acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

198 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
here, in days of fasting, he sat watching the sun
go down behind the hills. His guns were two
blocks of cast-iron, the size of anvils, the powderchamber
of each a four-inch cavity half a foot in
depth with a touch-hole bored to it. We spent an
hour in this airy place, while our host served coffee
and cigarettes and rahat locoum, better known as
"Turkish Delight."
Hence was had as good a view of Kaisariyeh as
could be found anywhere. The old walls were all
in view, so also the interior of the castle with its
huddled village. We looked down upon the city's
flat roofs, which from this height lost their privacy,
and allowed us to see Moslem women at prayer.
The city's minarets were counted and their mosques
named with pious satisfaction.
Apart from the favouring and ever-present majesty
of Argaeus, Kaisariyeh is a dull city, with nothing
of beauty in itself or site. It is ill-built, and has
neither greenery nor water. Immediately around it
are wide stretches of volcanic ash, barren and uncultivated,
save for a few vegetable gardens. Brown
hills surround the plain at a little distance except
in the south, where Argaeus goes up in his lonely
grandeur, so near at hand that his first slopes come
almost to the city's boundary. By the overshadowing
presence of this noble mountain, however, the
site of Kaisariyeh, otherwise a mean one, is made
remarkable and attractive. Better placed, though,
was Maxaca, the earliest city, and ancient capital of
Cappadocia, whose ruins, set among vines and fruit
trees on the slope of Argaeus, I could see plainly
from the tower. It is difficult to understand why
the ancient and much finer site was abandoned,
there being little more than a mile between old
and new. Mere prejudice, perhaps, for what is now
Kaisariyeh was once the Christian suburb of the
pagan capital which destroyed its temples on turning
to the new faith.
On a morning of sunlight and clear air I went