LIFE IN SMYRNA—TRIP TO TRIOS—FOSTER FALLS IN LOVE—COCKERELL STARTS ALONE FOR TOWN OF SEVEN CHURCHES—PERGAMO—KNIFNICH—SUMEH—COMMERCE ALL IN THE HANDS OF GREEKS—KARASMAN OGLU—TURCOMANS—SARDIS—ALLAH SHERI—CROSSES FROM VALLEY OF HERMUS TO THAT OF THE MEANDER—HIERAPOLIS—DANGER OF THE COUNTRY—TURNS WESTWARDS.

"After our experiences of danger, discomfort, and cold at sea, Smyrna seemed to us a paradise of delightfulness. The consul received us very hospitably, and introduced us to various acquaintance and to the pleasures of the carnival which was going on. To you in England its diversions would have appeared vulgar and flat. To us it was the quintessence of gaiety to meet the masques, bad as they were, with their forced hilarity, passing noisily from one Frank house to another. On the last days of the carnival there were processions, than which nothing could be more ridiculous. There was a Bacchus on a barrel with various spouts about his body which, when turned, distributed wine to the populace; and about the car it rode on, piped and danced a number of wretches dressed in nankeen stained to a flesh-colour and hung with faded leaves and flowers. There followed on another car the 'Illness and Death of Bacchus.' He was in bed surrounded by a procession of weeping bacchanals, priests, doctors, glisters, and other remedial engines of gigantic dimensions. In sober daylight such a sight calls for its enjoyment for an amount of lightheartedness Englishmen do not at all moments possess—but we, under the circumstances, were very much amused.

We would have started at once on a tour of the Seven Churches if the road had been clear. For the moment, however, it is blocked by the presence of a pasha, who with four thousand troops is raiding and making war on his own account. His army is stationed just across our path, and I have been strongly advised to wait until the storm is passed over.

I am really not sorry to have such a good reason for remaining a little longer where I am. The weather is still very severe and quite unfit for travelling.

Our chief friend in Smyrna is a Mr. Thomas Burgon, married to a Smyrniote lady. With him we started on February 15 to make a little trip of four days to Boudron, the ancient Trios.

We went in an open boat up the gulf to Vourlac, that is to say, to the scala or port of it, which is on an island opposite to the site of the ancient ClazomenÆ, and walked from there to the town, spent the night there, and next day rode to Boudron. Here was only a tiny cafanÉ, and nothing but a bench to sleep on. The following days were passed entirely among the ruins of temples and magnificent buildings, among which now only a few scattered husbandmen guide their ploughs. If in Chandler's day—1775—the Temple of Bacchus was anything like what he describes, it must have been a good deal knocked about since, for it is very different now. The country we passed through generally is exceedingly fertile, and, in consequence of the great demand for produce in and about Smyrna, very prosperous.

When I got back to Smyrna I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Captain F. Beaufort, R.N.,[37] of H.M. frigate Frederiksteen. He is an accomplished antiquarian, a taste he has been able to cultivate in these countries, as he has been employed for some time in charting the coasts hereabouts.

I have suffered not a little from the changeableness of my companions: Mr. North first, in giving up the whole voyage to Egypt when we were halfway there, because of the weather; then Douglas, in suddenly at Scio taking it into his head to go home to England because he was disappointed of the voyage to Egypt; and now, finally, Foster has fallen in love and refuses to make with me the tour of the Seven Churches, as he promised, because he cannot tear himself away from his lady love.

The difficulty mentioned before about the raiding pasha has been settled. The moslem of this place have conciliated him with a gift of 20,000 piastres, and he is to retire to his own pashalik of Kauna. So I only await my horses and janissary to set off alone.

