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
The Turcoman reapers, who came up to see us and talk with us, said that
there were the remains of walls on the summit of the principal acropolis
opposite us, and that, further up the valley, there was a chamber with two
columns in front. Mr. Harrison and I saddled and rode off, passing along a
wall of fantastic rock-turrets, at the base of which was a natural column,
about ten feet high, and five in diameter, almost perfectly round, and
upholding an immense rock, shaped like a cocked hat. In crossing the
meadow we saw a Turk sitting in the sun beside a spring, and busily
engaged in knitting a stocking. After a ride of two miles we found the
chamber, hewn like the façade of a temple in an isolated rock, overlooking
two valleys of wild meadow-land. The pediment and cornice were simple and
beautiful, but the columns had been broken away. The chambers were
perfectly plain, but the panel-work on the ceiling of the portico was
entire.
After passing three hours in examining these tombs, we took the track
which our guide pointed out as the road to Kiutahya. We rode two hours
through the forest, and came out upon a wooded height, overlooking a
grand, open valley, rich in grain-fields and pasture land. While I was
contemplating this lovely view, the road turned a corner of the ridge, and
lo! before me there appeared (as I thought), above the tops of the pines,
high up on the mountain side, a line of enormous tents. Those snow-white
cones, uprearing their sharp spires, and spreading out their broad
bases--what could they be but an encampment of monster tents? Yet no; they
were pinnacles of white rock--perfect cones, from thirty to one hundred
feet in height, twelve in all, and ranged side by side along the edge of
the cliff, with the precision of a military camp. They were snow-white,
perfectly smooth and full, and their bases touched. What made the
spectacle more singular, there was no other appearance of the same rock on
the mountain. All around them was the dark-green of the pines, out of
which they rose like drifted horns of unbroken snow. I named this singular
phenomenon--which seems to have escaped the notice of travellers--The
Titan's Camp.
In another hour we reached a fountain near the village of Kümbeh, and
pitched our tents for the night. The village, which is half a mile in
length, is built upon a singular crag, which shoots up abruptly from the
centre of the valley, rising at one extremity to a height of more than a
hundred feet. It was entirely deserted, the inhabitants having all gone
off to the mountains with their herds. The solitary muezzin, who cried the
_mughreb_ at the close of the fast, and lighted the lamps on his minaret,
went through with his work in most unclerical haste, now that there was no
one to notice him. We sent Achmet, the _katurgee_, to the mountain camp of
the villagers, to procure a supply of fowls and barley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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