acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

336 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
For one who comes down from the Cilician Gates
to Tarsus in winter-time there is all the ^reat and
pleasing contrast of dropping from snow and ice and
rigorous cold into a subtropical climate and vegetation.
The air seems strangely soft and balmy, and
scented by the earth and plants and sea of a hot
lowland. And the town itself is surrounded by
gardens and orchards, by dark-foliaged persimmons,
by shining orange-groves, at this time of year loaded
with the great shapeless yellow oranges called
turnnj ; there are vineyards, fields of young maize,
and sugar-cane, and tobacco ; and beside the yellow
river grow light-green feathery brakes of cane. But
everything is ragged and neglected, grown by sun
and Avater and rich soil with the least possible
labour.
Notwithstanding the Adana-Mersina Railway which
passes through Tarsus, the town remains a place ot
many caravans. Here they set out, here they arrive
and rest, in their traffic between interior and coast
through the Cilician Gates. Vacant ground in and
about the town is filled with sedate camels kneeling
and standing, with bare-legged camel-men in dirty
white, with tents, heaped camel-saddles, and bales
of merchandise. One looks at this commerce of
Tarsus with never-failing interest, not as anything
uncommon, for camel traffic is the familiar sight of
all roads and towns of Asia Minor, but for what
it represents in this city. It represents, almost unchanofed
in details, the ancient traffic which created
the earliest Tarsus, and has maintained every city
upon this site from that time to the present. There
can be no question that Tarsus is the outcome of
the Cilician Pass. Come through the pass and down
into Tarsus and you have no doubt on that score.
The road from the pass and the wide country
behind it reached the plain, in a few miles came to
the Cydnus, and there found it navigable for the
small craft in which ancient navigators followed their
calling. So Tarsus became a port, and the Medi-