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THE SITE OF MAXACA 199
to the site of Maxaca and wandered in the orchards
which now cover the slopes. Among them stand little
yailas, the makeshift buildings used as dwellings byowners
when summer heat causes the narrow streets
and packed dwellings of Kaisariyeh to be almost unendurable.
No sooner is the site reached than you
find the soil as plentifully mixed with fragments
of brick and stone and marble as a field on the
chalk is sprinkled with flints. The dry walls between
gardens are formed of piled fragments, and
similar materials help for the yailas. Vines are
spread on undisturbed masses of concrete or brickwork
which have been foundations. Here and there
may be seen portions of brick conduits—for water
evidently played a great part in the city—and old
vaults running back into the hillside, the outer end
broken down, the interior filled with debris and
earth. Now and then a small glistening piece of
marble arrests the eye and proves to have been
polished, and may even show a fragment of carved
surface — part of a leaf, a scroll, or moulding. On
a wider survey the site of the stadium becomes
apparent ; and the morning sunlight, falling much
aslant on the bare surface of a shallow valley, brings
out, at a little distance, a series of faint regular
shadows which suggest unmistakably the greater
stoppings of an amphitheatre. A great city, indeed,
extended over these low spurs and valleys coming
down from Argaeus.
Having rambled here for a couple of hours, I sat
in the verandah of an empty yaila, while Ighsan laydown
beside me like a dog and waited in silence.
Hence I looked over the grey, flat-roofed, minareted
city, with a thin film of blue smoke above it ; over
the plain, with its patches of green, to the northern
hills where a few gaunt poplars stood on the skyline,
and in the north-east to mountains covered with
snow. Any one who takes an interest in the early
history of the Church finds much to think of here.
Basil was born at Caesarea— as the city was then