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IN THE MYRTLE SCRUB 325
We left this place the next morning in a soft rain,
and at once entered a country that was almost England.
There were rough hawthorn hedges with moist
dead leaves and ground-iv}^ beneath them, primroses
and violets in bloom, and the only un-English flower
was cyclamen. Spring had begun on this southern
slope of Taurus, and was six weeks ahead of the
corresponding period in England.
Descending quickly now towards the warm sea
we passed through different belts of vegetation. In
a couple of hours from the khan the rain had ceased,
the air became very soft and mild, and in front and
on either hand, far as eye could reach, extended a
tumble of low rounded hills, cut sometimes by gorges,
always sinking towards the sea. They were covered
with smooth scrub, looking in the distance like green
velvet—myrtle bushes eight or ten feet high, growing
close and thick, with lemon-green and dark-green
foliage on the same bush. Here was the myrtle scrub
of the Mediterranean coast in which, during old wars,
men had lurked and hidden. Greeks and Romans
and Cilician pirates knew it well, no doubt, so also
Crusaders and Arabs and all the rest of them : it was
the natural covert of all men in arms in these parts
when hiding was the immediate purpose, and it is so
still. A friend had told me once that on being taken
by appointment to see a brigand on the ^gean coast
he found the party camped in myrtle scrub ; an
Armenian speaking of the Cilician massacres had
mentioned that some of his hunted people got away
and took refuge in the same friendly growth.
With these thoughts in mind I went into the
myrtle bushes myself, and amidst the scent of their
brushed leaves knew that I was in the setting of
many adventures in war and violence. And while
this fragrance surrounded me I seemed to understand
better some of the underlying causes which produced
whatever is characteristic in those Greeks who lived
upon the fringe of southern and western Asia Minor
and its islands. Blood, I thought, had really