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
Bolawadün is a collection of mud houses, about a mile long, situated on an
eminence at the western base of Emir Dagh. I went into the bazaar, which
was a small place, and not very well supplied, though, as it was near
sunset, there was quite a crowd of people, and the bakers were shovelling
out their fresh bread at a brisk rate. Every one took me for a good
Egyptian Mohammedan, and I was jostled right and left among the turbans,
in a manner that certainly would not have happened me had I not also worn
one. Mr. H., who had fallen behind the caravan, came up after we had
encamped, and might have wandered a long time without finding us, but for
the good-natured efforts of the inhabitants to set him aright. This
evening he knocked over a hedgehog, mistaking it for a cat. The poor
creature was severely hurt, and its sobs of distress, precisely like those
of a little child, were to painful to hear, that we were obliged to have
it removed from the vicinity of the tent.
Chapter XXII
The Forests of Phrygia.
The Frontier of Phrygia--Ancient Quarries and Tombs--We Enter the Pine
Forests--A Guard-House--Encampments of the Turcomans--Pastoral
Scenery--A Summer Village--The Valley of the Tombs--Rock Sepulchres of
the Phrygian Kings--The Titan's Camp--The Valley of Kümbeh--A Land of
Flowers--Turcoman Hospitality--The Exiled Effendis--The Old Turcoman--A
Glimpse of Arcadia--A Landscape--Interested Friendship--The Valley of
the Pursek--Arrival at Kiutahya.
"And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady." Tennyson.
Kiutahya, _July_ 5, 1852.
We had now passed through the ancient provinces of Cilicia, Cappadocia,
and Lycaonia, and reached the confines of Phrygia--a rude mountain region,
which was never wholly penetrated by the light of Grecian civilization. It
is still comparatively a wilderness, pierced but by a single high-road,
and almost unvisited by travellers, yet inclosing in its depths many
curious relics of antiquity. Leaving Bolawadün in the morning, we ascended
a long, treeless mountain-slope, and in three or four hours reached the
dividing ridge---the watershed of Asia Minor, dividing the affluents of
the Mediterranean and the central lakes from the streams that flow to the
Black Sea. Looking back, Sultan Dagh, along whose base we had travelled
the previous day, lay high and blue in the background, streaked with
shining snow, and far away behind it arose a still higher peak, hoary with
the lingering winter. We descended into a grassy plain, shut in by a range
of broken mountains, covered to their summits with dark-green shrubbery,
through which the strata of marble rock gleamed like patches of snow. The
hills in front were scarred with old quarries, once worked for the
celebrated Phrygian marble. There was neither a habitation nor a human
being to be seen, and the landscape had a singularly wild, lonely, and
picturesque air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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