acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

314 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
old guns, but the snow was deep, and the forts some
distance from the road, and I had to leave them
unvisited after all.
The summit of the Cilician Gates Pass is an open
saucer-shaped space a mile or so across, with a rim
of heights and cliffs on three sides. In this more or
less level area stands the village of Tekke, where the
road begins its descent to the Mediterranean. From
Tekke the road drops about two hundred feet to the
cliffs of the southern rim, and there finds the cleft
or gap called the Cilician Gates, which has given its
name to the pass. The actual opening cannot be
more than forty feet wide between its vertical faces
of grey rock. Half the width is occupied by the
road ; the remainder by a torrent, fifteen or twenty
feet below, in which at this point stands an immense
boulder with the well-known Roman inscription on its
front. Stand in this road, in the jaws of the Gates,
and look up the slope, the wall of rock with its old
tool-marks upon your left, the torrent and other cliff
on your right, and you occupy a space over which
have passed Cyrus, Alexander, Cicero, Haroun el
Rashid, St Paul, and a host of other famous men.
If there is another spot in the world where you may
do so much with equal certainty, I do not know of it.
Still looking up towards Tekke you may see the
work of widely separated conquerors who used this
pass of fame. The Roman inscription, which the tablet
in the boulder carries, is of Marcus Aurelius, and
while you look at it you well may think that some
faint reflection of the man's mind can be recognised in
the tablet and its position. You wonder just what
train of thoughts and orders resulted in the tablet
being hewn here rather than in the cliff itself That
the position, more prominent and lasting than any
other available, was his personal choice you may even
feel sure. The execution of the work, also, gives
rise to speculation and fanciful surmise. The tablet
is roughly hewn, as if by a workman in haste with
few tools, and is slightly out of square and perpen-