acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

292 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
road was clear enough for travelling, though deep in
slush. The troops fell in and marched away, but the
oflScers went in arahas, among them the major and
naval officer, riding together. The port-captain had
doubts as to what he should wear in this condition of
road, and at last hit upon a compromise. He got into
a pair of grey tweed trousers, gold-braided uniform
frock-coat with belt and sword, and for footwear kept
to his scarlet slippers.
The troops started early ; we let them go an hour
to beat a way for us, then we followed in their track.
For a while it w^as like paddling in a stream of halfmelted
snow, though presently the rise and fall of road
made things better underfoot. Heavy clouds were
rolling up the gorge from the south-east with the
movement of slowly turning balls. Sometimes they
parted a little and showed the mountains covered with
snow except where the main crest of the Taurus appeared
seven or eight miles away in the south. That
huge naked ridge showed as a gloomy precipice of
grey rock, feathered here and there snow on the
ledges, and had all the grandeur, too, proper to its
real heiirht. It was no moderate mountain enhanced
by its surroundings and aping the stature and majesty
of its betters ; it was the main ridge, claiming some
nine or ten thousand feet of elevation, with an almost
sheer fall on this northern side, and backed the intervening
white hills like a wall.
A few miles from Ulu Kishla I made out now what
I had looked for and failed to see when coming in
the opposite direction—the ancient Castle of Loulon,
on the northern side of the gorge. It stood on a
1500 -feet ridge a couple of miles off the road. I
had passed it for rocks when the slopes were brown ;
but now it showed black upon the snow, a Castle
Dolorous for any knight a-riding on adventure ; in old
of the Byzantines against Arabs
days a great fortress
of the coast, for it closed the inland end of the pass.
In those times here begfan the borderland of Cross
and Crescent ; and between Loulon and the Cilician