OUTING.
VOL. XIII. JANUARY, 1889. NO. 4.
AMONG THE TAURUS MOUNTAINS.
BY L. B. PLATT.
QUITTING the broad highways of travel, it is often refreshing to turn aside from beaten paths and strike off into new regions, where foot of tourist and pen of magazine writer have not awakened the sacred silences, startled the resident deities, and broadcast their treasures upon the world.
Through such a byway among the mountains of Taurus, in Asia Minor, from the sea-coast at Mersina, through half-ruined Tarsus, and across the wide Cilician Plain to the ancient cities of Marash and Aintab we made our journey.
There were three of us, Gould, a picturesque youth of seventeen mild summers, with carefully mapped side-whiskers of a style that had never before invaded that sequestered portion of the world, and afforded unceasing entertainment to the curious and admiring natives, Lee, a missionary at Marash, in the interior, and myself, the modest chronicler of our adventures. With three horses of the light-stepping Arabian blood, whose native turf is the sharp, loose stones of the mountains, another of less noble lineage to carry our pack, and an Armenian servant to run behind, we entered upon the Great Plain of Cilicia.
Immediately we were upon historic ground. Alexander had been here before us, wading breast-deep around that rugged promontory in the distance, beaten by the thundering Mediterranean surges, and sweeping the plain of his enemies with the velocity and destructiveness of a cyclone. He had met Darius the Persian here and annihilated his magnificent array in the world-famous battle of Issus, where “all day long the noise of battle rolled between the mountains and the (summer) sea.”
Cicero had been here as Roman Governor of the Province of Cilicia; had chased the bandit mountaineers into the fastnesses of the hills, defeating them there and flushing his maiden sword with victory, for which he ambitiously claimed, but never received, a Roman Triumph.