The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and SpainTaylor, Bayard
History
The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
Taylor, Bayard
Middle East -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
After our noonday halt, we went over the hills to another stream, which
came from the north-west. Its valley was broader and greener than that we
had left, and the hills inclosing it had soft and undulating outlines.
They were bare of trees, but colored a pale green by their thin clothing
of grass and herbs. In this valley the season was so late, owing to its
height above the sea, that the early spring-flowers were yet in bloom.
Poppies flamed among the wheat, and the banks of the stream were brilliant
with patches of a creeping plant, with a bright purple blossom. The
asphodel grew in great profusion, and an ivy-leaved shrub, covered with
flakes of white bloom, made the air faint with its fragrance. Still
further up, we came to orchards of walnut and plum trees, and vineyards
There were no houses, but the innabitants, who were mostly Turcomans, live
in villages during the winter, and in summer pitch their tents on the
mountains where they pasture their flocks. Directly over this quiet
pastoral, vale towered the Taurus, and I looked at once on its secluded
loveliness and on the wintry heights, whose bleak and sublime heads were
mantled in clouds. From no point is there a more imposing view of the
whole snowy range. Near the head of the valley we passed a large Turcoman
encampment, surrounded with herds of sheep and cattle.
We halted for the evening at a place called Kolü-Kushla---an immense
fortress-village, resembling Baïas, and like it, wholly deserted. Near it
there is a small town of very neat houses, which is also deserted, the
inhabitants having gone into the mountains with their flocks. I walked
through the fortress, which is a massive building of stone, about 500
feet square, erected by Sultan Murad as a resting-place for the caravans
to Mecca. It has two spacious portals, in which the iron doors are still
hanging, connected by a vaulted passage, twenty feet high and forty wide,
with bazaars on each side. Side gateways open into large courts,
surrounded with arched chambers. There is a mosque entire, with its pulpit
and galleries, and the gilded crescent still glittering over its dome.
Behind it is a bath, containing an entrance hall and half a dozen
chambers, in which the water-pipes and stone tanks still remain. With a
little alteration, the building would make a capital Phalanstery, where
the Fourierites might try their experiment without contact with Society.
There is no field for them equal to Asia Minor--a glorious region,
abounding in natural wealth, almost depopulated, and containing a great
number of Phalansteries ready built.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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