others with short stubbly growth; but the sheep are all of that quaint oriental description which one sees depicted on the bas-relief of Persepolis, with such enormous tails of fat that cases are on record of shepherds providing tiny wooden carts for the sheep to carry its appendage on. I have frequently seen sheep quite weighed down by them, but I have only heard of and never actually set eyes on the cart. These sheep are mentioned by Moses in Leviticus, and by Herodotus, who tells us that the tails were 66 one cubit in width." This weighty "bustle" is usually about the size of an ordinary football, and consists of a mass of fat on each side of the sheep's spinal cord, and forms, as we discovered, a most excellent substitute for dripping, and far preferable for cooking purposes to the rancid butter the nomads provided us with.

Most tribes of Yourouks on the southern slopes of the Taurus go in largely for camel - breeding. The stunted brushwood amongst which they live is excellent pasturage for them. They produce here that sort of mule camel known in Asia Minor as the Toulou camel, a cross between the Syrian and the Bactrian, excellent for standing heat and cold, mountain or plain. Every encampment we visited had a number of camels,-tiny foals a few hours old, and broken-down old camels which had carried for many seasons the Yourouk tents up into the mountains. A camel, we learnt, has a great fancy for tobacco, and will often stretch its long neck round to receive a whiff from its owner's cigarette or pipe.

As for the Yourouks themselves, they will do anything for tobacco

and coffee, smoking the dried leaves of certain mountain herbs they know of when they cannot get the genuine article; and for coffee, too, they have an excellent substitute, slightly medicinal, and more aromatic in flavour, which they produce from the seed of a sort of thistle which grows abundantly on their mountains (Gundelia Tournefortia). Coffee and tobacco are often more serviceable to the traveller to have with him than money when amongst the nomads, for everything is done over coffee. Whenever we wanted to ascertain the whereabouts of ruins or inscriptions, Captain Achmed would summon the men of the tribe to a solemn cup of coffee and a conclave. Then he would offer either tobacco or fractions of a penny, known as metallics, to those who professed to be able to guide us to such things. They generally chose the tobacco, and terrible walks they would take me at times: their hour generally grew into two or three, or sometimes four. Now and again my labours were rewarded with success, and a further item was added to the history of the pirates; but as often as not their expeditions ended in some miserable fiasco, fatigue, and loss of temper. A rock with natural marks upon it was supposed to be an inscription. A cave, supported by a natural pillar, was in their idea a ruin of exceeding importance. Tombs of a recent date were the frequent cause of acute disappointment. But notwithstanding the many failures, each walk had a charm of its own amongst the gorges, the rocks, and the brushwood of rugged Cilicia; and each walk increased my admiration for the instinct for locality possessed by these nomads, who could thread

their way with unerring steps through this mazy labyrinth.

In their home life the Yourouks have their peculiarities. They are the least religious people I ever came across, though professing to be followers of Mohammed. They have no mosques, nor did I see them saying the prayers or performing the ablutions inculcated by the Koran more than once or twice during the months we spent amongst them. They have their children circumcised, for the fact was forcibly brought before our notice one day during our stay at Maidan, when the travelling operator appeared to initiate the young Yourouks into the first mysteries of their religion, and the greensward before the tent of the Aga, or chief man, was chosen for the ceremony, and the children from all the neighbouring tents were here assembled for treatment. Beyond this outward symbol there appears to be but little of the religious zeal common in Mohammedan communities, and the Turkish officials are constantly urging them to have mosques in certain spots, and to employ hodjas to instruct their children. But they will have none of these things. In one settlement we visited, high

up in the mountains, a pious Mussulman had built them а mosque, but its roof was off, and I should think no service had been performed there for many years.

Nevertheless, it is perhaps too sweeping an accusation to say that there is no religion amongst them. A Yourouk of the mountain has his sacred tree, specimens of which we frequently came across in wild remote spots. Rags are hung to them, and wooden spoons as votive offerings. Little piles of stones are heaped up by passers-by in the

vicinity, and when a person dies they bring the corpse to one of these trees, read a few verses of the Koran over it, and take a handful of the small stones to put upon the grave; and furthermore, the idea is current amongst them that a corpse should be buried near a pathway, that the passersby may pray for its welfare. Religion in a modified form is present with them, and the religion of honesty and the respect for the goods of others is far more present with them than it is amongst the orientals who inhabit the towns and haunts of men. A verbal contract made over a cup of coffee is as binding to them as a written one, and the biggest rogues in the Levant are those to whom this primitive verbal contract has lost its value- those who are, so to speak, in the transition stage between patriarchal simplicity and the laws of civilisation.

