“There was a man,” said he, “who lived some time in Cæsarea, and having had experience of the people, he found them to be all pigs. Therefore he resolved to journey to the furthest end of the earth, that he might escape from them. And he went to Baghdâd, which is a long road.” “It is long,” admitted Fattûḥ. “And then he entered the bath and demanded a good ḥammâmjî to knead the weariness out of his bones. And the owner of the bath called out: ‘Bring the lame Cæsarean!’ Then said the traveller: ’A Cæsarean here and he lame!’ and he fled from Baghdâd.” Fattûḥ is innocent of any sense of humour. “Oh Merciful,” said he gravely. I do not know whether it was the effect produced by these [Illustration: FIG. 231.--MOUNT ARGAEUS FROM NORTH-WEST.] [Illustration: FIG. 233.--NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA.] [Illustration: FIG. 234.--NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA, DETAIL OF WINDOW.] tales which prevented me from lodging in Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or whether the prospect of two days spent in the society of people of my own speech and civilization would not have proved too strong a temptation, even if the Cæsareans had shone with every virtue; at any rate I went no further than Talas, and there remained as a guest in the hospital of the American missionaries. And if I saw little of the famous city of Cæsarea, I passed many hours in the hospital garden at the feet of men and women whose words were instinct with a wise tolerance and weighted by a profound experience of every aspect of Oriental life. Ḳaiṣarîyeh was the end of the caravan journey. In two days we had sold our horses (“One for us to sell and one for them to buy,” said Fattûḥ), and packed our belongings into the carts which were to take us to the railway at Ereglî. I rode down from Talas to conclude these arrangements and to visit the citadel which stands on Justinian’s foundations. The interior is now packed with narrow streets, the houses being built partly of ancient materials (Fig. 230). The fragments of columns and the weather-worn capitals which are imbedded in the walls of the houses were derived either from the early Christian town which occupied the site of modern Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or from ancient Cæsarea, which lay upon the lower slopes of Mount Argæus. A few foundations outside the limits of the present town are all that remain of the churches that adorned the greatest ecclesiastical centre of the Anatolian plateau, the birthplace of St. Basil, but the memory of the Seljuk conquerors, who gave it a fresh glory during the Middle Ages, is still preserved in many a decaying mosque and school.