. Fig. 2.—rock , UTCH I11>.SAK informant, and in the Middle Ages a captain of Timour Beg, who was sent to hunt out the cave-dwellers of this district, was shol with an arrow in similar fashion. Beyond the mill-stone is a series of dwelling-rooms, churches, and store-houses (that below Misti is reputed to contain as many as 400 dwellings), and the whole honeycomb is grouped round the village well, which in this waterless area is often very deep. Suvermcs, " water is lacking," the Turkish name of one of these villages, tells its own tale, and at another, Malakopi, the lev
. Fig. 2.—rock , UTCH I11>.SAK informant, and in the Middle Ages a captain of Timour Beg, who was sent to hunt out the cave-dwellers of this district, was shol with an arrow in similar fashion. Beyond the mill-stone is a series of dwelling-rooms, churches, and store-houses (that below Misti is reputed to contain as many as 400 dwellings), and the whole honeycomb is grouped round the village well, which in this waterless area is often very deep. Suvermcs, " water is lacking," the Turkish name of one of these villages, tells its own tale, and at another, Malakopi, the level of the water is about seventy metres below the ground. The burrowed habitations are also carried to a considerable depth. At Malakopi there are no less than five series one below the other and each defended by a mill-stone door. These subterranean warrens are called KaTavyia, " places of refuge," and the greater part of one of the of rock called Utch Hissar, " Three Castles," by the village of Matchan, the ancient Matiane, is the most remarkable natural spectacle I have seen. The rocks at Utch Hissar, thrown up perhaps by some volcanic agency, were honeycombed at some date unknown by human inhabitants. Weathering has now stripped the outer surface of the rock, and the oblong niches to be seen in Fig. 2 are rooms the outer walls of which have dropped away. But more remarkable still is the valley at the head of which these masses of rock are placed. Here the absence of the hard integument has left the soft stone bare and nature has weathered it into a series of fantastic cones. Looking down the valley, one sees them not in tens but in hundreds. To add to the bizarre effect, their colour no less than their shape is unreal. Some are yellowish- white, some pink, some black, and some a dirty red. It is not unlike the mountain scenery in one of Giotto's
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