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CHAPTER IV.
Marsovau—Vineyard quarrels—The Tash Khan as a place of refuge
Armenians and Turks—Pistols—Kara Mustapha Pasha : Donkeydriver,
Janissary, Grand Vizier—His plot—His defeat at Vienna
His death by bowstring.
Maesovan is one of the few towns in Asia Minor
without historical interest, or that does not at least
stand upon the site of some known ancient city. It
never had any importance of its own. It lay upon
no great route of armies, and never was a fortress, for
it had no natural features of the kind thought suitable
in early times for the making of one. It has
always been a plain market - town in a district of
husbandmen ; and town and district have the reputation
among Turks of being a sort of Ottoman Boeotia,
or worse. "Like a Merzifounli" is a reproach that
may imply dulness, or boorishness, or bad manners.
Yet it is a town fortunate in its situation. It is
built just where the abrupt range of Tafshan Dagh,
rising to nearly 6000 feet behind, meets the plain in
gentle slopes and downs. In front of the town the
ground sinks gently for three or four hundred feet
and thence the plain, eight or ten miles in width,
with Ak Dagh on the north and lesser mountains on
the south, goes forward to the second gorge of the
Tersikan Su and the enormous blue precipices of
Amasia twenty-five or thirty miles away. Past the
town, in a little valley, runs the Chai—a mountain
stream where it issues from its deep glen in Tafshan