What waifs of all the ages may be met within these alleys! Yet I think, and our Consul, Mr. Longworth, seems inclined to agree with me, that the Greek type prevails. Our conversation turns upon these race questions; one can indeed never cease learning what fallacious guides in such questions religion and nationality are. There are whole villages on this seaboard whose inhabitants are Mussulmans, and would resent being called by any other name than Osmanli; yet their Greek origin is established both by history and by the traditions which they themselves still in part retain. Thus take Surmeneh and Of, two considerable villages on the east of Trebizond. These versatile Greeks are as famous now for their theological eminence as they were formerly under the Eastern Empire, with this difference, that whereas in those days they supplied the Church with bishops, it is now mollahs that they furnish to Islam. Yet, fanatical as they are, they still hold to certain customs which connect them with the old faith they once served with such distinction, and have, no doubt, since persecuted with equal zeal. Under the stress of illness the Madonna again makes her appearance, her image is again suspended above the sick-bed; the sufferer sips the forbidden wine from the old cup of the Communion, which still remains a treasured object with the whole community, much as they might be puzzled to tell you why. As we are talking, a little girl happens to pass down the lane, a child of some ten years. Her limbs are scarcely covered by a loose cotton skirt, although her complexion has not suffered from the sun. The waxen texture of the flesh, the transparent colouring, and the rich setting of auburn hair remind one of the favourites of Venetian painters and of faces seen in North Italian towns. It is besides only natural that the people of this city should possess a strain of Italian blood; not so many centuries ago the Genoese controlled the commerce and menaced the independence of Trebizond.
Fig. 2. Trebizond from above the Head of the Western Ravine.
It is a long climb from the anchorage to the British Consulate, which, although within the limits of this suburb of gardens, has an elevation of at least 150 feet. Still, the site has the advantages of a middle position between the old fortified city in the western bay below us and the open walks around Boz Tepe. And if the mornings be devoted to the town and the ruins, the evenings may be spent on that airy platform or upon the lonely slopes of the adjacent hills.
There are many pleasant spots which, in the course of these rambles, invite a view over the town. The landscape which you overlook is that of the west—the vague succession of endless little capes and inlets, disappearing and combining to form the single feature of a wide and open bay. Below you lies the old city, mediæval walls and towers, overgrown by a canopy of leaves, gently sloping to the sea (Fig. [2]). Yet, however beautiful in itself may be the scene that expands before you, it is rather upon the thoughts and the memories which it raises that the mind is inclined to dwell. The sea is not so much the blue floor without limits to which the sinuous outline of the coast descends, as the open thoroughfare which leads across to Europe, joining Asia to the West. The fir-clad ridges, which close the prospect towards the interior, are rather the first outrunners of that wide belt of troughs and ridges in which so many armies have become entrapped, than the background of sterner features which supports the peaceful landscape in which the ruined burgh lies. The scene itself is the same that brought tears to the eyes of Xenophon, and which was associated in the mind of the Emperor Hadrian with his first view of this shore and sea.
But the morning is not the time, nor is this the occasion for such retrospective thoughts. Fresh from sleep, our first interest is the ivy-grown ruins of Trapezus, which lie far below us in the western bay. We descend from the slopes about Boz Tepe, by the neat villas and garden enclosures of the eastern suburb, to the ravine which separates this suburb, with the anchorage and commercial quarter, from the site of the old fortified town. It is indeed a position not readily forgotten and not easy to mistake. If the descriptions of Trapezus which have come down to us portray in a defective manner the many remarkable features which are characteristic of the place, they, at least, leave no doubt as to the identity of the historical city with the position of these ruins. At the foot of the precipitous slopes of Boz Tepe, on the western side of that table-topped hill, the surface of the ground is broken by two deep ravines, which, at a narrow interval, descend from the interior to the seaboard about at right angles to the margin of the shore. They represent the lower course of two of those wooded valleys of which the landscape towards Cape Ieros contains a succession, various in feature, but in character the same. Peculiar to these two ravines is their close proximity to one another; the streams which flow along them are only about 400 yards apart as they approach the sea. Indeed, at one point, over 1000 yards from the coast, the mass of rock by which they are separated forms a neck or isthmus of which the top is less than 60 yards across. In this manner a site is constituted which is bounded on three sides by natural defences—on the west and east by the ravines, and on the north by the sea. Draw a wall across the neck or narrowest portion of the rock, and you at once enclose the figure of an irregular parallelogram, of which the fourth side is the short cross-wall. These natural features, so favourable for defence, have not escaped the ingenuity of man; the cross-wall has been built in the shape of a massive tower and citadel, while the inner sides of the ravines have been lined with walls and castellations, which still frown above the leafy abysses and the streams rustling through the shade.
PLAN OF THE ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF TREBIZOND
as they exist at the present day
drawn out on the spot in 1898
In appearance the protected enclosure, with its flanking ravines, has been described by some writers as a peninsular plateau, while to others it has suggested the shape of a table and seemed to justify the name of Trebizond (Τραπεζοῦς). Neither likeness appears to me to be quite happily chosen. Both contain in themselves the conception of a disparity of levels, the plateau of a stage raised above the surrounding country, the table above the surface of the floor. Such are not the characteristics of the site. The metaphor of a table seems the more inappropriate, inasmuch as the least one might expect of such an object is that it should have a flat and horizontal top. This site possesses neither of these qualities. On the one hand, the upper portion, which supports the citadel, rises above the lower like a dais or step; while, on the other, the plane of the ground is an inclined plane, and follows the general configuration of the country, shelving from the hills towards the sea.