_At the Latmus._--Captain Beaufort sent two of his officers ashore to inspect the long aqueduct leading to Eleusa, which we could see from the ship, but the aga, who had at first consented to their going, withdrew his permission, and they had to give it up. At Pompeiopolis, as we had understood that the Turks of this part of the country were particularly dangerous, I took with me two marines as a guard to visit the ruins. Seen from the sea they presented a truly startling grandeur. The plan of the city is noble in the extreme--one single colonnade passes right through it from the port to the gate leading out into the country, and forty of its columns are still standing. The remainder, making about two hundred, lie as they fell. The town was defended by a fine wall with towers to it, enclosing a theatre and the port. The style of the architecture, which looked so well from a distance, when one comes to see it close is very bad. Pompeiopolis is quite deserted, but the Turks from the neighbouring villages came in, and, although their appearance was barbarous in the extreme, they were very civil. I imagine the 36 guns and 350 men of the _Frederiksteen_ had to do with this, for I observed that the further we got from the ship the less polite we always found the Turks to be. We made sail in the evening and anchored off Mersine, at the beginning of the great plain of Tarsous, and put ashore to reconnoitre and pay a visit to the aga with a view to getting horses to go to Tarsous. The aga was very civil and promised we should have the horses we asked for. In the morning the horses were ready; but now the aga, for whatever reason, discouraged our going to Tarsous, and told us that since seeing us yesterday evening he had received news of an outbreak there, that a neighbouring pasha had attacked the town and all was uproar and arms. On reflection his account struck us as so improbable that we decided at any rate to start, and go on according to the information we should pick up on the road. We set out, a large party. The country was a flat, covered with corn and in it many reapers, male and female, the latter going uncovered and quite unembarrassed by strangers. Their language and costume were Arab, quite unlike anything I had seen before, and there were quantities of camels about. The ride took us four hours. From the inquiries we made from time to time it was clear that the aga's tale had been a downright lie.