acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

444 ACKOSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
There was personal interest also in the view, because
I could follow from this point the irregular
course of my wanderings for three hundred miles.
But there was more ; for here, before me, in a wide
comprehensive view, to be grasped by eye and imagination,
lay the commercial heart of the Bagdad Railway
Scheme. Not of the present ostensible scheme perhaps,
but of the ultimate plan, when the railway
and all its feeder and other subsidiary lines should
be completed, and the commerce of wide territories
yet undeveloped should pass through a port in this
gulf not yet constructed. Covert hostility to British
interests lay behind the scheme in all its stages ;
and knowing this the eye turned towards the southwest,
hoping to see the dim island of Cyprus which
covers the gulf and all this coast-line. Cyprus could
not be seen because a great brown and green spur
of Ahmar Dagh intervened. But though not visible
hence, it certainly would show itself from the summit
of that mountain ; and its existence as a British
possession in just the right place, an unsurrendered
Heligoland against developments to come, seemed so
exactly suited to the need as to be like a provision
of Providence.
So much for matter of political interest : there are
others, however, to be found up here, just below
Beilan village, this clear spring day. On examining
the scene in detail the eye follows first the narrow
strip of coastal plain lying along the foot of Amanus
and going north till it turns at the head of the gulf,
twenty-five miles away. There the view is bounded
by low blue hills curving towards the west. Beyond
those hills, only three hours' walking from the coastline,
thereabouts is the castle of Toprak Kale, and two
miles inland from that point is the Bagdad Railway.
Passing round the coast to the north-west the eye
next comes to the little town of Ayas, against blue
hills, above the harbour called Ayas Bay, and can
see the white sails of vessels coming and going from
the port. West of Ayas Bay the hills sink to the