Our road leads up the hillside, at first by the town garden and wide streets, lined with houses and shops built in European style, and then through the narrow alleys which intersect the Christian quarters, a labyrinth of winding ways. These streets of Trebizond have a width not exceeding six or eight feet, and sometimes less, and are lined by the dull walls of garden enclosures which shut out all prospect over the town. A raised pavement runs along them, sometimes on both sides of the way, and always on one. Here and there the fresh green leaves of a fig tree overhang the walls, or the cherry-laurel with its clusters of claret-coloured fruit, or the pink flowers of the oleander. The houses are, for a great part, quite Eastern in character--blank, featureless wall, broken only at mid-height by little windows with gratings made of laced strips or mortised cubes of wood. But the modern villa is rapidly taking their place. What waifs of all the ages may be met within these alleys! Yet I think, and our Consul, Mr. Longworth, seems inclined to agree with me, that the Greek type prevails. Our conversation turns upon these race questions; one can indeed never cease learning what fallacious guides in such questions religion and nationality are. There are whole villages on this seaboard whose inhabitants are Mussulmans, and would resent being called by any other name than Osmanli; yet their Greek origin is established both by history and by the traditions which they themselves still in part retain. Thus take Surmeneh and Of, two considerable villages on the east of Trebizond. These versatile Greeks are as famous now for their theological eminence as they were formerly under the Eastern Empire, with this difference, that whereas in those days they supplied the Church with bishops, it is now mollahs that they furnish to Islam. Yet, fanatical as they are, they still hold to certain customs which connect them with the old faith they once served with such distinction, and have, no doubt, since persecuted with equal zeal. Under the stress of illness the Madonna again makes her appearance, her image is again suspended above the sick-bed; the sufferer sips the forbidden wine from the old cup of the Communion, which still remains a treasured object with the whole community, much as they might be puzzled to tell you why. As we are talking, a little girl happens to pass down the lane, a child of some ten years. Her limbs are scarcely covered by a loose cotton skirt, although her complexion has not suffered from the sun. The waxen texture of the flesh, the transparent colouring, and the rich setting of auburn hair remind one of the favourites of Venetian painters and of faces seen in North Italian towns. It is besides only natural that the people of this city should possess a strain of Italian blood; not so many centuries ago the Genoese controlled the commerce and menaced the independence of Trebizond.