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EARLY MOKNING SCENES 83
ever. Here was proof of liability to grievous error
iu trusting the telegraph. lu these circumstances
Amasia replied to Constantinople that it would wait
and see the new moon for itself.
As Paris is seen from the Eiffel Tower, or Rio
Janeiro from the summit of Corcovado Mountain,
so Amasia is seen from the castle rock. You look
down upon it vertically. You see the winding river
fringed by trees and cut into sections by bridges
can count the low domes of baths, the minarets, the
open courtyards of mosques, and might make a plan
of the streets. Buildings on the opposite sloping
talus a mile away seem to lose their high position,
and to be standing in the valley bottom. But above
them goes the great eastern precipice, grey and buttressed
and warm in the sun ; and it goes up and
up, hiofh above the castle level where you stand, and
shows itself over the crags this side of the gorge to
the whole plain of Marsovan and the surroundingmountains.
Looking either up - river or down you
see gardens and orchards going away into a sort of
forest, so closely are they placed and so dense their
growth, till a turn in the gorge cuts them off. When
I left this rock the sun had not yet set, but lights had
begun to twinkle in the dim gulf below.
Early morning in a strange place is apt to leave
impressions which are carried long in mind, and colour
the larger memories that a visitor brings away. I was
familiar enough with the sights and sounds to which I
awakened on the second morning in Amasia, but had
never found them before with the narrow streets and
glamorous atmosphere of an ancient city as setting.
I awoke when the dawn was still dark, and realised
at once, in a way I had not done till now, that I
was in the East ; not merely the East of maps, but
the East of romance and tradition, more often found
in books than in actual life. The subtle Greek influence
which pervades the coast had gone ; I had
got among those whose feelings were more purely
Asiatic.