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SAMStJN 11
most valuable tobacco country in Asia Minor, and
large deposits of coal as well. The country's physical
features, too, look kindly upon Samsim as a port. The
general trend of the great valleys, gorges like gates
fortunately placed, passes which are low, all make
for comparatively easy routes between port and backcountry.
With the construction of a harbour and
adequate railways Samsiin will become, in the inevitable
hands of Russia, the southern Odessa of
the Black Sea.
Meanwhile the town has been brought to its
present degree of prosperity mainly by the Bagdad
Road. Upon this chanssee, the longest and most
important metalled road in Turkey -in -Asia, comes
and goes all the trade between port and interior.
But the traffic is that of an Eastern highway, slow,
cumbersome, and wonderfully picturesque, and at
the height of the export season creates scenes in
Samsiin hardly to be equalled elsewhere. Bullockcarts
and waggons, camels, pack-horses, and donkeys,
begin to arrive about eleven, for they have come a
fixed stage and started early. After midday vehicles
in hundreds and animals in thousands choke the
streets and open spaces. Some are seeking the
warehouses, others are unloading or awaiting their
turn ; early comers are going off empty to the khans,
or the animals lie at rest in the shade of trees
beside the road. Among them move camel-men in
dusty white, and donkey-men, and horse-drivers, and
peasants on foot from the hill villages and the coast,
and riders gorgeous in blue and scarlet with gold
embroidery, and men of the town—they represent
every race within three hundred miles, and wear
garments of every colour and style. There are shouts
and cries ; the dull bruising thud of heavy sticks
upon donkeys' hindquarters ; the ceaseless tinkling of
donkey-bells ; the deep slow clanging of camel-bells
the groaning and wailing of ox-cart wheels. All this
mass moves and stands and reposes under a fierce
sun ; and the odours of camels and sweating men