Aintab is a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, and they are made up of Greek and Armenian Christians and Kurdish Mohammedans in about equal numbers. It is the capital of the Syrian vilayet, and is situated on the River Sadjur, a tributary of the Euphrates. Like Biredschik, Aintab includes an old mountain fortress, which was already known at the time of the Crusades—when it was taken by Saladin, and again in the year 1400 by Timur the Tartar. To-day it is the seat of wool and cotton manufactures, a commercial depot of leather, cloth, honey, and tobacco. At Aintab we changed our mode of travelling for the last time; for we disposed of our saddle-horses and proceeded to the coast in the same type of tumble-down conveyance as that in which we left Trebizond. Dr. Hepworth was very sorry to part with his sure-footed little grey mount, which had carried him from Bitlis without a single mishap or stumble. Altogether our experience of the Anatolian horse was one to be remembered with gratitude: never seeming to tire, tractable, docile, and sure-footed as a goat, this breed of horse, which is to be found throughout the Turkish Empire, is truly a friend of man. It is the only horse I have ever known which stands at the bidding of its master for hours together without being tied up. Also, I never once saw a horse treated unkindly during the whole of our journey. The monotony of riding day by day on horseback at a snail’s pace for weeks in silence, from early dawn till sunset, over an endless succession of undulating roadless hills and vales, with occasional spells of dreadful jolting in springless carts and carriages, had told on our spirits. Thus we all had good cause to rejoice over our arrival at Alexandretta. The sight of the sea once more, as from a high ridge of hills we first beheld the blue waters of the Mediterranean, after passing nearly two months in a wild, almost treeless and pathless country, was a thrilling sensation. Cut off from all the comforts of civilization, which lifelong usage causes us to take as a matter of course, their true value came home to us. Dr. Hepworth involuntarily recalled the famous episode in Xenophon’s “Retreat of the Ten Thousand” where the Greeks at last greeted the sea—in their case, the Black Sea—with the cry: “Thalassa! Thalassa!” Here, for the first time since leaving Trebizond, we beheld an inn. We were shown into a bedroom and were delighted to see what we had gone without for so long, and thus learned to appreciate as a luxury—a bed, a water-jug, a washing-basin, a table, and a chair.