CHAPTER I

THE COAST AND THE PORT

On four different occasions, both in summer and in winter, I have sailed along the southern shore of the Black Sea almost from one extremity to the other; yet I do not remember having seen the sky free from heavy clouds during two consecutive days. As the ship speeds eastwards along the mountains of Bithynia, a thin veil of haze will blend the land outlines together; while, as the range grows in height with every mile of progress, the vapour will collect about its upper slopes in long, horizontal, black banks. Even when the sun of this southern climate has swept the sky of every lingering film, when the zenith and the water recall the hues of the Mediterranean--the whole scale of brilliant blues--somewhere upon the wide circle of the horizon will be lurking the scattered forces of the mist. But the stronghold of the cloud is in the mountains of Akhaltsykh, at the foot of Caucasus, in the extreme eastern angle of the sea. Can there exist a more gloomy coast? There the sky is always lowering above the inky water, and the forests of fir which clothe the range from foot to summit wave darkly, like feathers over a pall. Such, I think, are the impressions which the mind most closely associates with the aspect of this sea and shore. What a contrast to the smiling landscape of the Bosphorus, the strait through which we enter this sad sea or leave it on our return home! The cold draught follows the home-coming ship up the narrow channel between the wooded cliffs, and frets the running tide into crisp little waves which sparkle in the brilliant light. The dolphins leap from the blue water and dart shining through the air. To the traveller who is returning from a long journey in Asia and a tedious tossing on this grey sea, the Bosphorus, always bright and gay and beautiful, may appear as the promised gate of paradise beyond the world of shades.

The character of the coast cannot fail to be affected by this climate, by this atmosphere. Just as the vapours gather thickest where the mountains are most lofty, at the south-eastern angle of the sea, so the vegetation increases in luxuriance and variety the further eastwards we proceed on our course. The cliffs or rolling hills about the entrance of the Bosphorus--the closing cliffs of the Greek legend, which caught the tail-feathers of the dove--soon give place to the belt of wooded mountains which rise from the immediate margin of the water, and stretch from west to east along the entire seaboard to the Phasis and Batum. Tier upon tier they rise from the narrow strip of sand and pebbles, and grow both in height and in boldness of outline as they stretch towards the east. The winds of the open sea, the cold winds of Scythia, fly over the barrier of the range; and the ship may often anchor in smooth water at a point where least protection would appear to be offered by the configuration of the shore. But the moisture of the air is arrested at the coast-line, and hangs about the upper tiers of the mountains or clings to the fir-clad slopes. These natural conditions are extremely favourable to vegetation, and the larger grows the scale upon which they are operating, the more abundant becomes the growth of trees and shrubs. When at last we have reached the neighbourhood of the Phasis, where the wall of this range towers highest above us on the one side, and the line of Caucasus closes the horizon on the other, the shore becomes clothed with dense forests, plants and creepers flourish with tropical exuberance; the traveller, threading the maze of evergreen woodland, might be walking along the banks of the Amazon or through the glades of Mazanderan.

August 13, 14.--Our ship is outward bound for the banks of the Phasis, "the furthest point to which vessels sail." It was evening when we hove anchor from Constantinople, and night had already closed as we passed the cliffs of Buyukdere and opened the mouth of the strait (Fig. 1). This morning we are skirting the Bithynian mountains, our head well up towards Amasra, behind us the bluff of Cape Baba, a promontory of twin hills. That cape hides the site of Heraklea, one of the most important of the old Greek cities, now patched with the relics of its former splendour, and shorn of the glory of its statue of Herakles, with lion-skin, club, quiver, bow and arrows all wrought of solid gold. The same lofty coast and bold headlands accompany our course; in a few hours we double Cape Karembe, and the sun has not yet set as we cast anchor off Ineboli, the outlet of the rich districts about Kastamuni, and perhaps at present the most prosperous of these western Pontic ports.

Herakli, Ineboli, Sinope, Samsun--the ships often stop at one or two of these places; yet how little now remains of the old Greek cities of the Argonautic shore! Step on land, and there are the high-prowed galleys drawn up, quite in the ancient fashion, upon the narrow strip of sand. But the hill to which we look for the ancient akropolis appears bare of any building now, and it is only by careful searching and diligent enquiry that you will find some faced stone with a Greek inscription of the Roman period built into the buttress of a modern bridge, or mocking the ruder masonry of a Turkish wall. Here at Ineboli, indeed, half-bedded in the soil a few paces from the shore, lies a shining fragment of white marble with sculptures in relief. A line of white-faced houses with roofs of red tiles nestles beneath the mountain wall. The Greeks live on one side, the Turks on the other; and the intelligent man to whom you naturally address yourself is an Armenian in European dress. Our ship does not call at Sinope this voyage--Sinope of the open site and spacious roadstead, whose walls seem to have resisted the general crumbling, and rise from the water a still perfect model of a fortified mediæval town. During the night we round the hump of Anatolia, and before mid-day we are lying in the bay of Samsun, towards the centre of the long curve lined with white-faced, red-tiled houses, beyond which the ruined walls of ancient Amisus still emerge from the briars on the summit of the hillside which closes the landscape on the north-west. But at Samsun also destruction has been busy; I look in vain for the massive tower of old acquaintance at the south-eastern extremity of the shore. I recognise the spot where it stood at the end of the long sea-wall, some parts of which still remain; but the foundations alone have escaped demolition, and the few large blocks of stone which still lie scattered on the ground testify rather to the carelessness of the Turkish building-contractor than to any respect on the part of his employers for the beauty and interest of their town.

The sites of these coast towns have been determined by the characteristics of the range of wooded limestone ridges which rise along the shore. Sometimes it will be a cleft in this latitudinal belt of mountains, a transverse fissure in the grain of the range, which, with its rustling river giving access to the interior, has attracted a settlement. The eye rests with pleasure on the deep green of these narrow valleys; the limestone towers high above them and protects the rich growth of trees and shrubs. Or the range recedes from the margin of the water, sweeping inland in the shape of a vast amphitheatre, and curving outwards again to form a distant promontory of the bold and sinuous coast. The first description will apply to the position of Ineboli; the second may be illustrated in a typical manner by the site of Samsun. There the open stage of the wide hemicycle is filled with rolling hills and level expanses which yield abundant crops of cereals. It is true that the estuaries of the two larger rivers, Halys and Iris, present exceptions to the normal configuration of the seaboard. These considerable streams form extensive deltas which project far out into the sea. For awhile, as you pass them, you almost lose sight of the mountains, and the view ranges across low, marshy tracts, studded with trees. As we skirted the delta of the Halys, we looked down upon such a wooded plain across a narrow bank of sandy shore. It appeared as if inside that slender barrier the solid land had sunk beneath the level of the waters upon which we sailed. The delta of the Halys is as celebrated for its tobacco as that of the Iris for its Indian corn, and Bafra and Charshembeh are becoming serious rivals to the old Greek cities of the coast.

Indeed, even along this remote seaboard the flowing tide of Western civilisation is surely setting eastwards again. How the conditions of human life around these lonely waters have altered within the last sixty years! Sixty years ago the first steamer drew her train of smoke and foam past these forelands and bays of still uncertain fame. The slave ships infested the harbours of the coast, and if a sail rose upon the horizon it was likely to be a slaver's sail. Armed bands still forayed into the recesses of Georgia for their loot of beautiful boys and girls, and parents who wished to preserve their daughters from the market would place them, when quite children, in one of the numerous fortified convents which crowned the summits of their native hills. Slowly the grip of law has fastened upon the peoples of Caucasia, a stern force moving with the insistence of a vice from distant Russia, from the north; while from the west, with, perhaps, less system, less coherence of methods, European commerce creeps along this Turkish shore of the sea, and extends ever further into the inland country the solvent influences of her sway. Already towards the middle of the century the Russians swept these waters with their steam cruisers, while their police boats blockaded all the coast of Circassia to guard against the import of arms. Only when the season was most tempestuous, when the cruisers had retired within their harbours and the Cossacks no longer dared to face the open sea, the captain of the slave ship would venture out upon his perilous voyage from some wooded inlet of the eastern shore. At the present time this traffic has either ceased entirely or is conducted through obscure and secret channels, where it would be difficult to trace. To Russia belongs the credit of this achievement, which has accompanied the extension of her empire down the eastern coast of the Black Sea. To Europe and to the increasing intercourse with European markets is due the growing prosperity of these towns of the Turkish seaboard, and indeed the very appearance which they present. New houses, in construction far more solid than their predecessors, are transforming the aspect of the shore; burnt bricks or stone masonry take the place of wood, and these materials are faced with a coat of concrete, painted a pure white. The window apertures are large, and at evening or morning a row of wide glass panes reflects the glow. Even the Government can show some signs of progress; carriageable roads have been constructed to the towns of the interior, from Ineboli to the inland centre of Kastamuni, from Samsun to Amasia and Sivas.

August 15.--Weighing from Samsun at night, it is early morning as we cast anchor off Kerasun--Kerasun with its castled rock thrown seawards from the range, the lofty headland of the bay, from which the town curves westwards and sinks to the waterside under the shadow of the mountain wall. Were it not for the needle forms of minaret and cypress, rising against the terraces of white walls and red roofs which mount from the water's edge, we might be sailing on the Rhine, past some grim old burgh, dominating the cluster of peaceful habitations which cower at its skirts. In less than three hours the barges are emptied, and we are proceeding on our course. Almost immediately we pass close to a little island, a rare object along this shore. It is a mere fleck of rock, picturesquely encircled by feudal walls and towers. The range on our right hand is always rising in elevation; hard porphyritic rocks are beginning to take the place of the crumbling limestone; the ridges, clad with firs to the very summits, stand up one behind another ever loftier and more abrupt. At the same time the lower slopes increase in verdure; orchards and plantations clothe each respite of open ground. Small settlements succeed one another more closely, the houses peeping out with their white faces from the soft, leafy background of green.

