Macedonia, a plea for the primitive

156 MACEDONIA
past the beautiful circular mass of the old Byzantine
church of St. George, almost to the White
Tower and the sea itself.
Right under the shadow of the wall is the old
town—houses of all shapes and colours and sizes,
jammed together in a glorious muddle so that no
streets are visible— just a sea of old wrinkled tiles
with, here and there, green garden patches or dark
clumps of trees, broken only by the slender white
masts of tall minarets. Closer inspection may
reveal a little round-roofed tomb, the bronze
domes of a Turkish bath, or the pink brickwork
of a little Byzantine church. The curious and
rare minaret with a double gallery is quite near,
while further away another claims our attention
by the " cross-gartered " effect of its red brick
ornamentation. On the heights to our right a
little monastery is seen nestling among the black
cypress trees ;
lower down we observe the strange
buttresses of St. Elias, another Byzantine relic,
and the beautiful little cupolas of St. Catherine's,
standing out from the low lichened roofs of the
host of houses round about. At this point, the
eye is arrested by a large dark grey patch, devoid
of trees, its monotony broken only by a few lonely
minarets or the big skeleton frames of modern
buildings in Venizelos Street. Such is the broad
bare scar left by the last great fire.
Far away to our right stretch the flat marshes
of the Vardar, backed by the distant blue of the