March 1st.—I started in a boat for the scala of Menimen, where the horses were waiting for me to take me to Menimen on the Hermus. As my janissary got drunk overnight, I had to wait next morning till seven before I could start, and in consequence did not get so far as I intended, and had to sleep in a small cafanÉ, on the site, as I take it, of the ancient CumÉ. We slept six in a small space, the divan, with a large fire, while the three or four horses were in the space beyond. Greeks steal when they get a chance, but Turks as a rule may be trusted; and though Dimitri and I were so tired that we left my arms, silver cup and spoons, &c., lying about all night, nobody touched them. In the morning I walked over the site of CumÉ. There were large remains of the wall nine or ten feet thick, and I found the torso of a white marble statue five feet six inches long, of a very beautiful style. The head, arms, and legs had been broken off by the aga of the place because he thought he should find gold inside. It is not far from here to Pergamo, but it took us unusually long because the water was out in all the low ground, and one had to keep to the causeways. These are made mostly of stones taken from ruined cities, in which one saw bits of architraves, friezes, and so on. Getting off the causeway in one place, I was very nearly bogged.

At Pergamo I lodged in the khan. The first thing I did was to walk up to the castle. It is in three stages, with remains of fortification of all ages, from the earliest to the Genoese, but the Roman are the most important. On the second stage are two towers and a great wall built of Roman-Greek fragments of white marble. Above are two larger towers with a gate and strong wall full of fragments. On the south-west side a gap or dell in the hill is filled up with arches fifty feet high by twenty wide, and above them a range of smaller ones, the whole forming a solid foundation for an immense temple[38] of white marble in the best Roman-Greek style. The whole work is prodigious and very noble. There are still considerable remains of the temple, but they are rapidly disappearing, for the Turks cut them up into tombstones. The ancient town seems to have been built on the hill. Everywhere on the sides of it are immense foundations. The amphitheatre is an extraordinary building. It stands in a narrow valley astride of a river. The two sides of the valley make the two ends of the oval, and the middle stands upon arches under which the river runs. I was detained at Pergamo two days by the weather. It poured all the first day, and the second the water was out and the river too high for me to get across.

I went to the baths to see the vase for which Canning offered 10,000 piastres, and bought there a beautiful stone for 40 piastres, and some bronze coins.

I took a guide to show me the way across the river, for the water was out all over the valley, and even on the causeway it was over our horses' knees, and to get off it would have been dangerous. On the way we met the son of a neighbouring aga with a party of fifty armed followers. We took them at a distance for a company of derrys, or mountain robbers. But when they came near us we saw they were much too smart. The young man was merely going to the Aga of Pergamo with the compliments of his father on the recovery of his health. Seeing me and my suite dressed À la Turque, he sent in passing a man with his compliments to me to wish me a happy journey.

The pleasant taste left by this graceful courtesy was wiped out by the next incident, which was far from agreeable. We came upon a camel-driver whose camels had got bogged in the swamp and could not be made to move backwards or forwards. Impatience at his trouble had put the man so beside himself that as we passed on he insulted our party. I did not understand a word he said, or the cause of offence, but our janissary was in a moment as furious as he. Both drew their pistols, and I had the greatest difficulty in containing my man. One or other would have been killed for no reason that I could comprehend. I managed to drag my man away, and we went on to Knifnich; after which our horses, wearied with their wetting and plodding through the heavy mire, could go no further, and we halted for the night. I had a letter to a resident Armenian merchant who received me with genuine hospitality; he introduced me to a relation of his, and the two vied in their honest gallantry. Each insisted on entertaining me. Finally my friend gave a party in my honour; and in the evening, the Turkish part of the company having departed, the women, contrary to the usual Armenian custom, appeared. The music which had been sent for began to play the Greek circle, the Romaika, and we all danced it together. At the end I did what I had understood before was the height of gallantry in these countries: on passing the musicians, dancing with my fair one, I clapped a dollar into the hand of the musician to express my enjoyment. Better still, is with a bit of wax to stick your sequin on his forehead, but I had no wax even if I had wished to try it. After eating and dancing to our heart's content, beds were spread, and in courtesy the landlord remained in the room till I was undressed. Nothing, in fact, could be more cordial than their treatment of me.

The trade of Knifnich is in raw cotton.

