and then fired as he rushed past. Though he did not fall till he had run fifty yards or so, when the dogs came up I found him shot through the heart and quite dead.
I had some trouble in getting horses, but succeeded with the help of the chief of police in hiring some for twenty piastres a day. A mounted zaptieh was sent with the party to help us in case of need, so that on March 28th I was at last able to make a start.
The horses were very fair, and we travelled over the dry rocky hills, covered with stunted evergreen oak and Pinus halepensis, across the watershed which separates Macri from the valley of the Xanthus river. Alpine Choughs and Blackheaded Jays, with Emberiza cinerea, were the most interesting birds, and a sweet scented Daphne, Cistus and Mediter¬ ranean Heath were in flower. The soil was mostly red stiff loam from the hard limestone rocks which form the hills, and notwithstanding the wet winter was already very dry. We reached a small, poor village called Minara about four o’clock, where I found bad lodging in. a Turkish hut. I visited the ruins of the ancient Pinara, discovered and described by Fellowes. The theatre remains very perfect, and there are thousands of tombs and chambers cut out of the rock in the cliffs round the site of the town, which must once have been a populous place, though now surrounded by a barren and rocky wilderness.
On the next day’s ride to Tortuca I crossed a spur of the Cragus mountain and found many large Valonian Oaks, Quercus Ægilops, whose acorn cups are collected in quantity for farming and were then a valuable article of export, I saw many Alpine and common swifts, and in the pine forest above the village both green and spotted woodpeckers. But by far the most interesting bird was the little nuthatch, only found in Asia Minor and Syria (Sitta Krueperi). It is confined to these rocky pine forests where it breeds in holes of trees like its European congener, whilst Sitta Neumayeri, the Syrian nuthatch, is essentially a rock-haunting bird.
From what Spratt and Forbes had written* I expected to find big game abundant in this neighbourhood. But the inhabitants seemed poor and stupid, and there was very little grass among the rocks at this season, Bears and red deer probably exist higher up in the mountains, and there were certainly wild goats, Capra ægagrus, on the sea cliffs, for I saw some small ones and a fine pair of horns thirty inches long in the village. But however interesting this part of Asia Minor may be to an archaeologist or a naturalist, there is not enough game to attract a sportsman. I went on from here to Junok, near the ruins of the ancient town of Xanthus, and in the valley near the sea found spring much more advanced and the trees coming into leaf. Here for the first time I found very comfortable quarters in the house of an old Turkish officer, Mehemet Aga by name, a Turk of the old school who had served in the Russian war of 1828, as well as in the Crimea, and who, though a poor man, was very hospitable and seemed really pleased to receive me in his house.
Among the ruins I found many beautiful Ophrys and other orchids in flower, and warblers and magpies were abundant on the borders of the marshy plain. At the next village, Bayeerzan, I lodged in the Oda, a
1 Travels in Lycia, 1847.
