"Tilled with a pencil," carefully weeded, and abundantly manured, the country looks like a garden. The industrious Greek population thrives under the rule of the Osmanlis. Travellers on foot and on horseback abound, and khans and cafés succeed each other rapidly. When the long descent alongside of the Surmel was accomplished, the scenery gradually became tamer, and the look of civilisation more emphasised. The grass was if possible greener, the blossoming hellebore more abundant, detached balconied houses with their barns and outhouses evidenced the security of the country, the heat-loving fig began to find a place in the orchards, the funereal cypress appeared in its fitting position among graves, and there was a briny odour in the air, but, unfortunately for the traveller, the admirable engineering of the modern waggon road deprives him of that magnificent view of the ocean from a height which has wrung from many a wanderer since the days of the Ten Thousand the joyful exclamation, "Thalatta! Thalatta!"
The valley opened, there was a low grassy hill, beyond it, broad yellow sands on which the "stormy Euxine" thundered in long creamy surges, and creeping up the sides of a wooded headland, among luxuriant vegetation, the well-built, brightly-coloured, red-roofed houses of the eastern suburb of Trebizond, the ancient Trapezus.[62] It was the journey's end, yet such is the magic charm of Asia that I would willingly have turned back at that moment to the snowy plateaux of Armenia and the savage mountains of Kurdistan.
I. L. B.
Among the prayers recited by the Hadjis are those with which the pilgrims circle the Kaaba at Mecca, a translation of which was given by Canon Tristram in a delightful paper on Mecca contributed to the Sunday at Home volume for 1883. The following is a specimen:—
"O God, I extend my hands to Thee: great is my longing towards Thee. Accept Thou my supplication, remove my hindrances, pity my humiliation, and mercifully grant me Thy pardon.
"O God, I beg of Thee that faith which shall not fall away, and that certainty which shall not perish, and the good aid of Thy prophet Mohammed—may God bless and preserve him! O God, shade me with Thy shadow in that day when there is no shade but Thy shadow, and cause me to drink from the cup of Thy prophet Mohammed—may God bless him and preserve him!—that pleasant draught after which is no thirst to all eternity."