The spring once begun, every day disclosed some new beauty to the
naturalist. Wherever he turned his eyes, thickets of almond trees
covered with snow-white blossoms, or fields over which anemones and
tulips were sprinkled thick as daisies or buttercups in an English
meadow, met the view. The anemone, in particular, was everywhere
abundant, in all its varieties of purple, deep-red, and scarlet, with a
ring of white round the base of its leaves. One of Hasselquist’s
favourite walks of this season was the vast Turkish cemetery in the
neighbourhood of Smyrna. Here, amid cypresses and a profusion of
balsamic and aromatic trees and shrubs, he philosophized on the
generation and decay of plants, ignorant, poor fellow, that within the
small sweep of the horizon which bounded his view his own mortal remains
would soon be deposited, and that the seeds of the flowers before him
would shortly germinate upon his grave.
Having sufficiently examined the environs of Smyrna, Hasselquist set out
on the 11th of March for Manisa, the ancient Magnesia, on a botanizing
excursion. The face of the country in this part of Anatolia was more
wild and savage than could be conceived by those who had never visited
the East. Mountains and valleys resembling the surface of a stormy sea
suddenly converted into solid ground, covered with mosses and wild
apple-trees, traversed by deep ravines, by chasms, by mountain torrents,
and beautified in various places by the pale flower of the oriental
saffron; such were the scenes which the roots and acclivities of the
ancient Sipylus presented to the view of our traveller. On arriving at
Manisa he was well received by the governor, an extremely young man, who
had sixteen women in his harem. Indeed, a physician is generally treated
with consideration by the Turks; and our youthful governor, who happened
just then to stand in need of his services, conducted himself with
distinguished politeness towards the _hakim_, or doctor. In return,
Hasselquist merely requested permission to botanize at his leisure in
the environs of the city, a favour which was very readily granted him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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