Such is the appearance of the shore we are skirting this morning--the range growing in height, the vegetation increasing, the characteristic beauties of the coast now, perhaps, for the first time imprinting a lasting image upon the mind. Like the Mediterranean, this sea is almost tideless--the narrow strip of sand, upon which the waves plash, is unencumbered with those oozy beds of giant seaweed which, scattered in fragrant streamers upon our English seaboards, whet the freshness of our sea-breeze. Beyond this margin rise the first spurs of the mountains, or immediately descend into the deep, clear waters in the form of bold capes. If this coast yields to some in variety of outline, and is wanting in those combinations of sinuous bays and sea-thrown islands which lend such beauty to the landscapes of western Asia Minor and to the European shore of the Mediterranean Sea, it is surpassed by none in distinctness of character, in singleness of effect. Day after day it is the same long belt of mountains always following the shore, the same long series of parallel ridges rising roughly parallel to the shore. The persistence of the range, the regularity of the system, the many signs along the seaboard of an ever-increasing development in the scale of the mountain walls which lie behind--all contribute to the growing consciousness that this foot of the barrier, the pleasing inlets of this shore, are but the threshold of some commanding piece of natural architecture of which we long to realise the plan. While the imagination is stimulated by this largeness of feature, the eye also is pleased. Groves of lofty fir trees clothe the slopes and climb the summits, standing out on the undulating backs of the ridges against the light of the sky. Wherever the soil favours, there are pretty orchards, and an abundant growth of plants and trees. Nature strikes the first note of that "evergreenness" for which the coast of Kolchis has been famed.

Towards mid-day we are holding up for a well-defined headland, projecting towards the north. It is distinguished by bold bluffs, breaking off in the form of cliffs before they reach the water's edge, and by a succession of deep valleys which descend on either side to the margin of the shore. It is the promontory of the "sacred mountain"--Hieron Oros, now called Yoros, Ieros, or simply Oros--and it forms the western border of that series of smaller indentations which make up the beautiful bay of Trebizond. Platana, most picturesque of little settlements, nestles well under the shelter of this cape upon the west, when once you have doubled the points; while on the eastern side of the bay, exposed to the strong north-westerly winds of the seaboard, lies the site of the old city of Trebizond. From this port starts the principal avenue of communication between Turkish Armenia and the sea; and beyond the mountains, on the south of this wild coast range, now traversed by a metalled road, lie the plains of the Armenian tableland. The width of this mountain belt which borders Armenia--this continuous chain of latitudinal ridges which, rising one behind and higher than the other, lead up like a ladder to the edge of the Armenian plateau--is on this section of the range a direct distance of nearly fifty miles. When the roses are blowing in the gardens of the seaboard, the Armenian rivers may be bound with ice; an unbroken sheet of snow may dazzle the eyes of the traveller, as he penetrates from this border country of parallel crests and depressions to the open landscapes of the tableland.

Fifty miles of intricate mountain country, inhabited at all periods by a sparse and little civilised population of doubtful or mixed race! The fact goes far towards explaining the isolation of Armenia, the remoteness throughout history of the great grain-growing plains of the interior from the coast towns of the Black Sea. While the Greek cities of the seaboard, sheltered behind the barrier of the range, found a natural and almost uninterrupted connection with the main currents of Western history and Western life, the Armenian country and people, full exposed to the revolutions of Asia, belonged essentially to the East.

Yet these crumbling walls and towers, emerging at intervals from a leafy overgrowth of creepers and trees, claim a larger share of our attention than a merely passing notice of the port of Trebizond. For, in the first place, no traveller, about to enter the interior by this well-known and well-beaten route, can fail to undergo the spell which belongs to these ruins, or to feel his interest aroused by the monuments which still remain here of an empire long forgotten in the West. Nor will a mind which has been fed upon Western literature ignore the importance of realising the events of Western history as they touch this remote shore. The annals of Trebizond, while they illustrate and in themselves to a great extent resume the fortunes of these coast towns, were joined by a thread which was seldom severed to the web of Western things.

August 16.--The morning is the time to arrive at Trebizond, perhaps to wake when the ship lies secure at anchor, while a fresh land-wind blows. The vessel coming from the west crosses the bay from Cape Ieros to an answering headland in the east, and does not bring up till she has doubled this lesser promontory and closed or almost closed the wide bay from sight. The anchorage lies at the foot of the eastern suburb of the city, now the most flourishing portion of the town, and the suburb mounts the back of the little promontory, and descends to the water on the opposite or western side. The inlet which recedes from the cape is not deep or extensive, and the shelter which it offers is so partial that in stormy weather a ship may be obliged to run for Platana, and seek shelter under the lee of Cape Ieros, now some fifteen miles away. This configuration of the shore may be said to give two faces to the site of Trebizond. While the ancient city with the ruins looks seawards and westwards, commanding the softer landscape of the bay, to the anchorage belongs an easterly aspect, and a view past the estuary of the famous river Pyxitis along the wildest portion of the coast range.

Facing the anchorage, on the east of the white houses which climb the western skirts of the rising land, a bold cliff towers up above the water with abrupt walls of dark rock. The face of this cliff is almost bare of vegetation; but the summit, which is flat, is completely covered with a soft carpet of old turf. The elevation of this lofty platform above the sea-level is 850 feet. East and west the hill descends with gentler gradients, on the one side to the estuary of the Pyxitis, and on the other to the little cape and to the town; but whether you approach it from the city or from the river valley, the slopes are no light matter to climb. On the south it joins on to the half-circle of the coast range, which recedes from beyond the river in a wide amphitheatre, embracing both the bays and all the town. Thus the town itself is shut off from the level ground about the river by this peninsula of table-topped rock; and while one road climbs these slopes to unite the two valleys, the other winds outwards along the foot of the cliff, following the curve of the shore.

I remember that, when for the first time I looked out upon the city, I was at once impressed with the manner in which this bold natural feature corresponded to the name of the town (Trapezous). Could the shape which is denoted by the figure of a table be presented by Nature in a more convincing manner than by this mass of rock, towering up above the sea and from the valleys to a summit which is almost perfectly flat? Yet the name does not appear to take its origin in a justification at once so striking and so clear, but rather to derive from the configuration of the ground in the western bay upon which the ancient fortress was built. Still this platform is surely the most impressive characteristic of the site of Trebizond. The Turks, who have no antiquarian sympathies, apply to it the bald and undiscriminating appellation of Boz Tepe, the grey hill, basing the name upon the colour of the trachytic rock of which the hill is composed. The Greeks of old knew it as the Mount of Mithros--Mithrios--from a statue of the god Mithras which used to stand upon this elevated spot. It is not easy to imagine a more delightful ground of vantage from which to overlook the town and command the coast. You may step a distance of some 500 paces by 200 on a level surface of springy turf, with no object between you and the wide expanse about you, in air which is at once full of sun and vigorous; and, if the day be clear, you may descry beyond the endless stretch of water the faint blue line of distant Caucasus closing the horizon in the east.

The anchorage of Trebizond receives the first flush of morning; a mellow light is thrown upon the terraces of the eastern suburb, circling seawards down the lower slopes of Mount Mithros to the point of the little cape. Here and there among the buildings rows of tall cypresses still hold the shadows of night; but the white faces of the houses soon dispel the darkness, and their glass windows reflect in a glow of dazzling splendour the lurid brilliance of the rising sun. Nowhere else than in these landscapes of the Black Sea and the Caspian is the dawn more essentially the "rosy-fingered," or the sea at sunrise "the glass-green." As the rays commence to break, the wind freshens and the black cypresses wave and sway. Down the coast, beyond the dark cliff of Mithros, the mountains of the seaboard are massed in savage parapets beneath the rising sun; the faithful clouds cling to their slopes or float above them, a sky of cold, silvery greys. Westwards, above the point of the little promontory, under the immediate lee of which we lie, you just discern the softer setting of the greater bay itself, as the outline of the range sweeps in long undulations far out into the western sea. The day wakes; the colours start; the world of pinks and opals disappears. The aspect of the town is warm and genial, even in winter, when the background of broken ridges look their wildest and the sparse fir trees stand out darkly from the snow. Sunny meadows and flashes of green turf caress the traveller, who may have journeyed through the long Eastern summer and autumn in countries where scarcely a blade of grass grows. The shore is soon astir, and the cries of the boatmen are carried down the wind. Large, high-prowed galleys bear down upon us, the crews racing for the first berth. We are surrounded by a swarm of ragged human beings, shouting, scrambling, gesticulating, as their boats and heavily laden barges drive against our tall iron sides.

The steamers anchor at some little distance from the shore, and it takes a long pull, at a time when the wind is setting off the land, to reach the little mole. The shore-boats are manned with ill-miened youngsters, whose clamour never ceases from ship-side to landing-stage. On the quay are arrayed the customs officers and their assistants, motley groups in which the cast-off wardrobes of Europe mingle with the coloured cottons of the East. What a relief to escape from all this turmoil, to repose for a few minutes in a spacious coffee-house, rising high above the harbour and the noise! A youth is just completing his lustral service of the morning; the floor has been swept and watered, the nargilehs are coiled--the peaceful figure of Ion rises in the mind.