Next day I got as far as Sumeh. The roads were so heavy that our baggage horse fell and I thought we should never get him up again. This comes of having started too early in the year. Close to Sumeh, in a dell, is the picturesque village of Tarcala, with an ancient castle above it. A friend, Constantine Stephano, took me to call on a Greek family there. I cannot go into details; suffice it to say I found the people so really barbarous that I could not bear it and came out. Indeed, in simple savagery it would be impossible to surpass the natives of this country.

In the khan I found a number of Romaic Greeks. It was the last day of carnival and they were singing Moriote songs, making a noise and behaving themselves generally in a way they would not venture to do in Greece proper. The fact is, that Karasman Oglu, who governs all this part of the country from Pergamo north to Samos in the south and inland to Sart and Magnesia, is an extraordinarily good administrator for a Turk. He sees that the Greeks form the most industrious and the richest part of the population, and that it is to his interest to protect them. Trade is flourishing, and Greeks from other parts, such as those from the Morea who were so noisy in the khan, come and settle under him. I am bound to say that here, and everywhere else where they come into power, they are insolent and insufferably vain.

On the other hand, the Turks hereabouts are a mild and hospitable but apparently a dull race. They are even more severely taxed than the Greeks. For instance, it was they who had to pay to buy off the raiding pasha I spoke of, and in places remote from the seat of government they suffer great oppression from the hands of their petty governors. Indeed at times they have openly expressed to me their desire that the French or the English would take possession of their empire, for that they would be better off in the hands of anybody than in those of their own countrymen. And nothing would be easier than to take possession of it. In all my tour I saw only one fortress, and that a small one, quite incapable of resisting a regular force. Moreover, it is not a cramped country like the Morea, but perfectly open; and after you leave the coast, which is really populous and well cultivated, it is a desert. In nine hours' journey from Akhissar to Sart, I came across only one village and a few Turcomans.

These Turcomans are a nomadic people. They live in tents, of which you find perhaps twenty together, with their herds of cattle, horses, and camels around them, and wander about following the pasture. They consider themselves just as much part of the inhabitants as the settled population, and are well armed and dressed. As a rule, in these parts at any rate, they are inoffensive, but further up the country I am told they are organised into larger bands, call themselves dervishes or desperadoes, and if travellers do not keep together in large caravans, attack, rob, and even sell them for slaves. I was even given the sort of price I might be expected to fetch in that capacity, viz. from ten to twenty pounds.

From Sumeh to Kerikahatch, and thence over a low watershed into the valley of the Hermus and to Akhissar, where there is nothing worth seeing. I spent the evening with Greek and Armenian merchants, very rough company.

Went on towards Sardis. At a village on a small branch of the Hermus we came upon a large party of Turcoman women, who had come down from the mountains to wash. They made no attempt to avoid observation as the Turkish women do, and some of them were exceedingly beautiful. They had with them three men as guard, who showed no jealousy of us and very civilly told us our way. In the afternoon we arrived at the Hermus, and the view of the valley I shall never forget. It was a glorious country up the river, but the cultivation and the rich population were behind us, and in front was a continued desert. A ferry-boat running on a rope set us over the river, and an hour later we reached Achmet Li, a miserable village of mud cottages, and prepared to pass the night in the wretched cafanÉ. Happily, when it got about that we were not Turks, the widow of a Greek papa gladly received us and lodged me well. The raiding pasha aforesaid had passed through and burned the aga's house, but done no other harm beyond eating up all the fowls in the place; there was not one to be got for love or money for my supper.

Next day we got early to Sart. The neighbourhood affords the most lovely views imaginable of distant hills. The site itself is peculiar. The hills are wholly of fat earth, no rock seen at all, and the weather has worn them into the most fantastic forms. Amidst them the castle, standing at the foot of Bousdagh, is astonishingly picturesque. But the whole is a very picture of desolation. Where the ancient Sardis stood are now ten or twelve miserable huts. Far off across the glorious landscape I could distinguish one solitary wretched village, and here and there a Turcoman's tent. A veritable desert, where the soil is rich as anyone could imagine.

