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450 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
was a post of the British Levant Company at Scanderoon
for some two hundred years. You may still
see, in a little forsaken burying -place, the graves,
bearing English names, of factors who died here
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
They lived and died here, discontented men, cursing
their ill-fortune at being stationed in such a desolate
forsaken place, with disease and violence always
around them, but carrying on a great business.
Alexander Drummond, the same who became Vice-
Consul at Aleppo, has something to say about Alexandretta.
"The town of Alexandretta and the country
around," he writes, " produce nothing but robberies,
rapes, murders, and every species of villainy which
perfidy can contrive and desperation execute."
" In this cursed place," he says elsewhere, " we are
subjected to every ill that flesh is heir to."
Drummond landed here to begin his first journey
to Aleppo, and leaves a record of his experiences,
throwing an interesting light on life in the town
and district. Just as he was starting for Aleppo, an
official, sent by the Aga, demanded seven and a half
piastres before he could be allowed to mount a horse.
Indignantly asking what was meant by this imposition,
he learnt that it was a special tax upon the
English, levied during many years at their own suggestion,
and for a very definite purpose. It was to
prevent idleness on the part of English sailors, who,
it seems, were more fond of riding up to Beilan than
of sweating in ships' holds a-stowing of their masters'
goods.
"A most scandalous indulto!" cries Drummond.
" Infamy ought to disgrace the memory of those
who were first guilty of such base condescension."
He was a man of inquiring mind, facile with his
pencil, and fond of sketching, and still more of measuring
everything precisely. He illustrated his book,
and looking through it you find he had a liking for
showing overhanging crags. No illustrator ever made