70 OVERLAND TO INDIA CHAP.
dusk to the last seat with bawling guests of doubtful respectability.
Beyond Kara-kilisse we crossed, on November 23, the considerable river Chor-su, and drove for a time over an excellent road which now and then tended to become a trench, but the pleasure was soon over. To drive on a road pounded into a bed of bottomless mud is bad enough, but if anything can be worse it is when the mud is frozen hard as stone. Such was the case this day, when the temperature was 24.1° at seven o'clock. Soft mud is worst for the horses, frozen for the drivers. The flakes of clayf lay like slices of black pudding turned up at the sides of the ruts behind the last vehicle. The whole country was white with hoar-frost, and rime covered our carriages. It melted under the rays of the sun, and drops from the hood glittered like rubies in the sun, which at that time of the day was right in our faces. The morning was clear, but the sun was no sooner up than the whole sky was covered with clouds.
We mount between low, slightly snowclad mountains slowly through the broad undulating valley, and leave the river Murad at some distance on our right. Rattling and creaking, our train passes heavily and laboriously past the villages Junjali, Kazli, Bezireh, Mengeser, and Chüpkeran at the foot of the snowy ridge of Sinek-dagh. At the sight of these collections of wretched wearisome grey huts, one misses the handsome and proud Trebizond, the picturesque Baiburt, and the old dignified Erzerum, and one misses the wild bold relief of the coastal belt, here replaced by the desolate evenness of the plateau country. There is no longer any traffic ; all is empty and deserted as though enemies' troops had ravaged the country.
We constantly make long détours out into the fields to avoid the road where the mud is rapidly softening in the warmth of day, and we drive through the Murad, which may now carry down about 35o cubic feet of water per second, and is said to be swollen in spring to a mighty river. On the left bank, which we follow, leafless bushes and grass grow, and there are innumerable tracks of grazing sheep. At Yilasor, where the people are
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