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OLD TAKSUS—THE CYDNtJS 335
richness and importance. Tarsus, indeed, has risen
above its evidence of that era, and so has hidden its
antiquities. The Cydnus carries much matter in suspension,
and is in flood often, and in two thousand
years has covered Greek and Koman Tarsus, and in
a thousand years the level of the Arab city too.
So when men build in Tarsus now they expect to
dig deep before finding a foundation ; nor do they
complain, for so digging they know they will obtain
from structures of the ancient city all the stone required
for their new buildings. They go down ten,
twenty, thirty, forty feet, and are among great
blocks of stone and marble filled in with soft silt,
and now and again light upon fragments richly
carved—marble friezes, capitals of columns, enrichments—and
these, if not too large, are sometimes
brought to the surface in evidence of the past. I
saw various fragments so obtained, — marble basins
and pedestals and a bronze tripod or two. There
are mounds also at Tarsus which are said to cover
remains of vast buildings. One such elevation is now
a Turkish cemetery, and grown over with aloes—
ragged, unpromising place ; but there, when digging
for graves, they sometimes unearth statuettes—so
you are told, and have to take the statement on
faith, for exploration is forbidden.
In Tarsus, as in so many places in Asia Minor, the
traveller may suddenly come face to face with the
past in a manner so intimate as to startle ;
he may
even find that ancient traditions or historical events
affect his own personal actions, as I did here. That
the Cydnus gives fever to all who bathe in it, and
that Alexander was one of its victims, is a tale one
reads and never credits, regarding it as a picturesque
superstition. And yet, behold ! when I proposed to
swim in the Cydnus myself— for the sake of Cleopatra
if you like—I was urged not to do so ; for
the story of illness following is no tradition in this
place, but a matter of local experience and belief, and
after all carried enough weight to dissuade me.