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SYRIAN SCENES 411
the zaptiehs soon arrived, and at the sight of my
pasporta and old teskei^e, cuffed two or three noisy
boys and saw us safely out of the market.
The roadside scenes beyond Killis were always
purely Syrian. One at the edge of the town made
a picture of such eastern repose that I turned towards
it often, and wished some painter could have caught
its spirit and colouring. Green open country ran up
to the low white boundary wall of a mosque and
yard. The mosque was low and square and white,
covered with a white dome, and for change in proportion
had beside it a slender white minaret. Within
the enclosing wall stood cypresses, their yew-green
spires contrasting with the white building and rising
high above it against a blue sky, and against the
white outer wall on one side was a careless splash
or two of pink almond blossom. On this scene fell
sunlight, ardent and clear, though not yet strong
enough to affect the peculiar freshness and subtle
exhilarating quality which belong to early morning
in these reg-ions.
On the road were graceful women and girls,
their
faces unveiled, carrying articles on the head, or
dragging bundles of dried thistles and dead branches
of olive. Other women were at work on the land
but men were few, for all males of military age were
with the colours. Before me and on either hand
the country stretched in gentle undulations of wheat
to a blue horizon or low blue hills ; such a land for
open expanses of wheat I had never thought to find
here.
During late forenoon a dim blue shape appeared
above the wheat in the south. At first it looked like
a gigantic spreading tree in a bare country, but in
an hour or two I saw that it was a rock, somewhat
like the village stronghold of Orta Hissar in Cappadocia.
The road at last passed beneath it, and then
I recognised that this must be the Rock of Azaz, a
spot notable in Byzantine and Arab history. It had
been an outlying fortress of Aleppo, or perhaps the