It will not flow again!
A great stretch of road, after we had passed the exhausted fountain, traversed another of those immense plains for which this part of the country is celebrated. No monotony, however, renders them irksome to the traveller; on the contrary, they are characteristic and various in the extreme. Gigantic walnut trees, laden with fruit; fig trees, almost bending beneath their own produce; little wildernesses of gum cistus, carpeting the earth with their petals; woods of mulberry trees; stretches of dwarf oak, with here and there timber of larger size overtopping them; grass land, gay with tents, pitched for the accommodation of those who guard the droves of horses grazing in their vicinity; camels browzing on the young shoots of the forest trees; herds of buffaloes, with their flat and crescent-shaped horns folding backward, and their coarse and scantily-covered hides caked with the mud in which they have been wallowing; and flocks of goats as wild and as agile as the chamois, keep the eye and the imagination alike employed.
Now and then a native traveller, mounted on his high-peaked saddle, with a brace of silver-mounted pistols and a yataghan peeping from amid the folds of the shawl that binds his waist; his ample turban descending low upon his brow, and his yellow boots resting upon a pair of shovel stirrups; his velvet jacket slung at his back, and the long pendent sleeves of his striped silk robe hanging to his bridle-rein, passes you by. His horse is, nine times out of ten, scarcely one remove from a pony, but it can go like the wind; and, as it tosses its well-formed head, expands its eager nostril, and scours along with its long tail streaming in the wind, you are immediately reminded that both the animal and his rider are, although remotely, of Tartar origin. Of course, the horse has his charm against the Evil Eye, as well as his master; and, moreover, perhaps, his brow-band, or breeching, prettily embroidered with small cowries, and his saddle-cloth gay with the tarnished glories of past splendour.
At times you are met by a party of Greek serudjhes returning to Moudania with a band of hired horses, which, although they have probably tired the patience and wearied the whip of their strange riders, are now racing along amid the shouts and laughter of their owners, as though they were engaged in a steeple-chase. A cloud of dust in the distance heralds the approach of a train of rudely-shaped waggons, frequently formed of wicker-work, drawn by oxen or buffaloes, and generally laden with tobacco; while, nearer the city, gangs of donkeys, carrying neatly-packed piles of mulberry boughs for the use of the silk-worms, which form the staple trade of the neighbourhood, complete the moving picture.
The river which traverses the plain is spanned by a bridge of five beautifully-formed arches. When we passed, it was so shrunken that an active leaper might have cleared it at a bound; but the current was frightfully rapid, and the channel, heaped with flints and sand, had evidently been insufficient to contain its volume during the winter, as the land, for a wide space on either side, bore traces of having been flooded.
On the edge of the plain stands the fountain of Adzim Tzèsmèssi, overshadowed by three fine maple trees, and in itself exceedingly picturesque. A rudely-constructed kiosk, raised a couple of steps from the ground, and surrounded by seats, protects the small basin of granite into which the water rises, and whence it afterwards escapes by pipes into two exterior reservoirs: that which is shaded by the maples being reserved for the use of travellers, and the other for the supply of cattle.
Here, of course, we found a caféjhe, surrounded by a group of smokers; and procured some excellent coffee and cherries.
During our halt, a party of Bohemian gipsies, on their way to the coast, stopped to refresh themselves and their donkeys at the mountain spring; they were about thirty in number, and the men were remarkably tall and well-looking, but formidable enough, with their pistols and yataghans peeping from their girdles; they had two or three sickly, weary children in their train, who appeared half dead with heat and toil; and half a dozen withered old women, who might have sat for the originals of Macbeth’s witches, they were so “grim and grisly;” but there was one female among them, a dark-eyed, rosy-lipped maiden of sixteen, or thereabouts, who was the perfection of loveliness. For a while she stood apart, but, as the rest of the tribe, attracted by my riding-dress, clustered about me, and assailed me by questions to which I was utterly unable to reply, she at length took courage and joined the party. As her wild and timid glance wandered from me to her companions, I found that it invariably rested upon one individual, and I had little difficulty in filling up the romance suggested by her earnest looks. Nor was I deceived; for when the tribe moved away, the bridle of her donkey was held by the tall, sunburnt youth to whom she had attracted my attention; and as they passed the stream, he did not relinquish it though he trod knee-deep in water, when he might have traversed the little bridge without wetting the soles of his feet; but in recompense of his devotion, he feasted, as he went, on the smiles of his fair mistress, and the cherries which I had poured into her lap. After their departure, I made a hasty sketch of the fountain, and then quitted with reluctance a spot so redolent of beauty.
The plain at this point appeared to be set in one uninterrupted frame-work of mountains—the river ran shimmering and sparkling through its centre—the mulberry and walnut trees were scattered thickly over its entire surface—the clouds, as they flitted by, created a thousand beautiful varieties of light and shade; and the soft wind that sighed through the maple leaves almost made me forget my fatigue.