Yet these crumbling walls and towers, emerging at intervals from a leafy overgrowth of creepers and trees, claim a larger share of our attention than a merely passing notice of the port of Trebizond. For, in the first place, no traveller, about to enter the interior by this well-known and well-beaten route, can fail to undergo the spell which belongs to these ruins, or to feel his interest aroused by the monuments which still remain here of an empire long forgotten in the West. Nor will a mind which has been fed upon Western literature ignore the importance of realising the events of Western history as they touch this remote shore. The annals of Trebizond, while they illustrate and in themselves to a great extent resume the fortunes of these coast towns, were joined by a thread which was seldom severed to the web of Western things. August 16.--The morning is the time to arrive at Trebizond, perhaps to wake when the ship lies secure at anchor, while a fresh land-wind blows. The vessel coming from the west crosses the bay from Cape Ieros to an answering headland in the east, and does not bring up till she has doubled this lesser promontory and closed or almost closed the wide bay from sight. The anchorage lies at the foot of the eastern suburb of the city, now the most flourishing portion of the town, and the suburb mounts the back of the little promontory, and descends to the water on the opposite or western side. The inlet which recedes from the cape is not deep or extensive, and the shelter which it offers is so partial that in stormy weather a ship may be obliged to run for Platana, and seek shelter under the lee of Cape Ieros, now some fifteen miles away. This configuration of the shore may be said to give two faces to the site of Trebizond. While the ancient city with the ruins looks seawards and westwards, commanding the softer landscape of the bay, to the anchorage belongs an easterly aspect, and a view past the estuary of the famous river Pyxitis along the wildest portion of the coast range.