The anchorage of Trebizond receives the first flush of morning; a mellow light is thrown upon the terraces of the eastern suburb, circling seawards down the lower slopes of Mount Mithros to the point of the little cape. Here and there among the buildings rows of tall cypresses still hold the shadows of night; but the white faces of the houses soon dispel the darkness, and their glass windows reflect in a glow of dazzling splendour the lurid brilliance of the rising sun. Nowhere else than in these landscapes of the Black Sea and the Caspian is the dawn more essentially the "rosy-fingered," or the sea at sunrise "the glass-green." As the rays commence to break, the wind freshens and the black cypresses wave and sway. Down the coast, beyond the dark cliff of Mithros, the mountains of the seaboard are massed in savage parapets beneath the rising sun; the faithful clouds cling to their slopes or float above them, a sky of cold, silvery greys. Westwards, above the point of the little promontory, under the immediate lee of which we lie, you just discern the softer setting of the greater bay itself, as the outline of the range sweeps in long undulations far out into the western sea. The day wakes; the colours start; the world of pinks and opals disappears. The aspect of the town is warm and genial, even in winter, when the background of broken ridges look their wildest and the sparse fir trees stand out darkly from the snow. Sunny meadows and flashes of green turf caress the traveller, who may have journeyed through the long Eastern summer and autumn in countries where scarcely a blade of grass grows. The shore is soon astir, and the cries of the boatmen are carried down the wind. Large, high-prowed galleys bear down upon us, the crews racing for the first berth. We are surrounded by a swarm of ragged human beings, shouting, scrambling, gesticulating, as their boats and heavily laden barges drive against our tall iron sides. The steamers anchor at some little distance from the shore, and it takes a long pull, at a time when the wind is setting off the land, to reach the little mole. The shore-boats are manned with ill-miened youngsters, whose clamour never ceases from ship-side to landing-stage. On the quay are arrayed the customs officers and their assistants, motley groups in which the cast-off wardrobes of Europe mingle with the coloured cottons of the East. What a relief to escape from all this turmoil, to repose for a few minutes in a spacious coffee-house, rising high above the harbour and the noise! A youth is just completing his lustral service of the morning; the floor has been swept and watered, the nargilehs are coiled--the peaceful figure of Ion rises in the mind.