One of the most intelligent Yourouks we came across was called Osman. He knew something of letters, and could distinguish them from marks on the rocks, so that he never took me wild-goose chases whilst we were in his district. He had a pleasing round face, like all his race, but far more intelligent. His long white petticoats, blue jacket, and red fez made him decidedly picturesque, though perhaps not so strikingly so as some of his fellows who indulged in yellow cotton and red girdles. He gave me a good deal of information on the religious question, and spoke of the desire the Government had to centralise the nomads, and induce those with families to reside, for some months of the year at any rate, where some instruction could be got for their young. But," said he, "the spirit of roving free

dom is innate in us; we could never conform to any other mode of life." And I could fancy that the nomad races of Asia Minor, like the Indians of America, if brought into immediate and forcible contact with the sedentary habits of the civilised, would dwindle away and become extinct.

For the present, however, there is no fear of such a contingency, for a more polygamous race can scarcely exist than the Yourouks of the Taurus. Every wife has a large family, and if it were not for the high rate of infant mortality, they would increase and multiply alarmingly. A well-toA well-todo Yourouk would think himself disgraced had he less than six or seven wives, or, more properly speaking, six or seven slaves. These good ladies do not all occupy the same tent, nor even the same encampment, but are scattered hither and thither with varied occupations. One wife minds the camels, two or three look after the flocks in different pasturages; a wife to spin and a wife to weave, a wife to cook and a wife to hew wood and draw water, completes the probable sum total of a Yourouk's harem: and as hired labour is unknown amongst them, the multiplication of family ties is absolutely necessary for advance in life. A poorly clad Yourouk was very glad to earn a few coppers by acting as our guide when we were encamped at a spot called Jambeslii, amid the ruined fortresses of a pirate town built on the edge of a gorge. He was said to be very low indeed in the scale of humanity; and on inquiring, I found that he was only able to keep three wives, and I could see that the Yourouks estimate the social position of their neighbours, much as we do in England,

by the number of servants they are able to keep.

Womanhood is, as a natural result of this system, sunk very low amongst them. A woman in her red petticoats, open jacket, and untidy head, is condemned to rush bare-legged after the goats, amid stones and brambles. Her only

ornaments are cowrie-beads and brass bracelets; and the surprise evinced at seeing their wrinkled faces in the looking-glass proved that the sin of vanity is unknown amongst them. When at the well fetching water, or at the stream thumping their clothes between stones to get them clean, they appear to have hardly anything on, and they are not ashamed; poor hounded things, they have no cause for shame. Anything like immorality is unknown amongst them.

We saw one or two betrothals and marriages whilst among them. At the betrothal the husbandelect generally agrees on the sum which he can pay for his future bride. In fact, the betrothal is the purchase of a slave pure and simple. When all arrangements are made, some one plays a tambourine or a flute, guns are let off, and the engaged couple exchange handkerchiefs. The marriage ceremony is a trifle gayer. Men go round with the bridegroom on horse or camel back to the tents in the neighbourhood three or four times before the day of the wedding, and feasting and dancing are indulged in in the evenings. Generally on the fourth day the bride is brought to her husband's tent, he entertains his guests with coffee and food, and the ceremony is concluded. But these oft-repeated weddings lose their zest, and a man with a prospect of so much matrimony before him can

not afford the time and money generally devoted to such occasions by a European monogamist. Wife-stealing is common amongst the nomad tribes: though in excess of the male population, the supply of females is not equal to the demand, and constant skirmishes occur with neighbouring tribes when a girl, or not unfrequently a matron, is snatched from her home.

