can to avoid it, by feasting all night
and sleeping all day, but the poor, who must perform their daily
avocations, as usual, suffer exceedingly. In walking through Tarsus I saw
many wretched faces in the bazaars, and the guide who accompanied us had a
painfully famished air. Fortunately the Koran expressly permits invalids,
children, and travellers to disregard the fast, so that although we eat
and drink when we like, we are none the less looked upon as good
Mussulmans. About dark a gun is fired and a rocket sent up from the
mosque, announcing the termination of the day's fast. The meals are
already prepared, the pipes filled, the coffee smokes in the _finjans_,
and the echoes have not died away nor the last sparks of the rocket become
extinct, before half the inhabitants are satisfying their hunger, thirst
and smoke-lust.

We left Tarsus this morning, and are now encamped among the pines of Mount
Taurus. The last flush of sunset is fading from his eternal snows, and I
drop my pen to enjoy the silence of twilight in this mountain solitude.

Chapter XVIII.

The Pass of Mount Taurus.

We enter the Taurus--Turcomans--Forest Scenery--the Palace of Pan--Khan
Mezarluk--Morning among the Mountains--The Gorge of the Cydnus--The Crag
of the Fortress--The Cilician Gate--Deserted Forts--A Sublime
Landscape--The Gorge of the Sihoon--The Second Gate--Camp in the
Defile--Sunrise--Journey up the Sihoon--A Change of Scenery--A Pastoral
Valley--Kolue Kushla--A Deserted Khan--A Guest in Ramazan--Flowers--The
Plain of Karamania--Barren Hills--The Town of Eregli--The Hadji again.

"Lo! where the pass expands
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems, with its accumulated crags,
To overhang the world." Shelley.

Eregli, _in Karamania, June_ 22, 1852.

Striking our tent in the gardens of Tarsus, we again crossed the Cydnus,
and took a northern course across the plain. The long line of Taurus rose
before us, seemingly divided into four successive ranges, the highest of
which was folded in clouds; only the long streaks of snow, filling the
ravines, being visible. The outlines of these ranges were very fine, the
waving line of the summits cut here and there by precipitous gorges--the
gateways of rivers that came down to the plain. In about two hours, we
entered the lower hills. They are barren and stony, with a white, chalky
soil; but the valleys were filled with myrtle, oleander, and l