Besides the fine situation there is only one other thing to notice, viz. the Ionic temple. I spent my first day in examining it and making a drawing of it. Only three of the five columns still standing in Chandler's time remain erect; the other two were blown up three years ago by a Greek who thought he might find gold in them. The whole temple is buried many feet deep. As I wished very much to see the base of the column, I got a Cretan—whom I found here professedly buying tobacco, but I suspect a fugitive from his home for some murder—to dig for me. I had to give it up after we had got down ten feet without reaching it. One ought to be here for a month, and then, as the earth is very soft, one could do the thing thoroughly. Nobody would interfere. I spent the evening with the Turcomans in a tent, sitting cross-legged on a mat, smoking. They had a bold free manner and a savage air, but they were not uncivil to me. My janissary got into a dispute with one because he had taken his place. He ordered him out, and the man would not go. As he and all his companions were well armed, a fight would not have been pleasant, and when the dispute quieted down I was not sorry.

The ruins of the comparatively modern town, especially those of a large church, seem to consist entirely of fragments of ancient temples, some of the bits being very fine. The castle has no remains of earlier date than that of the Lower Empire. The more ancient fortress may have been swept away by the torrents, which tear the soil into such strange forms, and the whole site be changed. At any rate I could not find a scrap of ancient wall anywhere, and the later ones are rapidly being undermined, and totter on the edge of the precipice.

Next day we rode eastwards along the side of Bousdagh (Tmolus). In five hours we passed only two small villages and a number of Turcoman tents, but we met many caravans, the camels whimsically decked with feathers and shells, and the largest male with festoons of bells as well. I was told that the Turks were very fond of witnessing camel-fights, and that those which I saw most handsomely dressed out were the champions at that sport.

The houses hereabouts are all built of mud, and so full of mice that I could not sleep in the night and was in consequence late in starting. We continued along the great valley and came by midday to Allah Sheri (Philadelphia), the most forlorn city ever I saw. The squalid mud houses cover several small hills and contain a population of about a thousand families, mostly Turks. There are twenty-four churches, of which only five are in use, while the rest are kept sacred by occasional services. In the shape of antiquities there is nothing to be seen. The chief curiosity is the warm mineral spring, which smells like addled eggs and has a taste of ink. The people about use it a good deal for scorbutic complaints. Some travellers have spoken of having been shown a wall of bones here. I saw nothing of the sort.

Two hours' travelling next day brought us at last to the end of the immense plain of the Hermus, and we began to get among the mountains, going up the east side of a steep romantic dell, the west side of which was wonderfully rugged and wild. Beyond were mountains covered with snow: beneath us an immeasurable giddy depth. Except a few sheep, we saw no living thing for hours together. Once I heard some wild duck by the torrent below. At the end of six hours we reached Derwent, a village of, say, two hundred houses. A wretched lodging and, as there was no fowl to be got—and that is what one depends entirely upon—no supper; and I had to be content with smoke, coffee, and Homer. In the evening came, as usual, a number of Turks to see the stranger. They enter, they salute with a 'Salaam aleikum,' and sit down perhaps for hours. Their conversation generally turns upon the stranger, with conjectures upon his object in coming. Later at night came in the son of our host. He had been searching for a strayed ox, and was afraid that the wolves had got it. He examined my firearms for a long while, and admired them very much. The Turks of this part of the country are large, handsome, very slow in their speech, and stupid and ignorant.

Starting next morning, we began by following the course of a river till we got on to a high level plain surrounded by formless hills—an ugly country. We met a few Turcomans, and once I saw some ploughing. At the end of seven hours' riding we reached the edge of the valley of the Meander and looked over a glorious view; then downwards through Bulladan, a village of about five hundred houses and a number of mosques, to a village the name of which I never learnt, where we slept.

As one expects nothing of one's host but shelter, it was an unusual hospitality in ours to give us some of his bread. It was a strange compound, such as I had never seen before. To make it, the dough is mixed very thin and poured on a heated copper. The result looks like rags of coarse cloth and tastes like bad crumpets. We slept in a barn with the horses.