Our road leads up the hillside, at first by the town garden and wide streets, lined with houses and shops built in European style, and then through the narrow alleys which intersect the Christian quarters, a labyrinth of winding ways. These streets of Trebizond have a width not exceeding six or eight feet, and sometimes less, and are lined by the dull walls of garden enclosures which shut out all prospect over the town. A raised pavement runs along them, sometimes on both sides of the way, and always on one. Here and there the fresh green leaves of a fig tree overhang the walls, or the cherry-laurel with its clusters of claret-coloured fruit, or the pink flowers of the oleander. The houses are, for a great part, quite Eastern in character--blank, featureless wall, broken only at mid-height by little windows with gratings made of laced strips or mortised cubes of wood. But the modern villa is rapidly taking their place.

What waifs of all the ages may be met within these alleys! Yet I think, and our Consul, Mr. Longworth, seems inclined to agree with me, that the Greek type prevails. Our conversation turns upon these race questions; one can indeed never cease learning what fallacious guides in such questions religion and nationality are. There are whole villages on this seaboard whose inhabitants are Mussulmans, and would resent being called by any other name than Osmanli; yet their Greek origin is established both by history and by the traditions which they themselves still in part retain. Thus take Surmeneh and Of, two considerable villages on the east of Trebizond. These versatile Greeks are as famous now for their theological eminence as they were formerly under the Eastern Empire, with this difference, that whereas in those days they supplied the Church with bishops, it is now mollahs that they furnish to Islam. Yet, fanatical as they are, they still hold to certain customs which connect them with the old faith they once served with such distinction, and have, no doubt, since persecuted with equal zeal. Under the stress of illness the Madonna again makes her appearance, her image is again suspended above the sick-bed; the sufferer sips the forbidden wine from the old cup of the Communion, which still remains a treasured object with the whole community, much as they might be puzzled to tell you why. As we are talking, a little girl happens to pass down the lane, a child of some ten years. Her limbs are scarcely covered by a loose cotton skirt, although her complexion has not suffered from the sun. The waxen texture of the flesh, the transparent colouring, and the rich setting of auburn hair remind one of the favourites of Venetian painters and of faces seen in North Italian towns. It is besides only natural that the people of this city should possess a strain of Italian blood; not so many centuries ago the Genoese controlled the commerce and menaced the independence of Trebizond.

It is a long climb from the anchorage to the British Consulate, which, although within the limits of this suburb of gardens, has an elevation of at least 150 feet. Still, the site has the advantages of a middle position between the old fortified city in the western bay below us and the open walks around Boz Tepe. And if the mornings be devoted to the town and the ruins, the evenings may be spent on that airy platform or upon the lonely slopes of the adjacent hills.

There are many pleasant spots which, in the course of these rambles, invite a view over the town. The landscape which you overlook is that of the west--the vague succession of endless little capes and inlets, disappearing and combining to form the single feature of a wide and open bay. Below you lies the old city, mediæval walls and towers, overgrown by a canopy of leaves, gently sloping to the sea (Fig. 2). Yet, however beautiful in itself may be the scene that expands before you, it is rather upon the thoughts and the memories which it raises that the mind is inclined to dwell. The sea is not so much the blue floor without limits to which the sinuous outline of the coast descends, as the open thoroughfare which leads across to Europe, joining Asia to the West. The fir-clad ridges, which close the prospect towards the interior, are rather the first outrunners of that wide belt of troughs and ridges in which so many armies have become entrapped, than the background of sterner features which supports the peaceful landscape in which the ruined burgh lies. The scene itself is the same that brought tears to the eyes of Xenophon, and which was associated in the mind of the Emperor Hadrian with his first view of this shore and sea.

But the morning is not the time, nor is this the occasion for such retrospective thoughts. Fresh from sleep, our first interest is the ivy-grown ruins of Trapezus, which lie far below us in the western bay. We descend from the slopes about Boz Tepe, by the neat villas and garden enclosures of the eastern suburb, to the ravine which separates this suburb, with the anchorage and commercial quarter, from the site of the old fortified town. It is indeed a position not readily forgotten and not easy to mistake. If the descriptions of Trapezus which have come down to us portray in a defective manner the many remarkable features which are characteristic of the place, they, at least, leave no doubt as to the identity of the historical city with the position of these ruins. At the foot of the precipitous slopes of Boz Tepe, on the western side of that table-topped hill, the surface of the ground is broken by two deep ravines, which, at a narrow interval, descend from the interior to the seaboard about at right angles to the margin of the shore. They represent the lower course of two of those wooded valleys of which the landscape towards Cape Ieros contains a succession, various in feature, but in character the same. Peculiar to these two ravines is their close proximity to one another; the streams which flow along them are only about 400 yards apart as they approach the sea. Indeed, at one point, over 1000 yards from the coast, the mass of rock by which they are separated forms a neck or isthmus of which the top is less than 60 yards across. In this manner a site is constituted which is bounded on three sides by natural defences--on the west and east by the ravines, and on the north by the sea. Draw a wall across the neck or narrowest portion of the rock, and you at once enclose the figure of an irregular parallelogram, of which the fourth side is the short cross-wall. These natural features, so favourable for defence, have not escaped the ingenuity of man; the cross-wall has been built in the shape of a massive tower and citadel, while the inner sides of the ravines have been lined with walls and castellations, which still frown above the leafy abysses and the streams rustling through the shade.

In appearance the protected enclosure, with its flanking ravines, has been described by some writers as a peninsular plateau, while to others it has suggested the shape of a table and seemed to justify the name of Trebizond (Trapezous). Neither likeness appears to me to be quite happily chosen. Both contain in themselves the conception of a disparity of levels, the plateau of a stage raised above the surrounding country, the table above the surface of the floor. Such are not the characteristics of the site. The metaphor of a table seems the more inappropriate, inasmuch as the least one might expect of such an object is that it should have a flat and horizontal top. This site possesses neither of these qualities. On the one hand, the upper portion, which supports the citadel, rises above the lower like a dais or step; while, on the other, the plane of the ground is an inclined plane, and follows the general configuration of the country, shelving from the hills towards the sea.

Yet these images and the impressions from which they derive are no doubt founded upon real conditions. The isolation of the figure, together with its elevation--not indeed above the levels which adjoin it on either side, but above the level of the sea--these are the two factors which have supplied the real substance of such impressions. The first of these features would appeal to the eye with more distinctness, were it not for the thick growth of trees and underwood which rises from the floors and up the slopes of the ravines, and almost conceals the escarpment of their sides. The depth of the gulfs may be gauged by the following measurement made at the head of the western ravine. Standing at the bottom of the abyss, the rock which supports the citadel and palace overtops you by about 150 feet at the highest point. The width across them, from cliff to cliff, varies considerably, according as each gulf opens or closes in; the length of each of the two bridges which span the ravines is about 100 paces. Both ravines tend to flatten as they descend towards the shore, or in other words, to increase in width and diminish in depth. As for the elevation of the enclosure, it is of course most considerable at the narrow isthmus and the citadel. This highest portion, containing the keep and palace, is about 200 feet above the sea.

It is plain from the description which has just been given that the characteristic features of the site attain their greatest development in that part of the enclosure which is most remote from the shore; that it is there the protecting gulfs are deepest, and the rock loftiest which they flank. Indeed, during the Byzantine and earlier Comnenian periods the fortress was confined to this upper portion, and the outer wall on the side of the sea was drawn from gulf to gulf at a distance of about 460 yards from the present margin of the shore. A few sentences may suffice to present the plan of the fortifications, as it may be traced among the ruins that remain. At the very head of the formation came the keep and citadel, the outer wall being drawn across the narrow isthmus between the two ravines; this was the weakest point in the whole circumference of the fortress, and the works were strongest upon this side. Built into this outer wall stands a massive square tower, which rises boldly above the battlements and faces the approaches from the south. The ground shelves upwards almost from the immediate foot of the tower to the amphitheatre of hills which surround the bay. Thus the fortress is commanded by the slopes upon the south, where already it is by nature most vulnerable. It was from the south that its assailants delivered their principal attacks: the Goths, the Georgians, the Seljuks, the Turkomans, the Ottoman Turks. All the space inside the wall and between the two ravines was filled up at this uppermost part of the fortress, first by the keep, and then by the palace itself; the citadel served as the kingly residence, and the wall with the bold windows which rises along the edge of the western ravine was alike fortress and palace wall. This uppermost fortress or citadel, with the palace of the king, was separated from the lower but more extensive portion of the site by a cross-wall, equal in height to the walls along the ravines, and supported at either end by towers. So much loftier is this upper stage than the stage which lies below it that, whereas the palace, which occupies the most elevated point, towers high above the battlements of the cross-wall, the base of this wall itself overtops the highest buildings of the second and lower stage.

Below the cross-wall, with its massive double gate, lay that part of the fortress which contained the cathedral and public buildings, and formed the inhabited portion of the original fortified town. Like the citadel, it was protected on two sides by the ravines, lined on their inner edge by a lofty wall seven feet in thickness, with towers at intervals. A second cross-wall, extending from ravine to ravine, was its bulwark on the side of the sea, and constituted the outer rampart of the enclosure as it existed in the ancient form. This outer rampart followed the edge of a natural declivity in the surface of the shelving ground, and presented a bold front to the lower levels lying between it and the shore.

