The Caldwell watchman. (Columbia, La.) 1885-1946, 1915-01-08

! lrundle over the series o.
mud holes and hillocks
which pass for streets in Tarsus. Fol
we were to 60 right through that most
famous pass in history, the Cilican
gates, over the crest of the Taurus
mountains, on to the high plateau of
eastern Asia Minor, writes Basil
Mathews in the Culver.
Alexander the Great poured his
hosts onto the plain of Cilicia and
INTO Syria through this narrow, pro-
found gorge, which could be barred
by the single gate of an ordinary
castle. Cyrus and his 10000 Greeks
plunged from the great road on the
Anatolian plateau which lies beyond
the snow ridge of Taurus down on to
sfaeSe plains. Later the Roman legions
.thunderea Ti6Vf 1his>fSad to Tarsus.
This, too, is the gorge into whose
shadow Paul passed, to come out on
the shining tableland of Anatolia,
where Iconium and Derbe and Lystra,
with Pisidian Antioch, waited for his
word. Through these Gates also,
Frederick Barbarossa poured his
hosts to join Richard the Lion-heart
at Acre.
The ARABIA or Turkish wagon (Which
was to be our home for the next two
days. is seatless spring carriage,
covered from end to end with a hood
borne by eight supports. From the
hood hang curtains which can be
rolled up in fine weather and dropped
to keep out rain and wind. You lay
your bedding on the floor of the
wagon, your steamer rugs on the bed
ding, your travelling cases at the back
to lean against; and in this oriental
repose look out on the scenery-or
sleep.
Our wiry, slight horses pegged on,
breaking into a trot on the occasions
when the road really was a road.
Their brides sparkled with blue
beads, which are most powerful in
averting the evil eye. The araba-ji
(wagon-man) was a stoutly-built
young fellow, who drove with one leg
curled up under him, and made slow,
large gestures when he spoke, with a
rare mixture of unconscious dignity
and oriental leisure.
Across the Plain.
For an hour or more we drove
across the plain, the arched hood of
the wagon framing the huge white bull
wark of the Taurus. The range lifted
itself as though to bar the way. The
great, brown, comfortable Cilician
plain, fertile with the deposit of a
thousand centuries from the noun
tains, was broken here and again by
the uprising Of the sharp conical mass
of some hill-like that of the Seven
Sleepers with its cave. Every here
and there sprays of anemones (of
every tint from palest helotrope to
deep purple) were scattered among
crocuses whose white and yellow
heads broke-almost stalkless -
through the earth.
We took backward look at the
great plain, flooded with afternoon
light, caught the distant CLINT of the
sea over Mersina, and drove on north
ward. A short, precipitous, forbidding
ravine Of brownish-gray SCARED rock,
so sheer and steep that it looked as
though some angry god had hewn it
open with an ak, was the one strik-
ing break in the normal gradual rise
of the road, up and on, twisting and
recoiling, but always finally moving
north.
Swinging round rocky corner, we
made a narrow plain-a miniature
plateau of the hills, where, behind a
khan, the camels were grouped in
brown circles, heads down as though
settling into Rugby serum but
actually just feeding from a sackful
OF fodder thrown down.
Then we turned sharply into the
gateway # Yenikhan New khan.
T. g adjective new" sounded good To