Human nature is pretty much the same in the Orient as anywhere else; the degradation of woman to a position beneath her proper level has borne its legitimate fruits; the average Turkish woman is said to be as coarse and unchaste in her conversation as the lowest outcasts of Occidental society, and is given to assailing her lord and master, when angry, with language anything but choice.

It is hardly six o'clock when I issue forth next morning, but there are at least fifty women congregated in the cemetery, alongside which my route leads. During the night they seem to have made up their minds to grasp the only opportunity of "seeing the elephant" by witnessing my departure; and as, "when a woman will she will," etc., applies to Turkish ladies as well as to any others, in their laudable determination not to be disappointed they have been patiently squatting among the gray tombstones since early dawn.

The roadway is anything but smooth, nevertheless one could scarce be so dead to all feelings of commiseration as to remain unmoved by the sight of that patiently waiting crowd of shrouded females; accordingly I mount and pick my way along the street and out of town. Modest as is this performance, it is the most marvellous thing they have seen for many a day; not a sound escapes them as I wheel by, they remain as silent as though they were the ghostly population of the graveyard they occupy, for I which, indeed, shrouded as they are in white from head to foot, they might easily be mistaken by the superstitious.

My road leads over an undulating depression between the higher hills, a region of small streams, wheat-fields, and irrigating ditches, among which several trails, leading from Tereklu to numerous villages scattered among the mountains and neighboring small valleys, make it quite difficult to keep the proper road. Once I wander off my proper course for several miles; finding out my mistake I determine upon regaining the Torbali trail by a short cut across the stubble-fields and uncultivated knolls of scrub oak. This brings me into an acquaintanceship with the shepherds and husbandmen, and the ways of their savage dogs, that proves more lively than agreeable. Here and there I find primitive threshing-floors; they are simply spots of level ground selected in a central position and made smooth and hard by the combined labors of the several owners of the adjoining fields, who use them in common. Rain in harvest is very unusual; therefore the trouble and expense of covering them is considered unnecessary. At each of these threshing-centres I find a merry gathering of villagers, some threshing out the grain, others winnowing it by tossing it aloft with wooden, flat-pronged forks; the wind blows the lighter chaff aside, while the grain falls back into the heap. When the soil is sandy, the grain is washed in a neighboring stream to take out most of the grit, and then spread out on sheets, in the sun to dry before being finally stored away in the granaries. The threshing is done chiefly by the boys and women, who ride on the same kind of broad sleigh-runner-shaped boards described in European Turkey.