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LOULON CASTLE 293
Gates, fifty miles away, was the road of raid and
counter - raid and battle. From the hie^h ridefe of
Loulon the signal - fires announcing Arab raid or
invasion set out along the chain of fortresses and
were seen at last across the Bosphorus. Bound about
this castle, or its forerunners on the same site, eddied
the armies of Haroun el Bash id and the Emperor
Nicephorus I., the same Nicephorus who made a
treaty with Charlemagne at Aix la Chapelle in the
year 803 ; and hither came Nicephorus to oppose this
Khalif of the Arabian Nights, and to pay him tribute
after failure in arms. Hereabouts East met West as
hostile Moslem and Christian, perhaps more often and
with more varying fortune than they met anywhere
else. And yet how little we know of all those centuries
of fighting and intriguing, of success and disappointment
I This pass, these inland and seaward slopes of
the Taurus, have seen enough stirring work to fill
volumes, but they possess no legends, do not figure
in story and song, and of the events themselves
only a few bald details survive. And those who
fought have fared as ill : except the Khalif Haroun
el Bashid who lives in the Arabian Tales, the others
are little more than empty names.
At noon the sun came out, snow vanished from the
road, and travelling became pleasant. By the time
we reached the gorge above Chifte Khan, where the
road drops five or six hundred feet by zigzags, the sky
was hard and clear, the air still, and frost had set in.
At this point the Chakia descends by waterfalls in a
deep narrow ravine, where a considerable tunnel for
the railway was in progress. All the railway work
appeared to be in solid rock in this section, and
blasting was going on with impressive energy. Great
blocks of stone were being hurled into air ; from each
mouth of the tunnel trucks appeared continually and
tipped fragments into the torrent; the mountain was
being disembowelled for the railway from Berlin to
the Persian Gulf; and again this furious activity
and sound seemed charged with hostility to my