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SCENES OF CENTURIES AGO 5
the Ten Thousand embarked for Byzantium after their
march from Mesopotamia. Or your steamer may turn
out of her direct course some morning and anchor in an
obscure Mediterranean roadstead. Perhaps you are
vaguely conscious of having heard the name of the
place before, but certainly do not connect it with
anything. The purpose of the call, you are told, is
to take on board a few thousand cases of oranges, it
being the time of orange-gathering at Dort Yol, better
oranges than which are to be found nowhere. The
name is Turkish for "Four Roads"—The Crossways,
as one might say—and quite unenlightening historically.
But that narrow strip of plain lying nearly
abreast of you between mountains and sea, and covered
with filmy morning vapour, as the sun comes up over
the high ridge of Amanus, is no other than Alexander's
battlefield of Issus.
Besides these places of fame which crowd the
littoral, there are unexpected survivals reproducing
scenes of twenty centuries ago. A sight of this kind
I watched one summer evening on the coast of the
Black Sea, when a long-boat, whose bow was shaped
like a swan's breast, put off from the shore. Her
stem projected above the hull, and was curved into
a form resembling roughly the head and neck of a
bird preparing to strike. Upon the mast, hanging
from a horizontal yard, was set a single, broad squaresail,
and under its arching foot could be seen the black
heads of rowers, five or six men on either side, and a
bare-legged steersman placed high above them in the
stern. The sun was going down behind the mountains
of Sinope as this boat, her sides and beak painted
vermilion and blue, came lifting easily over the swell
on her way to the night-fishing. Her sail was white
and rounding, her oars rose and dipped regularly, and
their wet blades flashed red in the dying sunlight.
By some slight alteration of course her appearance
suddenly changed, and she became just such a craft
as is represented on one of the old Greek coins.
And then the song of her crew came fitfully across