The third and lowest stage of the fortified enclosure filled the space that yet remained between this outer wall of the city and the immediate margin of the sea. The ravines open outwards as they approach the seaboard, and the figure widens which they bound; but on the other hand, the sides of these natural barriers flatten and take the surface of the adjoining ground. Thus the plan of the lower fortress did not display the same subservience to the natural features of the site, and was protracted on the west beyond the outer margin of the western ravine. Indeed, the area enclosed by this later work of the fourteenth century was considerably greater than that of the ancient burgh; and in proportion as it was deficient in natural defences, so it was stronger in those of art. A wall six feet and a half in thickness, with towers at irregular intervals, surrounded the new work; and, except on the side of the sea, this rampart was flanked by a second and lower wall with a moat on its outer side. But, although the lower fortress formed a third and separate unity, overstepping the natural limits of the site, it was connected in the closest manner with the upper enclosure, and with the walls flanking the ravines. On the east the new ramparts joined the old wall, and continued its direction in a straight line to the shore, at which point they turned at right angles, along the shore. Thus the old cross-wall was completely covered by the new fortifications, and the principal gate of the old city, leading through that wall and facing the sea, instead of standing at the outer extremity of the fortress, now became situated in about the middle of the fortified plan. The new wall along the sea was protracted further westwards than the western extremity of the old cross-wall; it was drawn across the mouth of the western ravine, and far overlapped the parallel line of the old wall. Some little distance west of the depression it again changed direction, and stretched up towards the south, until it reached a point opposite to the bridge which leads out from the middle fortress, and over 100 paces from the edge of the ravine. From this point, which was emphasised by a rectangular tower of extraordinary size, the line of wall was taken at right angles, and met the margin of the ravine.

This threefold disposition of the walls and fortifications is characteristic of the plan of the fortified city, and forms a feature well noted in the descriptions of the topographers and still distinguished in popular speech. Indeed, even at the present day, when most of the great gates have disappeared, and houses with several storeys obscure the plan, the hillside is lined by three complete fortresses, each separated from the other and one higher than another, yet all three welded closely into one. The appearance of the city in the days of her splendour must have justified her reputation as "Queen of the Euxine," and lent colour to her claim to be the capital of a restored Roman Empire of the East. Between extensive suburbs, filled with busy streets and markets, rising from the shore on either hand, through a labyrinth of gardens and garden-houses, clustered on the higher slopes, the two converging lines of massive parapets and towers mounted slowly up the shelving ground. The further they receded from the margin of the seaboard, the clearer grew the essential features of the site--the ravines opening darkly at the immediate foot of either wall, the walls closely following the irregular course of the chasms, and now rising, now declining, along the uneven surface of the cliffs. Near the head of the figure stood the royal palace, raised high above the massive works of the citadel, deeply moated by the sister gulfs on either side. Broad windows opened from the royal reception hall of white marble to the varied prospects on every side, while within, the vast apartment was adorned with rich paintings, the portraits of successive holders of the imperial office, their insignia and arms. On the east, beyond the abyss, the slope gathered gradually to the side of Mithros, the table-topped hill, in which direction, just opposite the palace, the church and fortified enclosure of St. Eugenius crowned an almost isolated site which was flanked on the further side by a third and lesser ravine. Towards the interior, on the side of the narrow isthmus, the view ranged wide, above the battlements, over the hills encircling the broad bay; while the rising ground, opening upwards from the tongue of the isthmus, was occupied by the theatre and by the extensive walled enclosure of the polo-ground or hippodrome. A royal gate gave access from the palace to these pleasure-places, the distance of a short walk from the wall; and through this gate the imperial party and their brilliant court would pass to their marble seats above the race-course, whence the whole landscape of city and field and ocean lay outspread at their feet. If the several divisions of the fortified enclosure may be described as so many steps, or shelving terraces, rising one behind another from the shore, then the race-course outside the walls will be the fourth stage of the platform, the last and highest, and the fairest of all. Indeed the prospect over the walls and towers of the city to the distant sea beyond must at all times have been one of surpassing beauty, whether seen from the windows of the Imperial residence, or from these airy heights above the town. To the palace was displayed the long perspective of the city architecture outlined against the blue bay--the massive cross-walls cleaving the crowded quarters, the domes of the churches glancing in the brilliant sunlight, and, interspersed, quiet respites of shade and leafiness, where some portico with frescoed walls and row of marble pillars recalled the habits of the classical age. From the higher standpoint of the race-course all the rich detail of this scene was blended and subdued; the eye would follow the long line of parapets and towers descending by the side of the sinuous streak of verdure which marked the course of the western ravine. The palace windows, which still rise above the head of that ravine, commanded the landscape of the west, the wide bay with its peaceful setting of cultivated hillsides stretching seawards to the distant cape.

Among the most pleasing and, perhaps, not the least striking feature in the composition of these scenes must at all times have been the luxuriance and variety of the vegetation which is natural to this soil. The necessary moisture is provided, not by stagnant pools and marshes, as in the country watered by the Kolchian rivers further east, but by salubrious springs, bubbling from the surface of the rock and collecting in rustling streams. The sun is indeed the fiery orb of Eastern landscapes; but the climate is tempered by the chilling winds from across the sea, bringing rain and mist in their train. The outcome of these conditions is the simultaneous exuberance of the trees and plants which flourish upon the coasts of the Mediterranean and of the leafy giants of our Northern woods; side by side with shady thickets of chestnut, elm, oak and hazel, groves of cypress, laurel and olive grace the shore. The wild vine hangs in festoons from the branches, and in sheltered places the orange tree, the lemon, and the pomegranate thrive and yield their fruit. All our fruits are found in the well-stocked gardens, while the fig of Trebizond is of old as famous as the grapes of Tripoli and the cherry of Kerasun. Cucumbers are cultivated, and heavy pumpkins, and tobacco, and Indian corn, with its reed-like stalks and luscious leaves. The beautiful pink flowers of the oleander may be seen rising above some orchard wall. In the middle of the seventeenth century we are told of upwards of thirty thousand gardens and vineyards inscribed in the city registers, and at that time the slopes about Boz Tepe were completely covered with vines. But it is on the western rather than on the eastern side of the fortress that Nature has most freely lavished her gifts; and on no spot with more abundance or greater effectiveness than on the western ravine. The beauties of that valley, almost as we see them to-day, have been described in glowing language by Cardinal Bessarion in the fifteenth century, himself a son of Trebizond, and by the historian of the Comnenian empire whose warm imagination was kindled by scenes which recalled and intensified the graces of his native Tyrol. [1] A path leads down from the suburb on the west into the shade and freshness of the gorge, through thickets of lofty forest-trees, their leafy branches laced together by wild vines. Even at mid-day, when the sun hangs cloudless over the narrow vista, the rays scarcely penetrate to the deep shadows of the evergreens--a luxuriant undergrowth of myrtle, laurel and ivy, rising from the floor and up the cliffs. From the highest point of the castle rock some 150 feet above you, amongst a wild confusion of creepers and trees, the bold wall of the palace, now reduced to an empty skeleton, still stands up against the sky; and the broad windows which once opened from the emperor's apartments still overlook the verdant scene below. Past mossy banks, upon which the iris and primrose flourish, through leafy brakes, where trees of laurel hide the ground, the little stream cascades into the laps of the hollows or plashes over ledges of hard rock.

But we are anticipating on our walk, which has not yet brought us further than the edge of the eastern ravine. We cross the bridge, and at once find ourselves within the fortified enclosure, which is traversed by a broad road. Following that road, we are passing through the middle fortress--that part of the site which constituted the inhabited quarter of the walled city in its original form. Now as in ancient times it is crowded by buildings, while a considerable portion is taken up by the Serai, or Government House (No. 17 on plan of Trebizond and surroundings), which is situated about in the middle of the space between the ravines, on the south side of our road. Here the pasha will be sitting within an inner room, a bundle of papers by his side on the divan. Entering the court, you have on one side this palace, thronged with applicants, and, on the other, the iron gratings of a prison, banding the faces of the captives as they stare on the scene below. Past the gateway of the Serai, a narrow way leads up the enclosure, diverging at right angles from the road which joins the ravines. It conducts us to the upper fortress through a quarter filled by private houses, and inhabited exclusively by Mohammedans. A walk of some two or three hundred yards brings us to the foot of the lofty cross-wall, which is almost as fresh to-day as when it was reared. By a steep incline we enter a gateway into a hollow tower adjoining the outer wall on the east, which constitutes the only passage into the citadel.

The massive ancient gate still rests upon its hinges, its rusty iron plates riddled with bullets. A second gate, placed at right angles to the first in the further wall, gives issue from the tower. The citadel, like the middle fortress, is occupied by modern houses; but they are less frequent, and are almost confined to the spaces immediately neighbouring the cross-wall. There is some difficulty in examining the extensive ancient works which still in part remain upon the site. One of the principal buildings is occupied by military stores, and is forbidden ground. I contrive to effect an entrance, and find it quite empty--a palpable reason for such exclusive measures. Then the walls which enclose the gardens of the private dwellings are no less the discreet protectors of the life of the harem than the veil to hide the squalor of faded opulence. While one of us is taking readings with the prismatic compass, the whole quarter is raised by the protestations of a young minx, who will insist that she is the object of his unmannerly stares. I have said that the palace is now a mere skeleton; a rambling old house, with a picturesque overhanging roof, fills a portion of the ground plan of the royal apartments, where they overlooked the western ravine. We are tardily given admission by a female voice. From an embrasure in the massive wall of the fortress, just below the row of eight arched windows, which stand up blank against the sky, we feast our eyes upon the charming view over the western ravine, following its sinuous outline into the background of leafy hills, or resting upon the cypresses and minaret of the Khatunieh mosque among the villas on the opposite margin of the abyss.

Within this outer wall, a little south of our standpoint, a square tower rises above the outline of the battlements, displaying in its upper storey the interior of a spacious apartment with windows opening upon the landscape. The fragment of a wall juts out towards us from beside the tower; and three large windows, of which two are double, with slim dividing pillars, have been spared to it by the ravages of time. Just north of us, three more windows rise from the outer wall, on a higher plane than those above our heads. Both rows are but the remains of much longer series, once the life and pride of these grim parapets. They enable us to reconstruct the ancient splendour of the imperial residence, which, day by day, is slowly passing towards the world of unsubstantial memories, to share the fate of sacred Troy and of King Priam, rich in flocks.

