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m SAMStJN ROADS 9
had seen upon it the highway life of a wide eastern
country devoid of railways—strange wheeled vehicles,
caravans, peasants, beggars, gipsies, smugglers, soldiers,
dervishes, prisoners in chains. I had slept in its wayside
khans. All that I heard and saw made me wish
to go farther,— to go southward across the mountains
till at last I should come down to Syria and the
Mediterranean.
After spending twenty-four hours in Samstin Roads,
waiting for the sea to abate, the passengers were put
ashore through the surf Our boat could not make
the usual landing-place, and had to go where the run
of the waves served best ; and customs officials, police,
and spectators came hurrying along the beach to
intercept us. We landed a mile east of the site of
Amisus ; an old Greek city— in its day successor
to Sinope—which the Romans took after a long
siege when Lucullus fought the last Mithridatic War,
and drove that king out of Pontus. Nothing is left
of Amisus now except fragments of its port, and
a little broken masonry on the bare hillside,— even
the name is almost forgotten locally. But the geographical
factors which enabled Amisus to supplant
Sinope operate still, and here is now a busy town,
in value of exports and imports the chief Black Sea
port of Asia Minor, a town with a great future
before it.