August 15.--Weighing from Samsun at night, it is early morning as we cast anchor off Kerasun--Kerasun with its castled rock thrown seawards from the range, the lofty headland of the bay, from which the town curves westwards and sinks to the waterside under the shadow of the mountain wall. Were it not for the needle forms of minaret and cypress, rising against the terraces of white walls and red roofs which mount from the water's edge, we might be sailing on the Rhine, past some grim old burgh, dominating the cluster of peaceful habitations which cower at its skirts. In less than three hours the barges are emptied, and we are proceeding on our course. Almost immediately we pass close to a little island, a rare object along this shore. It is a mere fleck of rock, picturesquely encircled by feudal walls and towers. The range on our right hand is always rising in elevation; hard porphyritic rocks are beginning to take the place of the crumbling limestone; the ridges, clad with firs to the very summits, stand up one behind another ever loftier and more abrupt. At the same time the lower slopes increase in verdure; orchards and plantations clothe each respite of open ground. Small settlements succeed one another more closely, the houses peeping out with their white faces from the soft, leafy background of green. Such is the appearance of the shore we are skirting this morning--the range growing in height, the vegetation increasing, the characteristic beauties of the coast now, perhaps, for the first time imprinting a lasting image upon the mind. Like the Mediterranean, this sea is almost tideless--the narrow strip of sand, upon which the waves plash, is unencumbered with those oozy beds of giant seaweed which, scattered in fragrant streamers upon our English seaboards, whet the freshness of our sea-breeze. Beyond this margin rise the first spurs of the mountains, or immediately descend into the deep, clear waters in the form of bold capes. If this coast yields to some in variety of outline, and is wanting in those combinations of sinuous bays and sea-thrown islands which lend such beauty to the landscapes of western Asia Minor and to the European shore of the Mediterranean Sea, it is surpassed by none in distinctness of character, in singleness of effect. Day after day it is the same long belt of mountains always following the shore, the same long series of parallel ridges rising roughly parallel to the shore. The persistence of the range, the regularity of the system, the many signs along the seaboard of an ever-increasing development in the scale of the mountain walls which lie behind--all contribute to the growing consciousness that this foot of the barrier, the pleasing inlets of this shore, are but the threshold of some commanding piece of natural architecture of which we long to realise the plan. While the imagination is stimulated by this largeness of feature, the eye also is pleased. Groves of lofty