Above the palace, within the narrowing tongue of the circumvallation, the space is occupied by the substructures of the keep, over which we clamber to the parapets of the outer wall. Beside us, the square tower at the extreme end of the fortress frowns out upon the knife-like ridge between the ravines. It is probable that this tower is composed of a solid mass, for one cannot trace any sign of a passage in. The battlements of the wall rise to a height of nearly 200 feet above the western ravine. Just on the east of the tower is placed the only entrance to the citadel from the side of the ridge. It consists of a long passage, flanked by a parallel outer wall, and abutting on a huge angular tower. But the inner doorway is now walled up, and one is obliged to retrace one's steps to the middle fortress, in order to pass without the walls.

The gate is situated just below the entrance to the citadel, in the wall on the east. It too is furnished with double doors, which, like their neighbours, have been riddled by musket fire. South of this gateway there is just enough room between the wall and the edge of the eastern ravine to permit of a narrow road. Leaving the interior of the fortress, one is taken along this road, with the wooded precipice on one hand and on the other the ivy-grown battlements. Peasants, carrying baskets, pass by on their way to market; and beneath a fig tree, teeming with fruit, some Mussulman women, resting from their wayfaring, cower within their veils as we approach. The colossal angular tower projects from the head of the irregular wall towards the leafy abyss, a large inscription gleaming white upon the wall which faces us, the record of the conquest of Mohammed II.

But the point at which you pause is at the head of the fortification, beneath the soaring escarpment of the square tower. It is the same site upon which the peoples from the remote recesses of Asia have stood with the lust of conquest in their eyes. On the opposite bank of the eastern ravine the drum-shaped dome of St. Eugenius rises from among a cluster of red-roofed villas. It was there that the Seljuk sultan issued his threats and insults, while the Greek emperor fasted and prayed. From within the limits of that same sanctuary were heard the shouts of the revellers, mingling with the voices of their concubines. And a white minaret proclaims the event of the long and unequal struggle between the full-blooded followers of the Prophet and the emaciated children of the Cross.

The tower itself has evidently been built at a later period than the wall from which it rises in a continuous face. The colour of the stone is slightly paler, and an inscription, now much decayed, attests it to be the work of the Emperor John the Fourth, the last but one of the Comnenian dynasty. The ground widens like a fan from the foot of this tower, and the ravines, which have almost met, diverge and become great valleys, stretching into the bosom of the hills. Within that ampler space, a few hundred yards south of the fortress, one may still recognise the enclosure of the hippodrome and the great gateway on its northern side. The wall still rises in places to a height of from six to ten feet, but all the interior structures have disappeared. A field of tobacco grows upon the site. Adjoining the gateway, and facing the palace, one is impressed by the shape and appearance of a projecting tongue of land with a flat top. The theatre may once have stood upon this spot.

The ancient churches of Trebizond, some converted into mosques and others into public baths, are among the most interesting relics which the town contains. Retracing our steps to the middle fortress and to the road which joins the two ravines, we have almost reached the bridge over the westerly depression before attaining the old cathedral, sacred to the golden-headed Virgin, of which the southern wall borders our road on the north (No. 18). How bare and bleak it looks, shorn of its southern and western porches, and covered with a thick coating of whitewash! A little court, paved with flagstones, adjoins it on the east, over which you pass to an entrance at the north-east corner which has destroyed the side apse on that side. If you scrutinise the outer wall of the principal apse, you may still distinguish beneath the whitewash a design of figures in mosaic, one of which perhaps represents the seated Virgin. Time has worn down the few sculptured mouldings of which any trace remains. There is little to attract the eye in this mangled group of gables, surmounted by the drum of a duodecagonal dome. On the northern side rises the minaret, adjoining the principal entrance which has made use of the old porch on the north. Four marble pillars with Ionic capitals, probably the spoil of some pagan temple, support the roof of this spacious porch. We are about to enter, when we are called aside to observe an old fountain in the court on the east. It contains a marble slab with a Greek inscription, which is illegible; and the water issues from a much-worn bronze spout, representing the head of a serpent or dragon, which is said to have belonged to a bronze model of such a monster, killed by the spear of Alexius the First. Near the fountain is a tomb, still maintained in good order, in which repose the remains of a shepherd youth to whom the townspeople attribute the capture of the fortress by the Ottoman Turks. The story runs that Mohammed the Second, foiled by the strength of the citadel, had recourse to a final expedient of which the result should determine the alternatives of further effort or abandonment of the siege. A number of shots were to be fired from a cannon at the chain which supported the drawbridge. Should it be severed, it would be a signal for a renewal of operations; in the contrary case the siege was to be raised. The experiment failed; the sultan broke up his camp and removed the bulk of his army, leaving, however, the loaded cannon still in site. A young shepherd, happening to pass by, was prompted by the hardihood of his years to try his skill at the difficult mark. He discharged the gun, and the drawbridge fell. This child of a short-lived future sped to the camp of Mohammed, who was making his way up the valley of the Pyxitis towards Baiburt. But his story was derided, and the sultan, in a fit of anger, caused him to be killed. The rage of the despot was turned to grief when the confirmation reached him of this miraculous exploit. His return was followed by the fall of the city; and he endeavoured to atone for his rash action by loading his victim with posthumous rewards. Over the coffin one may still see the ball suspended which decided the fate of Trebizond. And the martyr is known by a name which repeats the sultan's sorrowful exclamation: "Khosh Oghlan," or "Well done! Oghlan."

The interior of the mosque produces an effect of extraordinary massiveness, with its bulky piers supporting the dome, with the walls which join these piers to the walls of the church and screen off the aisles from the open space beneath the dome. Except for the two inner columns of the porch, not a single pillar is to be seen. The aisles are narrow, and their ceilings low; they are surmounted by a gallery, from which you look through low, arched apertures into the nave. The Turks have placed a wooden stage in the northern arm of the church, between the two walls which screen off the aisle. This erection faces their altar, and is reserved for their women; you reach it by a staircase placed inside the building, in front of the north-east entrance. A doorway leads from this wooden structure into the old gallery over the aisle, through which you pass to the women's gallery in the original design, which fills the space above the ceilings of the narthex and exo-narthex on the western side of the mosque. Two lofty vaulted openings display the interior to this gallery; while the wall between narthex and exo-narthex is pierced by three arches in a similar style. The door on the west in the storey below, which in Christian times gave access through these outer spaces into the body of the church, is no longer used, now that the religious focus of the building has been changed from the apse to the southern arm between the aisles. The exo-narthex has a width of 18 feet, and the narthex of 9 feet 7 inches. The piers upon which repose the vaulted ceilings of these courts are of such thickness that the entire space, measured from the inner side of the outer wall to the outer side of the wall of the nave, amounts to 37 feet 5 inches. The interior measurements of the church proper are a length of 93 feet 6 inches from the commencement of the nave to the head of the apse, and a breadth of only 50 feet 5 inches. It is well lit from windows in the apse and along the walls; but the twelve windows in the dome are small. Beautiful marble plaques of various colours, and designs in mosaic, may still be admired in the apse; but there is an almost total lack of ornament elsewhere. As to the date of the building, it is ascribed by Texier to the Grand-Comneni; with much less knowledge I hesitate to offer the opinion that the design belongs to an earlier period.

From this mosque of the middle fortress, Orta Hisar Jamisi, the ancient cathedral, it is but a few steps to the bridge over the western ravine. Like its fellow on the east of the enclosure, it consists of a lofty stone embankment, with a single narrow arch through which the stream flows. The prospect on either side is of great beauty, while the deep shadows of the vegetation, rising from the floor of the ravine, rest the eye and refresh the sense. Towards the south, beyond an irregular line of ivy-grown parapets, and towers of varying features and size, the stately works of palace and citadel rise against the sky; while in the direction of the sea, where the depression flattens and is lost in a maze of houses, the tiers of red-tiled roofs are pierced by a double series of battlements and embowered forts. The wall of the middle fortress is seen extending for some distance along the uneven edge of its rocky support; but it is overpowered in the landscape by the outer line of walls, which, starting from the opposite side of the ravine, are drawn in a long perspective to the shore.

Our goal is now the famous church of Hagia Sophia; it is situated upon the coast on the west of the city, at a distance of over a mile from the walls (No. 25). The bridge leads over into the western suburb, and for a short space you follow the outer wall of the lower fortress, stretching westwards at right angles to the ravine. On the right hand this solid masonry and a massive rectangular tower; on the left, a little further on, the cypresses of the Turkish burying-field, the leaning white headstones with their gilt Arabic inscriptions better disposed and tended than is usually the case. We have passed the street which turns upwards to the mosque Khatunieh (No. 20), the spacious and still well-ordered mosque and medresseh which keeps alive the memory of the mother of Selim the First. Like the middle and lower fortress, this western suburb is inhabited for the most part by Mohammedans--what a contrast to the bustling town on the east of the city where the Christian quarters lie! There, busy streets, lined with the broad-paned windows of offices and shops; here, the silent graveyard and widely scattered dwellings which seem to shrink from contact with life. A brighter aspect belongs to the meidan or open place, to which we pass and which we cross (Kavak Meidan, or plane tree square)--an extensive stretch of green turf, resembling an English common, where in old times the jerid or spear exercise was performed. Several tombs (kumbets) are to be seen on this grassy lawn, but I do not know to whom they have been raised. A little later we have left the last settlements behind us, and are winding outwards towards the sea-shore.