It is fortunate that infant mortality is not even greater, considering the little attention that Yourouk mothers pay to their offspring when they get beyond the age of swaddling; and even then, to our minds, the treatment of infant life is odd. The mother heats some fine earth with a hot stone from her fire; this she binds with the swaddling-bands tightly round the child, and it is dressed for the day. Either it hangs from its mother's back or it swings in a goat-skin attached to a rope from the tent-pole, or as often as not is left to roll in the mud. If the babe survives this stage and the next, when it runs about barefoot in the mud and cold, it grows up strong and healthy, and every Yourouk may be said to be an example of the survival of the fittest. They are a fine, hardy race, capable of the most wonderful feats of endurance. In times of famine they can subsist on bread made of acorns-bitter, and with next to no nutriment in it. In times of plenty they eat little else but their flabby oat cake, washed down with buttermilk. Sometimes, as a great luxury, the housewife boils in a huge caldron the cones of a species of juniper (Juniperus drupacea), which, with a little flour in it, produces a brown sweet, not unlike chocolatecream in taste and consistency,

and exceedingly satisfying. They also consume a great deal of a coarse pungent cheese, and they are cunning in selecting food amongst the herbs on their mountains. But meat they seldom touch, nor wine, nor any of those many things which spoil our sedentary digestions.

During our stay in their tents and hovels we were able to form a fair idea of what their intercourse is with the outer world. A well-to-do man, usually a Greek from one of the neighbouring towns, will provide a tribe of Yourouks with a flock by what is called an "immortal contract". that is to say, the Greek engages to keep up the number of animals in case famine or disease diminish them. The Yourouk on his side agrees to produce for his patron so much butter, cheese, and milk. The contract is always a verbal one, and instances of cheating, I am told, are very rare; and if the seasons are prosperous, the tribe often succeeds in paying off the lender, and the flocks become their

own.

Periodically a travelling tinker comes amongst them, the great newsmonger of the mountain. He chooses a central spot to pitch his tent, and the most wonderful collection of decrepit copper utensils is soon brought from the neighbouring tents and piled around. He usually brings with him a young assistant to look after the mule and blow the bellows; and with nitre heated at his fire he mends the damaged articles, gossiping the while, and filling the minds of the simple Yourouks who stand around with wonderful tales, not always within the bounds of veracity. When his work is done he removes to another central point, and after he has amassed as

many fees as his mule can carry, for they usually pay in cheese and butter, he returns to his town and realises a handsome profit.

Cattle merchants also come, generally rascally Kourds, and over endless cups of coffee effect the purchase of the surplus flock which the nomads do not wish to take with them up to the mountains. They are always spring visitors, and their tents are the centre of great excitement for days together. Around them sit the chiefs of the tribes in solemn silence, smoking their long pipes and sipping coffee, whilst the women come up outside with the goats and sheep to be offered for sale, screaming and yelling as is their wont. When the merchants have collected as many animals as they can manage, they set off with them to the towns where they can effect a profitable sale.

Camel dealers, wool merchants, skin merchants, and tax-collectors all make their periodical rounds amongst the nomads, and as each tribe visits the same pastures every year at stated times, there is no difficulty for those accustomed to their habits to know where to find their clients.

Besides their pastoral vocations the nomads have a few other sources of livelihood. The Yourouks with whom we dwelt at Maidan occupy themselves in making pitch. Two circular holes are dug in the ground; into one of these they cast fir branches, which they burn, and the turpentine flows out of it, as from a winepress, into the other hole. Their tents were redolent with pitch collected like rancid butter in skins, and pressed down, and not a whit more agreeable. Other tribes devote some of their time to charcoal-burning, and one and

VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCV.

all they are frightfully destructive to the forests among which they wander. Acres of fine straight fir-trees, such as ship merchants would give good prices for for masts, are burnt annually by their fires; acres are cut down ruthlessly to secure pasturage for the flocks; and hundreds of trees are annually destroyed by tapping them just above the roots for turpentine.

Before aniline dyes were invented the Yourouks drove a good trade in colour-making from the herbs which grow on their mountain - sides; but now, alas! even for the purpose of dyeing their own wools for carpet-making, they purchase atrocious colours from Europe, with the result that their trade is gone, and with it the harmony in colours for which their carpets were once celebrated. Why they should have developed a taste for magenta, grass-green, and kindred colours, which are so different from their own, is a mystery, but such is the melancholy fact.

Every household commodity is made at home. The women spin their husbands' clothes, and it is not an uncommon thing to see an old Yourouk man, whose days of active work are over, plying the distaff like his wife, or standing at his tent door with a spindle in his hands.

Their shoes are made out of raw untanned hide, cut in a circle, and fastened round the instep by a thong. These are most excellent things for adhering to their rocky paths-far better than my boots when those rocks were slippery. They put their shoes into water every night to prevent their getting hard, and a pair will last about a fortnight.

They sow for themselves only just enough grain for domestic

2 c