Two hours' travelling next day brought us at last to the end of the immense plain of the Hermus, and we began to get among the mountains, going up the east side of a steep romantic dell, the west side of which was wonderfully rugged and wild. Beyond were mountains covered with snow: beneath us an immeasurable giddy depth. Except a few sheep, we saw no living thing for hours together. Once I heard some wild duck by the torrent below. At the end of six hours we reached Derwent, a village of, say, two hundred houses. A wretched lodging and, as there was no fowl to be got—and that is what one depends entirely upon—no supper; and I had to be content with smoke, coffee, and Homer. In the evening came, as usual, a number of Turks to see the stranger. They enter, they salute with a 'Salaam aleikum,' and sit down perhaps for hours. Their conversation generally turns upon the stranger, with conjectures upon his object in coming. Later at night came in the son of our host. He had been searching for a strayed ox, and was afraid that the wolves had got it. He examined my firearms for a long while, and admired them very much. The Turks of this part of the country are large, handsome, very slow in their speech, and stupid and ignorant.
Starting next morning, we began by following the course of a river till we got on to a high level plain surrounded by formless hills—an ugly country. We met a few Turcomans, and once I saw some ploughing. At the end of seven hours' riding we reached the edge of the valley of the Meander and looked over a glorious view; then downwards through Bulladan, a village of about five hundred houses and a number of mosques, to a village the name of which I never learnt, where we slept.
As one expects nothing of one's host but shelter, it was an unusual hospitality in ours to give us some of his bread. It was a strange compound, such as I had never seen before. To make it, the dough is mixed very thin and poured on a heated copper. The result looks like rags of coarse cloth and tastes like bad crumpets. We slept in a barn with the horses.
Next day we descended into the plain of the Meander and crossed the river by a bridge of four or five arches, the parapet of which is made of the steps of a theatre. Just there was a man administering a singular remedy to a mule which had fallen sick in the road. He had tied all four legs together and thrown him down. Then he had cut the throat of a sheep, and holding the mule's mouth open, let the sheep's blood flow into it. I was assured it was an excellent medicine. From the bridge onwards we crossed a flat till we reached the ridge, at the foot of which is Hierapolis. It had cost me certainly a whole day more than was necessary to get here, because Tabouk Kalise (the castle of the cemetery), its proper name, was spelt in Chandler, Pambouk (cotton); and when I inquired for Pambouk Kalise no one could make out what I meant, so that practically I lost my way until I got into the valley of the Meander. Once there, Hierapolis is a conspicuous object from a great distance on account of the remarkable whiteness of the rock on which it stands.
This is due to a petrification deposited by the river, which rises, a full stream, in the city and flows over the front of the cliff. It makes a fine cascade, and the spray of it, carried by the wind, spreads a white coating like ice over everything it reaches. As it gradually forms, it takes rounded shapes overlapping each other, something like conventional clouds. The ruins of the ancient city stand on the top above the cliff and half buried in a sea of this singular deposit. The vast colonnades present the most extraordinary appearance. The most magnificent are perhaps the ruins of the gymnasium, and the best preserved the theatre, which is all perfect except the proscenium; but perhaps what astonished me most was to find, on going out of one of the gates, a number of tombs of various forms and sizes as complete as on the day they were built, two thousand years ago. The style of them is very large and magnificent. Many of the sarcophagi are eight or nine feet long by three or four wide, and the rest in proportion. All bear inscriptions, but the rough quality of the stone prevented my reading them. Under the sarcophagus, and forming part of the monument, is generally a stone bench for the friends of the deceased to sit upon and meditate. There are some beautiful bas-reliefs in high preservation lying exposed in the theatre. Altogether, for preservation there can be nothing but Pompeii to compare to this place.
I did not forget to inquire for the remarkable cave in which no animal can live, which Chandler tried to find. My guide led me to one near the spring and told me that on certain days birds flying over it fall down, overcome by the fumes. There, sure enough, I did find four small birds with the bones of various other animals. If travellers had been frequent here I could have supposed that someone had put the birds there for sightseers to wonder at; but according to the old aga I am the first traveller here since Chandler's time in 1765, and it seemed impossible that it should have been done on such short notice merely to make a fool of me.
When evening came on, I walked down again to Yemkeni where the janissary and horses were. The aga had prepared a meal for me, and ate it with me, sometimes tearing bits of meat off and throwing them into my plate. As usual, all the Turks came in, in the evening, to stare.
All next day it blew and poured, but I went up to the ruins attended by the aga's man, and worked hard all day long. I had bought a live fowl to try Strabo's experiment of putting him into the cave; but whether it was not really the right cave, or whether the violent wind and rain prevented the gas having effect, at any rate the fowl was none the worse after being exposed to it for half an hour, and we ate him with a good appetite in the evening. Over his bones the aga grew talkative, and told me of the real cave which was in the mountain, one hour distant. He said that inside the cave is a bridge, and beyond that a chamber in which is a treasure guarded by a black man. He added that he who should get the better of that black man had need have studied and learnt much. Many and many an adventurer, after the treasure, had died horribly in the cavern. And so on, with all the cock-and-bull stories universal among the Turks. But when I asked him to give me a guide to take me to the cave, he put every sort of difficulty into the way. I should need ladders, and there were none—horses, and there were none. In short it was quite clear he meant to prevent my going, so I gave it up. I did so the more willingly because I already felt exceedingly uncomfortable. The people around me were utter savages, and the country perfectly lawless. South of the river, in the direction of Denisli or Laodicea, it was worse; and besides brigands, which were said to abound between Denisli and Aidin and would oblige my taking an expensive escort, the agas themselves had a very bad reputation for extortion. Moreover, my janissary was anxious, because in coming to Hierapolis we were already outside the limits to which my travelling firman referred, and he wished to get back within them. So, all things considered, I decided to give up seeing Laodicea (I could make out the situation of it at a very great distance) and passed on to avoid the desert country and dangerous neighbourhood."
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Later Sir Francis Beaufort, chief hydrographer to the Navy.