The church of Hagia Sophia, or the Divine Wisdom, now converted into a mosque, has been described as one of the most interesting monuments of Byzantine architecture, sculpture, and painting that time has spared. [2] This appreciation can only be partially tested by the traveller of the present day, because the frescos which once covered the interior of the building have been daubed over with successive coats of whitewash. It is possible that when the time comes for restoring the building to Christian worship, or at least, as we may hope, for preserving it as a relic to instruct an enlightened age, the scales may fall away and disclose in some of their ancient brightness the solemn faces and gorgeous robes of the Grand-Comneni as they looked down upon the congregation of monks and pilgrims six centuries ago. In the meanwhile we may consult those descriptions of the paintings which have come down to us in the accounts of modern travellers more fortunate than ourselves, for at some periods a portion of the plaster has fallen and revealed the rich work below. Of the sculpture and architectural merits we are able to judge on the spot, for, although the Turks have introduced some alterations in the structure, they are too clumsy to mislead.

The first view of the building, high-seated on the left hand where the road debouches upon the sands, at once exhibits the beauties which are peculiar to it: the choice of site and the skilful grouping of the component parts (Fig. 3). A broad terrace or esplanade, which is partly natural and in part supported by an embankment and a wall, forms the summit of a gentle slope which rises from the water beyond a fringe of cactus and leafy shrubs. The surface of the platform is flat and even, and is covered by a green carpet of turf. The prospect ranges wide across the bay to Cape Ieros, and seawards without limit over the waves. On the east, rising ground shuts out the city and the suburb, while on the south, the open landscape of hill and valley is felt rather than observed.

From the peaceful elevation of this pleasant terrace the well-preserved remains of an ancient monastery look down upon the shore. On the west, at the further extremity of the platform, a lofty square bell-tower or campanile stands out alone, like a sentinel, fronting the sea; just below it lies the church, a cluster of roofs and gables centring in a drum-shaped dome. Of the monastic buildings only one has been spared, a massive square edifice at the south-western corner of the platform, which is almost concealed by trees.

We mount the slope and reach the platform on the southern side, with the church between us and the blue waters of the bay. A custodian has been found in some hovel among the orchards, but no meaner object breaks the grassy surface of the terrace from which the building rises, the even masonry exposed from base to dome. Against the plain grey spaces of the walls which lie behind it, the rich façade of the southern entrance at once attracts the eye (Fig. 4). It consists of a porch or lateral structure, which once gave access to a door in the main wall of the church. Two graceful marble pillars with Corinthian capitals supported the façade; but the Turks have closed this entrance and walled up the columns, which are only visible from the inside. The new work does not rise much higher than the tops of the capitals, and the openings of the three arches which spring from the pillars have been filled with window glass. Of these, the central arch is slightly pointed, and those on either side are round. A pleasing feature of the design is the bold rounded arch which spans the porch from one wall to the other, and envelops the three lesser vaultings and their marble columns within a broad band of unsculptured stone. On the outer side, a narrow beading of grapes and vine-leaves accentuates the studied absence of all ornament upon the masonry of the span; and the keystone is enriched by the figure of the single-headed eagle of the Comneni, with open talons and wings outspread. The space of wall which is framed in this stately manner, and which is supported by the pillars of the façade, forms a panel or panels which are admirably adapted to receive that style of decorative treatment in which Byzantine art excelled. About in the centre, the space is broken by a quatrefoil window, above which, and on either side, plaques of varied mosaic have been inserted into the wall. Below the window, and from end to end, runs a frieze in low relief, surmounted by an inscription in Greek, "Have mercy upon me, save me from my sins, O succour me, Lord, God, Holy! Holy!" In the frieze may be discerned among the shapes of plants and trees, rendered with the highest skill and with much grace, human figures which indeed have suffered mutilation, but which, like corresponding works of the Romanesque style, appear deformed in size. Adam lies asleep among the foliage of the garden; a serpent, coiled round a leafless trunk, confronts the standing figure of Eve. Of the mosaics two at least of the plaques have been removed or have perished; you see the vacant oblong spaces on either side of the quatrefoil. The largest panels contain geometrical patterns; but the most beautiful and best preserved, if perhaps the smallest, is composed of two doves and two sprays of pomegranate in white on a black ground. This plaque has been placed just above the window and below the talons of the royal bird.

The reader will have divined that the great charm of this façade lies as much in the skill of the design--the wide span of the arch above the lesser arches, and the pleasing combination of these forms with the vertical lines of walls and columns, and with the sharp angle of the roof--as in the decorative effect of delicate mouldings and elaborate sculptures, and of rich mosaics thrown on the grey stone. Porches of similar plan give access to the interior, both on the western and northern sides; but their tympana or panels are without ornament. The western porch has an Arab niche with a deep honeycomb moulding from which the outer arch springs, and this moulding is continued in the form of imposts above the capitals of the columns. That on the north is without any remarkable feature, except that the capitals, which are of fresh white marble, appear to be of much later date. They are without carving, but in each is cut a panel, bearing the figure of a Latin cross.

A walk round the building confirms the impression which a first view produced. It is the number of roofs at various levels, the different grouping of the gables at every turn, that arrests and pleases the eye. The walls themselves are of hewn stone, with plain mouldings, of which the most delicate runs round the apse and side chapels, above the windows, in a continuous band. On the face of the apse itself you see the eagle of the Grand-Comneni, set in panel in the wall.

The entrance to the mosque is through the porch on the west. It is much shorter or less deep than its two counterparts, but, unlike them, gives access through a marble doorway to a second vestibule or outer court. This court or narthex extends the whole width of the building, and is both lofty and well lit. A door opens from it into the church proper, an airy interior of pleasing proportions, into which the light streams from the twelve windows in the circumference of the dome (Fig. 5). Four massive marble pillars with carved Byzantine capitals support the pendentives from which the dome springs; but the sharpness of the sculpture has been obliterated by thick coats of buff and green paint. The Turks have also introduced some structural changes. The southern porch has been thrown into the body of the building, and an altar (mihrab) placed between the two columns which properly belong to the façade. In this manner the porch, with its orientation towards Mecca, has become the religious focus of the mosque; a wooden gallery, from which my illustration was taken, has been erected against the opposite wall. The apse, which is lit by three windows, is supplemented by two smaller apses or side chapels at the extremities of the aisles.

Like most of the ancient churches we are about to visit during the course of our journey south, Hagia Sophia is a building of small dimensions according to modern ideas. The interior has a length of not more than 69 feet from the inner door to the head of the apse, with a breadth, excluding the side porches, of 36 feet. A building of this size is admirably adapted to the art of the painter in fresco, while his work derives the greatest possible advantage from the features of the design. The lofty vaulted spaces of the dome and apse were once resplendent with bright effects; and on the walls were depicted the richly-apparelled figures of the princes of the Comnenian line. From the partial glimpses of the paintings obtained by various travellers, it is possible to realise, at least in some measure, the former splendour of the scene. At the entrance above the door was seen the image of Alexius, first emperor of Trebizond, surrounded by his court, like Justinian at Ravenna; in his hands the golden globe of empire, and on his forehead a white diadem. On the right of the same door stood the first Manuel (r. A.D. 1238-63), the prince who was known as "the great captain," and who, according to the description at the side of the figure, was the founder of this monastery. The emperor was without crown, but his forehead was encircled by a cinglet with a double row of pearls. The front of the royal robe was adorned on either side by a band of large circular medallions, bearing the device of the single-headed eagle; a similar ornament, engraved with the equestrian figure of St. Eugenius, hung upon the royal breast. Many of the successors of these two princes were without doubt represented on the remaining spaces of the walls; while the portraits included those of saints and evangelists, all attired in costliest style. The apse displayed a group of three figures, of whom the central one appears to have designated St. Paul; on his right hand St. James and on his left St. John were identified by written scrolls. From the inner sides of the arches, as from the vault of heaven, the faces of angels looked down. The floor was paved by a rich marqueterie of marbles; you admired in particular a design of geometrical character in which the tracing was done in black marble on a ground of vivid reds and pinks and greens.

But the impression which we should take away from this elaborate interior would be one of sadness, perhaps of pain. The art, the life, here represented, was an art in shackles, an expiring phase of life. The peculiar wooden quality of these expressionless faces may be gauged by the examples which have been preserved for us by the care of Texier. Strict conventions had taken the place of realities alike in life and in art; and how sad after the unsurpassed beauty of Hellenic vigour are the gaudy get-up and childish love of baubles which mark the declining years of the Greek world! Vanished, or hidden from sight behind the inexorable whitewash, lies the vivid evidence of that departed age; repugnant alike to the spirit and to the mission of Mohammedanism, this rich collection of Christian images must, from the first, have courted effacement. At the time of our visit the walls had been recently limed over to purify the edifice after the service of State prison to which, during the prevalence of cholera in the town, it had been temporarily assigned. In the upper storey of the campanile, a later work of the fifteenth century, the frescos are still exposed; but it is evident that they can never have possessed much importance. The baptistery, which is said to have been covered with such paintings, has been removed many years ago. It stood near the edge of the terrace, on the north.

Before retracing our steps towards the city, it is worth while to extend the excursion to the neighbouring ruin of Mevla Khaneh (House of gods, No. 23), if only for the sake of a ramble through the pleasant country lanes and a view over the peaceful landscape of the bay. Against the background of the line of heights, at a distance from Hagia Sophia of about three-quarters of a mile, the scanty remains of a heathen temple emerge from a leafy brake which fills a recess of the hillside. Portions of a tower and doorway, the lower parts of two walls have escaped the ravages of time. Small square niches are seen in the walls at close intervals, said to have contained the statues of the gods. From the floor of the temple rise tall elm trees, festooned with wild vine; and an ancient laurel tree bends over the ivy-grown masonry. Rarely do people pass this way; and, on the occasion of our visit, we were the unwilling authors of a rather serious offence. Among the lanes below the ruin we surprised a young woman, combing her long hair on the margin of a stream from which she had just stepped out.

