and the Patras-Athens line along the
Saronic Gulf, this Trans-Bosporus road for a great distance scarps and
tunnels the cliffs along the Gulf of Ismid, and sometimes runs so close to
the water's edge that the puffing of the _kara vapor_ or "land steamer,"
as the Turks call it, is drowned by the roaring breakers. The country
between Scutari and Ismid surpasses in agricultural advantages any part of
Asiatic Turkey through which we passed. Its fertile soil, and the
luxuriant vegetation it supports, are, as we afterward learned, in
striking contrast with the sterile plateaus and mountains of the interior,
many parts of which are as desolate as the deserts of Arabia. In area,
Asia Minor equals France, but the water-supply of its rivers is only one
third.

[Illustration: BICYCLE ROUTE OF Messrs. Allen & Sachtleben ACROSS
ASIA.]

One of the principal agents in the work of transforming Asia Minor is the
railroad, to which the natives have taken with unusual readiness. The
locomotive is already competing with the hundred and sixty thousand camels
employed in the peninsula caravan-trade. At Geiveh, the last station on
the Trans-Bosporus Railway, where we left the track to follow the Angora
highway, the "ships of the desert" are beginning to transfer their cargoes
to the "land steamer," instead of continuing on as in former days to the
Bosporus.

[Illustration: THE DONKEY BOYS INSPECT THE "DEVIL'S CARRIAGE."]

The Trans-Bosporus line, in the year of our visit, was being built and
operated by a German company, under the direct patronage of the Sultan. We
ventured to ask some natives if they thought the Sultan had sufficient
funds to consummate so gigantic a scheme, and they replied, with the
deepest reverence: "God has given the Padishah much property and power,
and certainly he must give him enough money to utilize it."

A week's cycling from the Bosporus brought us beyond the Allah Dagh
mountains, among the barren, variegated hills that skirt the Angora
plateau. We had already passed through Ismid, the ancient Nicomedia and
capital of Diocletian; and had left behind us the heavily timbered valley
of the Sakaria, upon whose banks the "Freebooter of the Bithynian hills"
settled with his four hundred tents and laid the foundation of the Ottoman
empire. Since leaving Geiveh we had been attended by a mounted guard, or
_zaptieh_, who was sometimes forced upon us by the authorities in their
anxiety to carry out the wishes exp