Here is a view of the sea at once distant, sudden, impressive, and enjoyed from an eminence not too high to be accessible to the Cyreian army. In so far, it would be suitable to the description of Xenophon. Yet again it appears that a person coming to this point from the land-side (as Xenophon of course did), would find it in his descending route, not in his ascending; and this can hardly be reconciled with the description which we read in the Greek historian. Moreover, the subsequent marches which Xenophon mentions after quitting the mountain summit Thêchê, can hardly be reconciled with the supposition that it was the same as what is now called Karakaban. It is, indeed, quite possible, (as Mr. Hamilton suggests), that Thêchê may have been a peak apart from any road, and that the guide may have conducted the soldiers thither for the express purpose of showing the sea, guiding them back again into the road afterwards. This increases the difficulty of identifying the spot. However, the whole region is as yet very imperfectly known, and perhaps it is not impossible that there may be some particular locality even on Tekiah-Dagh, whence, through an accidental gap in the intervening mountains, the sea might become visible. CHAPTER LXXI. PROCEEDINGS OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS, FROM THE TIME THAT THEY REACHED TRAPEZUS, TO THEIR JUNCTION WITH THE LACEDÆMONIAN ARMY IN ASIA MINOR. We now commence a third act in the history of this memorable body of men. After having followed them from Sardis to Kunaxa as mercenaries to procure the throne for Cyrus,—then from Kunaxa to Trapezus as men anxious only for escape, and purchasing their safety by marvellous bravery, endurance, and organization, we shall now track their proceedings among the Greek colonies on the Euxine and at the Bosphorus of Thrace, succeeded by their struggles against the meanness of the Thracian prince Seuthes, as well as against the treachery and arbitrary harshness of the Lacedæmonian commanders Anaxibius and Aristarchus. Trapezus, now Trebizond, where the army had recently found repose, was a colony from Sinôpê, as were also Kerasus and Kotyôra, farther westward; each of them receiving an harmost or governor from the mother-city, and paying to her an annual tribute. All these three cities were planted on the narrow strip of land dividing the Euxine from the elevated mountain range which so closely borders on its southern coast. At Sinôpê itself, the land stretches out into a defensible peninsula, with a secure harbor, and a large breadth of adjacent fertile soil. So tempting a site invited the Milesians, even before the year 600 B.C., to plant a colony there, and enabled Sinôpê to attain much prosperity and power. Farther westward, not more than a long day’s journey for a rowing vessel from Byzantium, was situated the Megarian colony of Herakleia, in the territory of the Mariandyni.