Next day we descended into the plain of the Meander and crossed the river by a bridge of four or five arches, the parapet of which is made of the steps of a theatre. Just there was a man administering a singular remedy to a mule which had fallen sick in the road. He had tied all four legs together and thrown him down. Then he had cut the throat of a sheep, and holding the mule's mouth open, let the sheep's blood flow into it. I was assured it was an excellent medicine. From the bridge onwards we crossed a flat till we reached the ridge, at the foot of which is Hierapolis. It had cost me certainly a whole day more than was necessary to get here, because Tabouk Kalise (the castle of the cemetery), its proper name, was spelt in Chandler, Pambouk (cotton); and when I inquired for Pambouk Kalise no one could make out what I meant, so that practically I lost my way until I got into the valley of the Meander. Once there, Hierapolis is a conspicuous object from a great distance on account of the remarkable whiteness of the rock on which it stands.

This is due to a petrification deposited by the river, which rises, a full stream, in the city and flows over the front of the cliff. It makes a fine cascade, and the spray of it, carried by the wind, spreads a white coating like ice over everything it reaches. As it gradually forms, it takes rounded shapes overlapping each other, something like conventional clouds. The ruins of the ancient city stand on the top above the cliff and half buried in a sea of this singular deposit. The vast colonnades present the most extraordinary appearance. The most magnificent are perhaps the ruins of the gymnasium, and the best preserved the theatre, which is all perfect except the proscenium; but perhaps what astonished me most was to find, on going out of one of the gates, a number of tombs of various forms and sizes as complete as on the day they were built, two thousand years ago. The style of them is very large and magnificent. Many of the sarcophagi are eight or nine feet long by three or four wide, and the rest in proportion. All bear inscriptions, but the rough quality of the stone prevented my reading them. Under the sarcophagus, and forming part of the monument, is generally a stone bench for the friends of the deceased to sit upon and meditate. There are some beautiful bas-reliefs in high preservation lying exposed in the theatre. Altogether, for preservation there can be nothing but Pompeii to compare to this place.

I did not forget to inquire for the remarkable cave in which no animal can live, which Chandler tried to find. My guide led me to one near the spring and told me that on certain days birds flying over it fall down, overcome by the fumes. There, sure enough, I did find four small birds with the bones of various other animals. If travellers had been frequent here I could have supposed that someone had put the birds there for sightseers to wonder at; but according to the old aga I am the first traveller here since Chandler's time in 1765, and it seemed impossible that it should have been done on such short notice merely to make a fool of me.

When evening came on, I walked down again to Yemkeni where the janissary and horses were. The aga had prepared a meal for me, and ate it with me, sometimes tearing bits of meat off and throwing them into my plate. As usual, all the Turks came in, in the evening, to stare.

All next day it blew and poured, but I went up to the ruins attended by the aga's man, and worked hard all day long. I had bought a live fowl to try Strabo's experiment of putting him into the cave; but whether it was not really the right cave, or whether the violent wind and rain prevented the gas having effect, at any rate the fowl was none the worse after being exposed to it for half an hour, and we ate him with a good appetite in the evening. Over his bones the aga grew talkative, and told me of the real cave which was in the mountain, one hour distant. He said that inside the cave is a bridge, and beyond that a chamber in which is a treasure guarded by a black man. He added that he who should get the better of that black man had need have studied and learnt much. Many and many an adventurer, after the treasure, had died horribly in the cavern. And so on, with all the cock-and-bull stories universal among the Turks. But when I asked him to give me a guide to take me to the cave, he put every sort of difficulty into the way. I should need ladders, and there were none—horses, and there were none. In short it was quite clear he meant to prevent my going, so I gave it up. I did so the more willingly because I already felt exceedingly uncomfortable. The people around me were utter savages, and the country perfectly lawless. South of the river, in the direction of Denisli or Laodicea, it was worse; and besides brigands, which were said to abound between Denisli and Aidin and would oblige my taking an expensive escort, the agas themselves had a very bad reputation for extortion. Moreover, my janissary was anxious, because in coming to Hierapolis we were already outside the limits to which my travelling firman referred, and he wished to get back within them. So, all things considered, I decided to give up seeing Laodicea (I could make out the situation of it at a very great distance) and passed on to avoid the desert country and dangerous neighbourhood."