One may return to Trebizond by the old road towards Platana, which has been replaced by a new chaussée nearer the shore. From the Kavak Meidan, with its one fine plane tree, we proceed through the quarter of Sotke towards the gate of the same name in the wall of the lower fortress. The riparian quarters on the east of the city are well worthy of a visit; they may be reached either by crossing the crowded spaces of the fortified enclosure, or by making the more pleasant circuit by the side of the sea. Choosing the second alternative, we soon arrive at the angle of the wall, and are treading the broad strip of sand. All the elements of the picturesque are present in the varied scene--the line of walls, the massive tower just on the east of the gate of Molos, the broad-prowed ships drawn up on the shore, the groups of people in motley attire. In the autumn large quantities of nuts are spread out on the sand, awaiting shipment to France. The tower is flanked on the west by the parapet of a modern battery, while on the east it is adjoined by the vault through which the stream issues which comes from the western ravine. In front of the vault there is a little bridge. The submerged remains of a semicircular mole--a work of the old Greek times--are indicated by a line of surf in the sea. It is evident that the entrance to this harbour was on the east. On that side too there is a tower, projecting into the waves with the form of a wedge, and still joined to the north-eastern angle of the fortress by the substructures of a massive wall.

It is through an opening in that wall that we pass from the life of the sea-shore into the more intense and throbbing life of the bazar. In old times one of the great gates gave issue from the lower fortress to the important riparian quarters on the east. This gate, the bazar gate or gate of Mumkhaneh (candle factories), has been removed to give space to a broad street. The stream from the eastern ravine, which passes outside the walls, is taken by a tunnel through this crowded quarter. The bazars adjoin the fortress; they are well stocked and extensive. The more one walks in Trebizond, the more one is impressed by the shyness of the women; nowhere in the East have I seen them more ashamed to show the face. Nowhere does one realise more keenly the loss of colour and gaiety which this muffling and veiling of women entails. A fine example of an old Italian magazine may be seen in this neighbourhood; it is called the Bezestan (repository of stuffs, No. 16). Where the bazar is at its busiest, a massive square building of stone and brick rises above the lines of booths with their shadowed recesses. It is entered by four doors, of wood plated with iron, one on each side. In the centre is a well; the roof rested on four piers and sprang from vaultings at each angle of the square. The piers and vaultings still remain, but the roof is gone. The place is occupied by sellers of quilts, or coverlets stuffed with cotton, which take the place of blankets in the East.

South of this building, beyond the large mosque of the quarter, which is without architectural interest, are situated the two Greek churches of Aivasil and Aiana, the first almost on the fringe of the bazars. Aivasil (No. 14) has been rebuilt, or rather the site of the old church has been covered by a modern and tasteless erection. But a long stone, part of a frieze, containing an inscription of Justinian, which belonged to the earlier edifice, is still preserved as an historical relic in the body of the church. Aiana (No. 13), its close neighbour, is, on the other hand, quite intact, and remains a most interesting example of the beginnings of Christian architecture. A small and unpretentious building of stone, not too evenly put together, with the arches over the little windows constructed of brick, it would almost escape notice were it not for a large bas-relief in marble which is inserted into the wall over the door on the south. Although the stone is cracked and the sculpture has suffered mutilation, one can recognise that there is represented a colossal seated figure, with a smaller figure, holding a shield, at her feet. The interior is built of brick, and consists of a nave and two aisles, the principal apse being flanked by two side apses. [3] But there is no dome; and the scanty light which falls on the withered frescos comes from nine little windows in the walls. Each aisle has two arches, the more easterly pair resting on piers, and the more westerly on marble pillars with Ionic capitals. One remarks the narrowness of the apse, in which is placed a primitive altar, resembling those in the oldest Armenian churches. It consists of a horizontal slab resting on a circular stone, and on the side of the slab is a Greek inscription. Several of the frescos remain with which the walls were once covered, the building being still used as a church. Besides Biblical subjects, one observes several portraits upon the wall on the west. The greater portion of the space is filled with the pictures of saints and monks; but on the north side there is represented a colossal figure, of which the head has unfortunately been effaced. The figure is attired in a purple robe, with bands of gold embroidered in black, the same costume as that in which the Emperor Alexius III. is depicted in the Bull at Sumelas. He holds a circular ornament or emblem in his left hand. An inscription, partially effaced, is seen on the wall below the figure. [4] Such is this relic of the early city, with its spoils of still earlier temples, bridging the periods of the old worship and the new.

Returning to the commercial quarter from the narrow alleys which surround this building, we pass an old house which is an example of a style of architecture now rapidly being replaced by the modern villa. The exterior, with its projecting upper storey and semicircular, roofed balcony, where the inmates would enjoy the freshness of the afternoon, produces an impression at once of somewhat costly solidity and of picturesque charm. The rooms are panelled in wood, both walls and ceilings; and screens of open woodwork, placed before the windows, preserve the privacy of the life within. In the little niches and in the details of the ornamentation the spirit is that of Persian art.

The magazines of the merchants are situated along the shore between the fortified city and the point of Güzel Serai. Proceeding eastwards, we need scarcely stop to visit the Greek cathedral (No. 12), a large modern building of extraordinary ugliness on the margin of the sea. On the south side of this pretentious church we are shown the tomb of the last of the Georgian kings. A road leads upwards through the crowded Christian quarter, Frank Mahalla, past the wall and tower of Güzel Serai (No. 10). These buildings date, I believe, from a comparatively recent period; but they occupy the site of the famous fortress of Leontocastron, long in dispute between the Comnenian emperor and the Genoese. The companion fort of Daphnus, another Genoese possession, probably stood in the bay on the west, where the quarter of Dia Funda, an Italian corruption of the Greek name, faces the modern anchorage. The walls of Güzel Serai overlook a park of artillery, drawn up on a grassy platform at the point.

Our walk through the eastern suburb may be protracted to the slope of Boz Tepe, where an ancient nunnery, famous for its frescos, commands the landscape of the city from a well-chosen site just outside its extreme fringe (No. 6). Adjacent to the building, which presents the appearance of a fortress, was placed the summer residence or pleasure-house whence the Grand-Comneni used to survey their beauteous capital. I can well remember the ruin of this palace, with its blank windows, such a pleasant frame to the charming view which they overlooked. Alas! this fragment has disappeared, to make room for an ugly guest-house which the avaricious nuns have built in its place. The chapel of the nunnery, dedicated to the Virgin, Panagia Theoskepastos, is built into the side of the cliff, its inner end being, in fact, a cave. Damp has blurred the frescos; but one may still recognise the royal portraits upon the north wall. The upper portions of two kingly figures, attired in purple robes, and on their right hand, side by side, two queens with jewelled crowns, still colour the mouldy side of the cave, and are almost hidden by a row of stalls. They have been identified by inscriptions which, I presume, have become effaced, as Alexius III. and his queen Theodora; as Andronicus and Eirene, mother respectively and son of the first-named prince.

Nor should the traveller omit a visit to the church of St. Eugenius (No. 19), although he may not have time to visit the grottoes in the face of Boz Tepe, and to protract the excursion beyond the embouchure of the Pyxitis to the site of Xenophon's camp. That famous church is situated in the opposite direction, and has been already mentioned in the description of the upper fortress. It stands on the margin of the eastern ravine, almost opposite to the great polygonal tower. The site is separated from the slopes of Boz Tepe by a second and smaller ravine, which shows remains, on the western bank, of walls and towers. Houses cluster round the building, their horizontal outlines topped by its gables and crowned by its polygonal, drum-shaped dome. St. Eugenius dates from the period of the Grand-Comneni; but the frescos on the western wall, which some travellers have noticed, are now nothing more than patches of colour. It is a somewhat larger edifice than Hagia Sophia, which, although less graceful, it resembles in some respects. The dome rests upon two fluted columns on the west side, while, on the east, it is supported by piers. A flood of light fills the interior, which is plain and bare, the church having been converted to the service of Islam by the Ottoman conqueror. It was here that Mohammed II. is said to have worshipped on the first Friday after the capture of the city by his troops. The event is commemorated by the name of New Friday (Yeni Juma) under which the mosque is known.

One is fortunate if it be possible to spend the later afternoons of days devoted to the study of the town among the restful surroundings of the pleasant country-side, upon the slopes of the adjacent hills. Such was my privilege in 1898. Our tents were pitched on the lofty plateau north-west of the city, the view ranging on the one side to the rocky cliffs of Boz Tepe, and, on the other, to the distant promontory of the sacred mountain. The crowded impressions of the day would take proportion and perspective. One saw a city which, in spite of the modern aspect of certain quarters, has lost little of the romance of the Middle Age. The earlier imprint upon its buildings is that of the era of Justinian; [5] their actual appearance is due to the Grand-Comneni; a great sleep has bridged the interval to the present time. Yet the life of the place, such as it is, pursues the old channels, and the throng in the streets is to-day not less heterogeneous than it was four centuries ago. The French, the Austrians, and the Russians conduct the carrying trade with Europe, reviving the function of the Genoese. The wares they bring are largely of British origin, and are largely imported by British merchants trading in Persia. Strings of Bactrian camels may be seen in the streets, about to start on the long stages which separate the seaport from Erzerum and Tabriz. The various peoples of Asia and of Europe still meet in the bazars. [6] But the romance of the city can never have equalled the romance of her surroundings, Nature being the subtlest weaver of mysteries, the mother with unending fables in whom the romantic spirit finds the only wholesome refuge from the dull realities of daily life. The most permanent memory which the traveller may take away from his visit may be the fruit of those half-hours between daylight and night which he spends in his encampment above the town. When once the sun has set there ensues a period of twilight, in which the glow of the south appears to be blended with the gorgeous effects of northern latitudes. Indeed, the view over the sea by day recalls the colouring on our English coasts; and the little silken Union Jack which fluttered over the tent of my companion, who was acting as consul, would often seem to wave on a field of its native blue. But in the evening there is produced a combination of elements, at once much softer and much sterner than the setting of our English scenes. The spirit of Scythia, of the frozen North, meets the languid Mediterranean spirit, and spreads a robe of fire and paleness over the sea. Only the cypresses and the luxuriant foliage preserve the identity of the sinuous bays; and the succession of meridional ridges which feature the coast towards Cape Ieros are clothed with a forest of trees, fretting the splendour of the western sky.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

