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82 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
these findings. To a friend of mine, lingering one
day among the ruins of that old castle on Mount
Pagus, which looks so nobly over Smyrna and the
Gulf, came great good fortune of this kind. Without
thought or search, in a spot familiar to tens of
thousands, his doubting eyes fell upon an intaglio in
perfect condition. It proved to be of Alexander's
time, and cut in a burnt emerald. And yet I, ever
on the alert, ever thrusting into these places and
crawling in subterranean passages, ever prodding with
a stick, ever digging, and ever feeling that perhaps I
should find a silver tablet with a Hittite treaty or the
Hittite alphabet set out upon it, never did find anything
at all beyond a paltry copper coin or two and
some human bones.
Looking over a wall of Amasia Castle was a breech
loading field-gun with a thousand- feet drop under its
muzzle. During the thirty days of Ramazan it would
nightly give the time of sunset, important moment to
a population waiting at tables below to break the day's
fast—a moment so important that the State undertakes
the duty of signalling it. You may hear this
signal booming along the Bosphorus during Ramazan,
and see people in open-air cafes waiting, knife in
hand, for the sound ; and the same sound and sights
you may hear and see at this time in every town
in the Turkish Empire. The Faithful attach vast
importance to accuracy in such matters ; and short
of individually seeing for themselves, require the
State to vouch for sunset. But even the State becomes
inadequate authority sometimes, so vital is
precision to these observances. Mohammedan ecclesiastical
authorities in Constantinople, on the assurance
of an observatory, once telegraphed throughout the
provinces that the new moon had just been seen, and
therefore the Feast of Bairam—or it may have been
some other festival—might begin. On getting this
telegram Amasia looked earnestly from its rocky
peaks, being no whit behind the capital in anxiety
to begin the feast, but could see no new moon what-