Before finally parting with our _kavass_, Hussein, we wished to have a photograph of him. To this he strongly objected. Photography was not in those days so common in Turkey, at any rate in the out-of-the-way parts to which he belonged, as it is at present, and he considered that its practice must be in no very remote way connected with black magic; when, on looking into the camera he saw the figures upside down, then he was persuaded that it could not be other than the work of Shaitan. However, at length he was persuaded. He was a merry, picturesque creature, beguiling his time on the march by singing. George, the dragoman, gave me a translation of one of his songs. “The falcon looks to the water, but I cannot see my Lady. She wounds me, but I know not how to cure the wound. The falcon loves to descend upon the peacock, and I long to kiss the white throat of my Lady. She has a knife in her hand; she is about to murder me. Yah! Hah! White are your legs, oh! my Lady!” October 29th.—I was very anxious to see the monument of Sesostris, a memorial of his victories, described by that beloved old traveller Herodotus, which is at Nif, within reach of Smyrna. A longish excursion. Herodotus mentions two such monuments, but so far as I know only this one has been discovered. We started at five o’clock in the morning with Mr. Cumberbatch, escorted by his _kavass_ and a mounted policeman. Even had there been no object of profound historic and artistic interest to be seen, the beauty of the excursion would have amply repaid our trouble. As the day broke we were met by successions of gorgeously lovely landscapes. The valley along which our road lay was hemmed in by mountains richly clothed with fruit trees, pines, cypresses and oaks, enfolded in the graceful drapery of vines and curtained with the festoons of climbing plants; wild flowers carpeted the “floor of the forest,” and fragrant shrubs perfumed the fresh morning air. In spring, when the cherries and other fruit trees are in blossom, this must be a happy valley indeed, but we saw it at its second moment of supreme beauty, when the woodland was aflame with what the Japanese call the brocade of the autumn tints. Nestled in the midst of these feasts for the eye lies the picturesque little town of Nif, or Nymphi. As we saw it, the market-place, with its stalls surrounding a noble group of Oriental plane trees, and filled with a busy, kaleidoscopic crowd still, at that time, clothed in Eastern garb, was like a scene devised by some cunning stage artist. We ate the food which we had brought with us in an ancient _khan_, itself a picture of the East, and then went to visit the Governor, whom the Consul knew. For a while we lingered in the inner court of the great man’s palace, a study such as Alma Tadema would have loved to paint, with its marble floor, its plashing fountain, fringed with oleanders, and the arches of its cloister decked with orange and lemon trees.