A little beyond the city we passed a mule-litter, closely covered with scarlet cloth, guided by two men, and followed by three Turkish gentlemen on horseback, attended by their servants, bound on some mountain pilgrimage; but we had not proceeded above half a league, ere, with the exception of a string of mules laden with timber, which occasionally crossed our path, we had the wilderness to ourselves. The ascent commences, immediately on leaving the city, which on this side is bounded by a deep ditch or fosse, into which two mountain torrents, boiling and bellowing down from the neighbouring heights, pour their flashing waters. A narrow pathway, so narrow that two saddle-horses cannot pass in it, traverses a dense wood of dwarf oak and hazel, clothing the hill-side, above whose stunted summits we looked down upon the plain, and the minarets of Broussa. A sudden turn in the road conducted us rapidly upwards, freed us from the hazel wood, and plunged us among masses of rock, over which our horses slid and stumbled, until we reached the foot of the next range of heights. Here the landscape began to grow in beauty; behind us was the city fenced with mountains, mapped out in all its extent, and as remarkable as that of Constantinople for the extraordinary and beautiful admixture of buildings and foliage, which I never remember to have seen elsewhere. Every habitation possessing, if not its garden, at least its one tall tree, beneath whose boughs the family congregate during the warm hours, the appearance of an Eastern city, as you look down upon it from any neighbouring height, is entirely devoid of that monotony which renders the roofs and chimneys of an European town so utterly uninteresting. It looks as though the houses had grown up gradually in the midst of a thick grove, and the eye lingers without weariness on the scene, where the glittering casements, touched by the sunlight, flash through the clustering leaves, and the wind heaves aside the more flexile branches to reveal a stately portal, or a graceful kiosk. From the spot on which we now stood, we saw Broussa to great advantage. The most striking object was the spacious mosque of Oulou-Jamè piercing through the morning mists in spectral whiteness—the stunted minarets, looking like caricatures of those light, slender, fairy-moulded creations which shoot so loftily into the blue heaven at Stamboul; minarets that have sacrificed their grace to the south wind, which blows so violently at Broussa as frequently to unroof the more lofty buildings; and whose ill-proportioned cupolas of lead complete the pictorial ruin, and give them the appearance of bulky wax candles, surmounted by metal extinguishers. A small space beyond ran the gleaming river, sparkling along its bed of white pebbles—the wilderness of mulberry trees spreading over the green carpet of the plain—and away, afar off, the range of mountains purpling in the distance, and crowned with clouds!