Tuesday May 21. [21 May 1907] Rode off with Haidar and Hassan at
5.45 by the Kolbasan [Kilbasan] road round under the outlying SE hill -
there is certainly a ruin on it which I must see. We wanted to go to a
reported cave but found no one who cd tell us about it and finally I
sent Hassan down to Kolbasan. We waited an hour and a quarter, I
sleeping, and as he did not come rode down to K. ourselves where
we had news of his going out by another road. We followed and
presently met him with a boy Ahmed. Where he had been I don't
know. The cave turned out to be just under the castle (Bash Dagh)
and near it I heard of a ruined church with the picture of a bird in it but
as it was all so near the castle I decided to go to the two places when
I go back there. So we rode on and at noon came to a Circassian
village, Eminler (K. [Kiepert] calls it Enirler) where I lunched in the
house of a charming man, Mehmet Bey. He had worked at one time
on the railway and had been in the country 12 years. Others had been
8 years. The village looked very clean and tidy with some 2 storied
houses. So we rode on to Mandasun where I was to see an inscribed
lintel but I found it was all underground and not visible. It is in the
courtyard of a house built partly inside a large square ruined building.
Lots of old stones, lintels with crucifixes etc. I had meant to go to
Istesar to see the tumulus of which the Mudir of Arik Euren [Arikˆren]
told me, and to Kilesejik but they were much too far off, so we turned
up to the hills again. Above Mandasun on the western slopes are lots
of Euren, chiefly long parallel lines of ruined garden walls, evlik
Hassan called them. The ground is now uncultivated. We crossed a
low spur and on the N side of the mt came upon a large town
completely ruined. Some buildings looked like churches, one had
the remains of a niche decoration on the outer walls: [sketch]
something of that kind. Below it we passed over lots of old vineyards
now apparently neglected. So up to DailÈ and down here at 5.15
pretty tired. Noticed more ruins between DailÈ and here. The crops
we passed through on the S side were miserably poor. Fattuh says
the people of Maden Sheher have scarcely any land, only that behind
and in front of the town. They have sheep and have suffered much
from the death of their sheep during the past cold winter. One man
who had 500 has only 10 left.