We were now within ten miles of Kastamuni, and by eleven o'clock next morning, July 5th, were in sight of the place. The old castle, standing on its rocky crest, was the first sight which greeted us as we looked down into the valley from the top of the ridge along which we had come. The town, spreading up and down the valley round the base of the castle rock, seemed very much larger than any Turkish town we had seen since leaving Aleppo. The valley was green with cultivated fields and trees, while the hillsides were bare and brown.
We were halted just outside the town, while a number of local gendarmes formed up on each side of the road. After a long wait, we thus progressed in state into the town and through the bazaar to our quarters, which proved to be houses from which the former Greek inhabitants had been ejected. In the end, although somewhat crowded, we found ourselves each with a bed, bedding, and a little other furniture. Most of us had not slept in a bed for eight months or more, apart perhaps from a few days in hospital, and all we desired at the moment was one long rest.
During the last week, which had been by far the pleasantest of the whole trek, we had averaged twenty miles a day. Our journey altogether had been nearly 1,700 miles, and was probably the longest distance across country any prisoners of war have had to travel to the place of their confinement.
CHAPTER IV
LIFE IN KASTAMUNI
July 1916—August 1917
On arrival in Kastamuni, we were divided into two groups, one being accommodated in a large building, formerly a Greek school, with one or two adjacent houses, and the other in a number of houses in a street lower down the hill. Both places were on the edge of the town in the Greek quarter. The schoolhouse was perched high up and commanded a splendid view across the town in the valley towards the hills, beyond which lay the Black Sea—only some 40 miles away.
The houses were built up on a wooden frame-work, the bricks being thrown in to fill up the intervening spaces in a most casual manner. The best houses were covered with stucco; but, however good in appearance, each house in Turkey has its own numerous population of small inhabitants. An Austrian lady whom we met assured us that her house was the only one in the town free from these pests, and we could well believe it.