room kept for strangers’ lodgings in most Turkish villages, but I was not able to collect much owing to the very sharp rocks, overgrown with bush, which cover the country and make walking very difficult off the paths.
Nine hours’ ride from here I reached Cassaba, crossing a pass 3,000 to 4,000 feet above sea level, where the snow was only just melted, and where I shot a wood-pigeon out of a flock which were not as yet paired. The scenery in the valley of Cassaba is very curious, the hills being composed of soft sandstone which is weathered by the rain into innumerable little conical hills and ravines, very bare of vegetation except terrestrial orchids. At Cassaba there was a Kaimakam, a very poor specimen of the modern Turk, who invited me to go out shooting next day; though he brought a lot of beaters and dogs, the beat was so badly managed that the wild pigs all escaped without a shot. On April 4th I left Cassaba for Myra, about eight hours’ ride through the Dembra gorge, the most beautiful valley I have seen in Asia Minor. We had to ford the river twenty or thirty times, and on its bank I found a rare Fritillary, which was described by Boissier as F. Lycia. Lower down this gorge opens out into a plain in which the village of Dembra or Myra stands near the sea, and there I lodged in the house of a Custom-house official. I was told that a bear had been killed near here in the winter, but whether the bear of this region is the Syrian bear, as I suppose, or a variant of the brown bear, I cannot be sure. Vegetation here was well advanced and the wheat, already two feet high, looked splendid. After it is cut in May there is said to be time for the people to go up to their summer villages and sow barley, after harvesting which they come down again to the plains in time to sow wheat. What a contrast to our English climate, where wheat is often ten or twelve months from sowing to harvest. A fine læmmergeyer sailed over my head here, and on the shore I shot a specimen of the African cuckoo, Coccystes glandarius, just arrived from the opposite coast. Choughs were also seen in the gorge and a rare bunting.
On April 5th, being Easter Sunday, I stayed at Myra and visited the ruins of the ancient city about a mile from the village. Though not so extensive as some of the ruins in Lycia the amphitheatre is in very good condition, the arches and the double corridors at the sides being perfect. There are also large rock tombs with fine sculpture above some of them.
Next day I returned by the same route to Cassaba and found a very graceful species of Thalictrum with white flowers as large as a shilling, and some nice ferns, irises and other plants. At Cassaba I packed up the living plants I had collected as well as I could, including a great number of Ophrys and Orchis tubers, and started to return to Macri by another route, which led for six miles up a steep hill by a rocky path difficult for horses. Neither at Cassaba nor at the large village of Ahoory could I get barley for the horses, food of all sorts being now unusually scarce and very little to be got for ourselves. Turks seem to be able to do with less than almost any people, and I never lived so badly on any journey as during this trip in Asia Minor, where not even coffee was procurable in many of the villages and we had to content ourselves with bad bread, onions and sour milk. After leaving Ahoory the road became better and
