of the hill. But as is invariably the case in Turkey, close inspection revealed the primitiveness and roughness.
After lunch, during which the servant and his little boy gravely sat and watched us, we went into the cave. We took our shoes off against our will, for the cave looked dirty and mussy. Down a long flight of stone steps the beturbaned guardian led us into a sickening atmosphere of incense and goatskin. We were told that the cave was large, but, as we were in stocking feet and had noses, we elected not to explore it. During the Decian persecutions, seven young men fled from Tarsus to this cave to escape. Here they fell asleep. They were miraculously kept asleep for one hundred years. Waking they thought it was the next day, and went down to a nearby village. They were surprised to learn that the whole world was Christian. This is the genesis, or at least the Oriental version, of the Rip Van Winkle story. The Christians built a
