DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0101
II. THE WAY HOME 91
XV. To-day we rode down the " Great Eastern
Highway " connecting the JEgea.11 harbours with the
eastern lands. During the first five hours there
stretched on our left a country, partly hilly and
partly plain, which has all the appearance of being
able to support a large population, containing fully
a dozen villages at the present day; and yet I do
not know that any traveller has ever gone through
it. It lies near, yet off the line of, the Great High-
way ; and one would expect that it was formerly
inhabited by a rather primitive people, like those of
Tchal district. Then we went along the northern
edge of the long salt lake Anava, where people still
gather salt, as they did when the vast army of
Xerxes marched by the same way. At ten hours
we passed under the village Tchardak ; three weeks
before my wife and I spent here the first night from
Apameia; but this time I plodded on two hours
more to Bash-Tcheshme (Head-Fountain).
Bash-Tcheshme stands at the top of the pass
that slopes down to the head of the Lycos valley.
No stream runs down the pass (except while rain
is falling), which in Byzantine times seems to have
been called Graos Gala, Old-Woman's Milk, by
coarse rustic wit. There is no village beside the
fountain; but merely a large shed, at which
muleteers and drovers rest and purchase cups of
coffee from the Turk who attends to the shed.
XV. To-day we rode down the " Great Eastern
Highway " connecting the JEgea.11 harbours with the
eastern lands. During the first five hours there
stretched on our left a country, partly hilly and
partly plain, which has all the appearance of being
able to support a large population, containing fully
a dozen villages at the present day; and yet I do
not know that any traveller has ever gone through
it. It lies near, yet off the line of, the Great High-
way ; and one would expect that it was formerly
inhabited by a rather primitive people, like those of
Tchal district. Then we went along the northern
edge of the long salt lake Anava, where people still
gather salt, as they did when the vast army of
Xerxes marched by the same way. At ten hours
we passed under the village Tchardak ; three weeks
before my wife and I spent here the first night from
Apameia; but this time I plodded on two hours
more to Bash-Tcheshme (Head-Fountain).
Bash-Tcheshme stands at the top of the pass
that slopes down to the head of the Lycos valley.
No stream runs down the pass (except while rain
is falling), which in Byzantine times seems to have
been called Graos Gala, Old-Woman's Milk, by
coarse rustic wit. There is no village beside the
fountain; but merely a large shed, at which
muleteers and drovers rest and purchase cups of
coffee from the Turk who attends to the shed.