CHAPTER XXII.
THE FORESTS OF PHRYGIA.
The Frontier of Phrygia — Ancient Quarries and Tombs — We Enter the Pine Forests — A Guard-House — Encampments of the Turcomans — Pastoral Scenery — A Summer Village — The Valley of the Tombs — Rock Sepulchres of the Phrygian Kings — The Titan's Camp — The Valley of Kümbeh — A Land of Flowers — Turcoman Hospitality — The Exiled Effendis — The Old Turcoman — A Glimpse of Arcadia — A Landscape — Interested Friendship — The Valley of the Pursek — Arrival at Kiutahya.
"And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady."
Tennyson.
Kiutahya, July 5, 1852.
We had now passed through the ancient provinces of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia, and reached the confines of Phrygia — a rude mountain region, which was never wholly penetrated by the light of Grecian civilization. It is still comparatively a wilderness, pierced but by a single high-road, and almost unvisited by travellers, yet inclosing in its depths many curious relics of antiquity. Leaving Bolawadün in the morning, we ascended a long, treeless mountain-slope, and in three or four hours reached the dividing ridge — the watershed of Asia Minor, dividing the affluents of the Mediterranean and the central lakes from the streams that flow to the Black Sea. Looking back, Sultan Dagh, along whose base we had travelled the previous day, lay high and blue in the background,
