and burnt up I found fewplants or birds of interest till I got to a considerable elevation. I met a man coming down with a horse-load of apples in perfect condition; they are said to keep good till the new crop is ripe, and the same is said of the celebrated Cassaba melons, which were still fresh and juicy and of delicious flavour after being kept six months in a dry cellar. I brought a few home and showed them to a fruiterer in Covent Garden. He said that their looks would condemn them in the London market, however good their flavour might be, as appearance was more important in the public estimation than taste. I do not know any part of the Mediterranean where such fine and cheap fruit is produced as in Asia Minor, and there seems no reason why it should not be imported at a profit, as well as dried fruits, if proper arrangements for the storage and packing were made.
At about fifteen miles from the plain, the valley up which I rode opened out into a plain covered with fine grass and inhabited in summer by the people of Odenish; but though many horses and sheep were grazing there, very few people had come up, and the high mountain above was still covered with snow. On the other side of this plain I came to a pretty lake, a mile long, surrounded by houses, fields and gardens, in which nightingales were singing, and beyond these were small woods of oak, walnut, poplar and willow, in which I saw hooded crows, starlings, buntings and woodpeckers. After finding lodgings in a small and dirty house belonging to the man who came with me as guide, I went out to search for plants, but the flora there is not so rich and varied as in the mountains of Lycia at the same elevation. I found some tulips, croci, irises and other plants, but on the light sandy soil which prevails there they were not so fine as in the heavier red loam of Lycia.
The next day I returned by a shorter but much rougher road to Salikly, passing some men who were dragging down one of the figured walnut logs, which are collected all over Asia Minor and Armenia for export to Marseilles, where they fetch a high price, and are cut up into veneer and gunstocks. I also saw an encampment of nomadic Yuruks, who wander from place to place all over Asiatic Turkey, living in black hair¬ cloth tents very like the tents used by the Tibetan nomads, but longer and more comfortable, with a cane-work shelter to keep the wind out. I also passed some hot sulphur springs, with a temperature of about 110°, which are used for bathing by people in the neighbourhood. On getting back to the station I skinned the few birds I had shot and returned to Cassaba, to Mr. Hutchinson’s hospitable home.
On my last day in Asia Minor I rode out to see the melon gardens for which Cassaba is famed. The plants are raised on hotbeds and planted out in the trenches in May. I was told that the best variety, which was then grown for the Sultan’s table, will not keep for more than a few days and has degenerated in quality of late years. My father, who brought home the seed of this variety thirty years before, said that the same thing had happened in England.
On returning to Smyrna I heard of a Greek who knew something about flowers, and who promised to collect bulbs in the summer; and this was the beginning of what has grown into quite a big business, as Galanthus
