acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

320 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
road has known, one likes to glance at a notable sight
in the year 843. During certain sjn'ing days the
Arab army of the Khalif Motassem marched by this
road— 130,000 horse and foot in brilliant colours, going
with cries and dust and trampling, and the word
"Amorium" painted large upon their clanging shields.
For so they openly announced their purpose—achieved
before the year was out— of capturing far-ofl Amorium,
that city and great inner fortress of the Byzantine
Empire whose ruins may still be traced fifty miles
north-west of Afium Kara tlissar. Visions of this
sort enter a traveller's mind as in leisurely fashion, in
sunlight and mild air, he comes down the CilicianPass
towards the present Turkish town of Tersoos.
At Gulek Boghaz Khan snow had been light,
but
in a mile or two it disappeared altogether. And
now the turning road, rising a little sometimes, but
only to make a longer dip of descent, became most
excellent under foot. It kept to the widening valley
of the river—a tributary of Antony and Cleopatra's
Cydnus—through a broken, falling country covered
with open pine- woods. Sometimes the river wandered
off and lost itself in a deep gorge, and
sometimes it flowed beside the road, and I looked
down on plane-trees growing from its shingle banks
and carrying a line of driftwood twenty feet high
among their branches.
There was always something
to draw the attention along this sunlit road descending
from mountain snow through air which grew
softer with every mile. Now a gushing spring
so great as to make a small river at once. Then
a piece of Roman way taking its uncompromising
course, while the modern road went curving to keep
its gradient, and left the other to display its
patterned surface on a rise. And next came a homelike
sight— a stony knoll crowned by a group of
sister pines, so like the knoll and trees on Milton
Heath that were the two magically exchanged scarce
a soul could swear to the difference. But presently
appeared beside the road a sacred bush, with its