mation concerning the road, the directions
being so contradictory that we were as much in the dark as ever. We lost
half an hour in wandering among the hills; and, after travelling four
hours over piny uplands, without finding the village of Kara Koei, encamped
on a dry plain, on the western bank of the river. There was not a spear of
grass for the beasts, everything being eaten up by the grasshoppers, and
there were no Turcomans near who could supply us with food. So we dined on
hard bread and black coffee, and our forlorn beasts walked languidly
about, cropping the dry stalks of weeds and the juiceless roots of the
dead grass.

We crossed the river next morning, and took a road following its course,
and shaded with willows and sycamores. The lofty, wooded ranges of the
Mysian Olympus lay before us, and our day's work was to pass them. After
passing the village of Kara Koei, we left the valley of the Rhyndacus, and
commenced ascending one of the long, projecting spurs thrust out from the
main chain of Olympus. At first we rode through thickets of scrubby cedar,
but soon came to magnificent pine forests, that grew taller and sturdier
the higher we clomb. A superb mountain landscape opened behind us. The
valleys sank deeper and deeper, and at last disappeared behind the great
ridges that heaved themselves out of the wilderness of smaller hills. All
these ridges were covered with forests; and as we looked backwards out of
the tremendous gulf up the sides of which we were climbing, the scenery
was wholly wild and uncultivated. Our path hung on the imminent side of a
chasm so steep that one slip might have been destruction to both horse and
rider. Far below us, at the bottom of the chasm, roared an invisible
torrent. The opposite side, vapory from its depth, rose like an immense
wall against Heaven. The pines were even grander than those in the woods
of Phrygia. Here they grew taller and more dense, hanging their cloudy
boughs over the giddy depths, and clutching with desperate roots to the
almost perpendicular sides of the gorges. In many places they were the
primeval forests of Olympus, and the Hamadryads were not yet frightened
from their haunts.

Thus, slowly toiling up through the sublime wilderness, breathing the
cold, pure air of those lofty regions, we came at last to a little stream,
slowly trickling down the bed of the gorge. It was shaded, not by the
pine, but by the Northern beech, with its white trunk and close