The mill-wheels are silent now. This little valley, with its rich grassy slopes, ought to have been covered with herds of sheep and cattle. Not one was to be seen. The pretty little place was as lonely as a graveyard, or as though no living thing had trod its rich greensward for years. We ascended the slope to the right, and when we reached the top of the ridge which separated it from the next valley, we had a beautiful panorama spread out before us.
The mountains here seemed to extend around in a circle, enclosing a tract of country some eight or ten miles in diameter, considerably lower down, which was cut up by a great number of deep hollows and ravines that traversed it in every direction, and seemed to cross and cut off each other without the slightest appearance of anything like reference to a watershed. It looked more like an enlarged photograph of the mountains of the moon than anything else I could think of Guided Istanbul Tours.
Down in the bottom of one of these hollows we could make out a village, which our guide informed us it would still take us an hour and a half to reach, although it really seemed to be very near.
The hillsides
This was the village of Batak, which we were in search of. The hillsides were covered with little fields of wheat and rye, that were golden with ripeness. But although the harvest was ripe, and over ripe, although in many places the well-filled ears had broken down the fast-decaying straw that could no longer hold them aloft, and were now lying flat, there was no sign of reapers trying to save them. The fields were as deserted as the little valley, and the harvest was rotting in the soil. In an hour we had neared the village.
As we approached our attention was directed to some dogs on a slope overlooking the town. We turned aside from the road, and, passing over the debris of two or three walls, and through several gardens, urged our horses up the ascent towards the dogs.
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