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CHAPTER XXX.
Adana— On a flat roof— The Bagdad Eailway again— Armenians of
Cilicia — Lesser Armenia — The great Adana massacre — Major
Doughty-Wylie—Armenian unwisdom— Killing an Armenian pastor
—Hanging of Moslems— Ibrahim, of the British Consulate— 1 pay
oflf Ighsan—His successor Mustapha—The British Consul goes with
me a stage.
Adana covers an isolated circular hill rising out of
the plain, a few miles from the foot-hills of the
Taurus. At the base of the hill on the eastern side
flows the Sihun— of old the Sarus,—here three hundred
yards in width, spanned by an ancient Arab bridge of
irregular arches and massive piers. Haroun el E,ashid,
the Khalif of the 'Arabian Nights,' knew Adana as one
of his cities, and fortified it with a castle, of which you
are shown the fragments. Bridge and ruined castle,
and the "Great Mosque" built four centuries ago, are
all
that now remain of the older city.
At Adana, as so often before, it was my excellent
fortune to fall into the hands of Americans, who most
hospitably received me in a house on the very summit
of Adana Hill, where I met several to whom Adana
will always remain a place of dreadful and vivid
memories. One roof, or perhaps two, may have been
a trifle higher,—the flat roof in Adana is an important
part of the house,—but none gave a finer or more
unobstructed view. Hence you looked down upon
the city ; beyond it to the level blue distances of the
plain ; to the long blue-and-purple snow-crowned wall
of the Taurus, going from north to west ;
to the peaks