Our road now took us through a flat country, and our spirits rose under the improved conditions. At mid-day we used to make a halt, tie up the horses, light a fire, and take an improvised lunch in the open. One day we rested beside a stream on the opposite bank of which one of the soldiers had placed a winebottle as a target. The Sultan had presented us each with a revolver on starting, and our Turkish escort were firing away with them at random, without, however, “driving the centre.” Dr. Hepworth and I stood aside, looking on somewhat amused, which made the situation rather awkward when Sirry Bey suggested we should join in and have a shot. This, however, we hesitated to do, for the good reason that we had previously tested our revolvers on board ship and found that we could not hit a haystack with them. Finally, Dr. Hepworth also urged me to try my luck; so, not wishing to appear churlish, I took a haphazard aim, and, to my intense surprise, down came the bottle. The others were much impressed, and begged me to repeat the exploit. This, however, I firmly declined to do, preferring to leave them under the impression of my dexterity. Few things struck me more forcibly on that journey than the lack of practice with firearms right through this supposed warlike population. We never came across a single rifle-range on the whole of our journey, and on one occasion when we attended an improvised shooting competition among the Kurds their marksmanship was of a very inferior order, and the behaviour of the competitors so excited that I gained the impression they might resent anybody excelling them at their sport.
We had met few horsemen since we left the land of the Kurds; but after Biredschik they again appeared on the scene. Now, however, they were Syrians, men in white flowing garments—bournous—resembling the Arab costumes familiar through Schreyer’s pictures of Algerian life, wielding spears of twelve to fifteen feet in length. They gave us an equally warm reception, and, like the Kurds, accompanied us for hours on our way.
The rest of our journey to Aintab was now plane-sailing. The road was tolerable and the traffic such as gave evidence of some degree of commercial activity. We counted over 1200 camels laden with merchandise which we passed in one day.
Aintab is a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, and they are made up of Greek and Armenian Christians and Kurdish Mohammedans in about equal numbers. It is the capital of the Syrian vilayet, and is situated on the River Sadjur, a tributary of the Euphrates. Like Biredschik, Aintab includes an old mountain fortress, which was already known at the time of the Crusades—when it was taken by Saladin, and again in the year 1400 by Timur the Tartar. To-day it is the seat of wool and cotton manufactures, a commercial depot of leather, cloth, honey, and tobacco.
At Aintab we changed our mode of travelling for the last time; for we disposed of our saddle-horses and proceeded to the coast in the same type of tumble-down conveyance as that in which we left Trebizond. Dr. Hepworth was very sorry to part with his sure-footed little grey mount, which had carried him from Bitlis without a single mishap or stumble. Altogether our experience of the Anatolian horse was one to be remembered with gratitude: never seeming to tire, tractable, docile, and sure-footed as a goat, this breed of horse, which is to be found throughout the Turkish Empire, is truly a friend of man. It is the only horse I have ever known which stands at the bidding of its master for hours together without being tied up. Also, I never once saw a horse treated unkindly during the whole of our journey.
The monotony of riding day by day on horseback at a snail’s pace for weeks in silence, from early dawn till sunset, over an endless succession of undulating roadless hills and vales, with occasional spells of dreadful jolting in springless carts and carriages, had told on our spirits. Thus we all had good cause to rejoice over our arrival at Alexandretta. The sight of the sea once more, as from a high ridge of hills we first beheld the blue waters of the Mediterranean, after passing nearly two months in a wild, almost treeless and pathless country, was a thrilling sensation. Cut off from all the comforts of civilization, which lifelong usage causes us to take as a matter of course, their true value came home to us. Dr. Hepworth involuntarily recalled the famous episode in Xenophon’s “Retreat of the Ten Thousand” where the Greeks at last greeted the sea—in their case, the Black Sea—with the cry: “Thalassa! Thalassa!”
Here, for the first time since leaving Trebizond, we beheld an inn. We were shown into a bedroom and were delighted to see what we had gone without for so long, and thus learned to appreciate as a luxury—a bed, a water-jug, a washing-basin, a table, and a chair.
Founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandretta is picturesquely situated, but otherwise a poor place, bearing all the signs of Oriental neglect; even the harbour, at which various steamers call, looked deserted and dilapidated. The town itself is surrounded on the land side by swamps, to the fever-breeding character of which the many white gravestones in the large cemetery seemed to offer eloquent testimony, inasmuch as the place has only about 1500 inhabitants. Thus the European colony gives it a wide berth, for its members reside ten miles away in the pleasantly situated town of Beilan. The vegetation, however, is very rich, almost tropical in character: beautiful palms and giant cactus plants flourish in abundance.
In summarizing the incidents of our journey, which had now come to an end, our Hungarian doctor turned to Dr. Hepworth and myself and said: “Now that we are well out of it I think we can congratulate each other all round. For I do not mind telling you that there was hardly a day, or rather a night, on this terrible journey in which we were not exposed to the risk of catching smallpox or typhus.” At Erzeroum several of us had been vaccinated, by the advice of the British Consul, though it was only with the greatest difficulty that lymph above suspicion was procured in the town.
Another, and by no means a trifling, danger which we luckily escaped was one which had been foretold us in Constantinople as the most serious possibility of our journey, namely, snowstorms and heavy rains producing floods. Had we encountered either of them in an awkward place it might have delayed us for days, even for weeks, in a country without roads or bridges. Fortunately, we met with neither the one nor the other. During the whole eight weeks we were on the road it never rained, and only snowed now and then for short periods.