Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant, 1810-1817: The Journal of C. R. Cockerell, R.A.Cockerell, C. R. (Charles Robert)
History
Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant, 1810-1817: The Journal of C. R. Cockerell, R.A.
Cockerell, C. R. (Charles Robert)
Cockerell, C. R. (Charles Robert), 1788-1863; Europe -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel
The ruins of the comparatively modern town, especially those of a large
church, seem to consist entirely of fragments of ancient temples, some
of the bits being very fine. The castle has no remains of earlier date
than that of the Lower Empire. The more ancient fortress may have been
swept away by the torrents, which tear the soil into such strange forms,
and the whole site be changed. At any rate I could not find a scrap of
ancient wall anywhere, and the later ones are rapidly being undermined,
and totter on the edge of the precipice.
Next day we rode eastwards along the side of Bousdagh (Tmolus). In five
hours we passed only two small villages and a number of Turcoman tents,
but we met many caravans, the camels whimsically decked with feathers
and shells, and the largest male with festoons of bells as well. I was
told that the Turks were very fond of witnessing camel-fights, and that
those which I saw most handsomely dressed out were the champions at that
sport.
The houses hereabouts are all built of mud, and so full of mice that I
could not sleep in the night and was in consequence late in starting. We
continued along the great valley and came by midday to Allah Sheri
(Philadelphia), the most forlorn city ever I saw. The squalid mud houses
cover several small hills and contain a population of about a thousand
families, mostly Turks. There are twenty-four churches, of which only
five are in use, while the rest are kept sacred by occasional services.
In the shape of antiquities there is nothing to be seen. The chief
curiosity is the warm mineral spring, which smells like addled eggs and
has a taste of ink. The people about use it a good deal for scorbutic
complaints. Some travellers have spoken of having been shown a wall of
bones here. I saw nothing of the sort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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