-rings the size of rope quoits aboard an Atlantic steamer, which I string on Igali’s cerulean waist-scarf, and sling over one shoulder.  The good lady lets me out of the gate, and says, “Bin bacalem, Effendi.”  She hasn’t seen me ride yet.  She is a motherly old creature, of Greek extraction, and I naturally feel like an ingrate of the meanest type, at my inability to grant her modest request.  Stealing along the side streets, I manage to reach ridable ground, gathering by the way only a small following of worthy early risers, and two katir-jees, who essay to follow me on their long-eared chargers; but, the road being smooth and level from the beginning, I at once discourage them by a short spurt.  A half-hour’s trundling up a steep hill, and then comes a coastable descent into lower territory.  A conscription party collected from the neighboring Mussulman villages, en route to Samsoon, the nearest Black Sea port, is met while riding down this declivity.  In anticipation of the Sultan’s new uniforms awaiting them at Constantinople, they have provided themselves for the journey with barely enough rags to cover their nakedness.  They are in high glee at their departure for Stamboul, and favor me with considerable good-natured chaff as I wheel past.  “Human nature is everywhere pretty much alike the world over,” I think to myself.  There is little difference between this regiment of ragamuffins chaffing me this morning and the well-dressed troopers of Kaiser William, bantering me the day I wheeled out of Strassburg.

CHAPTER XVI.

THROUGH THE SIVAS VILAYET INTO ARMENIA.

It is six hours distant from Yuzgat to the large village of Koelme, as distance is measured here, or about twenty-three English miles; but the road is mostly ridable, and I roll into the village in about three hours and a half.  Just beyond Koehne, the roads fork, and the mudir kindly sends a mounted zaptieh to guide me aright, for fear I shouldn’t quite understand by his pantomimic explanations.  I understand well enough, though, and the road just here happening to be excellent wheeling, to the delight of the whole village, I spurt ahead, outdistancing the zaptieh’s not over sprightly animal, and bowling briskly along the right road within their range of vision, for over a mile.  Soon after leaving Koehne my attention is attracted by a small cluster of civilized-looking tents, pitched on the bank of a running stream near the road, and from whence issues the joyous sounds of mirth and music.  The road continues ridable, and I am wheeling leisurely along, hesitating about whether to go and investigate or not, when a number of persons, in holiday attire,