For the topography and antiquities of Trebizond I would refer the student who may be desirous of going more closely into the subject to the following works:--Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, vol. xviii. pp. 852 seq.; and in particular to the following authorities, cited by Ritter, viz. Travels of Evliya, translated by von Hammer, London 1850, vol. ii. pp. 41 seq.; Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, Paris 1717, vol. ii. pp. 233 seq.; Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, etc., London 1842, vol. ii. appendix v. p. 409 (inscription No. 49, over the gateway); Fallmerayer, J. P., Fragmente aus dem Orient, 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1877, with which should be read the Original-Fragmente of the same author, published in the Abhandlungen of the Academy of Munich (Hist. Classe), vols. iii. and iv., 1843-44. Fallmerayer was the first to investigate the subject in an adequate manner; his descriptions are charmingly written; and, while I have availed myself freely in composing a part of this chapter of the results of his researches, I must also acknowledge having come under the spell of his personality (for a slight biography of the historian see Mitterrutzner, Fragmente aus dem Leben des Fragmentisten, Brixen 1887).

Among those who have advanced our knowledge of the place since Ritter wrote I would cite the following:--Texier, 1839, Description de l'Arménie, etc., Paris 1842, two vols. folio, with plates (see also the magnificent work by Texier and Pullan, L'Architecture Byzantine, London 1864); Pfaffenhoffen, Essai sur les aspres Comnénats ou blancs d'argent de Trébizonde, Paris 1847; Finlay, Mediæval Greece and the Empire of Trebizond (vol. iv. of History of Greece, revised edition, Oxford 1877); Tozer, Turkish Armenia, London 1881, pp. 450 seq. I have also had access to a book in Armenian which was shown to me at Trebizond, and which is entitled: History of Pontus, by the Rev. Father Minas Bejeshkean (Mekhitarist), a native of Trebizond, Venice 1819. [7]

The plans which accompany this chapter were made at the close of my second journey by kind permission of the Turkish Government, and after I had already perused the accounts of my predecessors. There is one point in connection with the topography which one would like to feel sure about, namely, upon what eminence in the neighbourhood the statue of Hadrian was set up. I fancy it must have been erected on the Karlik Tepe, a bold peak about four miles south of the town, commanding a magnificent view. A small chapel now stands upon the summit.

The history of the empire of the Grand-Comneni of Trebizond forms a most instructive episode in the immemorial struggle between the East and the West. It was Fallmerayer who may be said to have given this history as a new possession to knowledge in his admirable Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, Munich 1827, followed by the Original-Fragmente, cited above. These sources have been utilised by Finlay in his History of Greece and Trebizond; but it is to be regretted that Fallmerayer himself did not rewrite his Geschichte after his later discoveries of new and important material. The outline of the subject may, perhaps, be presented in the following brief notice.

The further one pursues one's studies of the countries west of India, whether in the camp or in the library, the larger looms the stately fabric of the Roman Empire of the East, and the more is felt the need of a work dealing comprehensively with this great subject. Our historians have allowed their interest to be absorbed by Europe; upon Asia and the rule of the Cæsars over some of the fairest portions of her vast territories for a period, which, commencing with the Roman Republic, may be said to extend down to the suppression of the despots of Trebizond by the Ottoman Turks in the latter half of the fifteenth century, they have scarcely bestowed more than an impatient glance. The period covers the bloom and fall of at least six great Asiatic dynasties--the Arsakids, Sasanians, Arab caliphs, Seljuk Turks, shahs of Kharizme, Tartar khans. It comes to an end among the ruins of Asiatic prosperity, when the Turkomans are pasturing their flocks among the débris of civilisation, and the Ottoman sultans, deriving their origin from a nomad Turkish tribe, are being carried to their zenith by the former subjects of the Cæsars, severed in the corps of Janissaries from their Western culture and Christian religion, and living only with the breath of their Mohammedan and Oriental king. This startling revolution in the political and economical condition of Asia, the effects of which are operative at the present day, may be traced back to the decisive blow which was struck at the Roman Empire of the East by the victory of the Seljuk sultan, Alp Arslan, over the Cæsar Romanus near Melazkert in Armenia in the year 1071. The three centuries of imperial rule in Asia which succeeded this event reveal few and spasmodic interruptions to the inclined plane of Western relapse. Then the darkness finally closes in; Constantinople falls (1453), and Western commerce is expelled from the Black Sea.

The empire of Trebizond takes its place in this great tragedy of history when the end is already in view. In the same year and the same month in which the Latins took Constantinople and the nobility of the imperial capital fled to the cities of Asia (April 1204), two youthful scions of the illustrious House of Comnenus appeared at the head of a body of Georgian mercenaries before the gates of Trebizond. The Comneni, whose name perhaps reveals an Italian origin, emerge into the light of history in the latter part of the tenth century, from a private station among the Greek nobility of Asia, where their hereditary estate was situated near Kastamuni, a town in the interior, which one may reach at the present day by a carriageable road from the port of Ineboli on the Black Sea. Manuel Comnenus, the first to bring fame to the family, was prefect of all the East under the Cæsar, Basil the Second (in 976); and his son, the scholarly Isaac Comnenus, was chosen by his contemporaries to occupy the imperial throne. The nephew of Isaac, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (r. 1081-1118), is well known for the part which he played during the crusading era; and he was followed on the Byzantine throne by two of the most martial figures of that age of heroes, Kalo-Joannes (r. 1118-43) and Manuel (r. 1143-80). Manuel was succeeded by his cousin Andronicus Comnenus (r. 1182-85), an emperor who did much to purify the corrupt provincial administration of the Byzantine monarchy, and who perished in a domestic revolution, due to his severe measures against the high nobility. The murder of this prince was followed at no long interval by the Latin conquest of the capital; and the two Comneni who came to Trebizond in 1204 were sons of Manuel, son and heir to Andronicus, who had also perished in the aforesaid revolution.

Their names were Alexius and David; and they were assisted in their enterprise by their paternal aunt, Thamar, the offspring of their grandfather and a Georgian lady. The political condition of Trebizond during the interval between the murder of Andronicus and the Latin conquest of the capital is not definitely known; but the Greek city was probably feeling the pressure of the neighbouring kingdom of Georgia at the time of the advent of the two Greek princes. The prospects of relief, on the one hand, from this pressure, and, on the other, from dependence upon the rotten court of Constantinople under the hopeful rule of an illustrious family, must have operated as powerful inducements to the townspeople to welcome the new régime. Alexius Comnenus is accepted as master of the city, and his rising fortunes attract to his victorious standard some of the noblest of the refugees from the capital, flying into Asia before the Latins. Others range themselves round the person of Theodore Laskaris in Bithynia; and two rival Greek or Roman empires are established upon Asiatic soil, that of Nicæa, or Nice, the capital of Bithynia, and the empire of Trebizond.

The successors of Laskaris fought their way back to Constantinople, which was recovered from the Latin barons in 1261. A much less splendid fate was reserved for the family of Alexius Comnenus; yet the little empire on the Black Sea survived the restored Byzantine Empire; and a space of nearly a hundred years separates the fall of the last of the Greek cities of the interior (conquest of Philadelphia by the Sultan Bayazid in 1390) from the overthrow of the rule of the Comneni at Trebizond (1461). During a period of over 250 years these petty Greek princes contrived to elude the storms of Mussulman conquest behind the wall of mountains interposed between the interior and the coast. Sometimes as vassals of the Oriental dynasties, at other times in a state of independence, they ruled over the beautiful city and a narrow strip of seaboard of varying extent. Their possessions even included a part of the Crimea, of which the tribute was conveyed across the expanse of waters in the imperial galleys. Proud of their pompous titles of Grand-Comneni and Emperors of the Romans, or lords of all Anatolia, Georgia, and the Transmarine, they supplied their deficiencies in real power by elaborate ceremonials, and substituted the gorgeous cult of their patron saint, Eugenius, for the devotional exercises of the Christian religion. They might be consigned without regret to the limbo of history, were it not for the cause of which they were the late and debased representatives, but which, nevertheless, they contributed to sustain. Their territory afforded a home and holding ground to commerce; and, when the land routes through Asia Minor fell into disuse owing to the increase of anarchy, Trebizond became an emporium of the trade with the further Asia, diverted to the more secure avenue of the Armenian plains. This trade was conducted with great spirit by the Genoese from their factories at Trebizond, until Grand-Comneni, Italian merchants, and all the apparatus of civilisation were swept away by the Ottoman sultan, Mohammed the Second (1451-81). This type of Oriental exclusiveness came marching across the mountains some years after his conquest of Constantinople (1453). The citadel of Trebizond was given over to the Janissaries, the palace to a pasha; the last of the Comneni was transported to an exile in Europe, whence, not long afterwards, he was summoned to the capital and commanded to abjure the Christian faith. The firmness of his refusal and the dignity of his martyrdom cast a parting ray of glory through the shadows which had already closed upon his House. His body and those of the princes who died with him were thrown to the dogs beyond the walls of Constantinople. Only one-third of the inhabitants of Trebizond, and these the dregs of the populace, were suffered to remain in their native city. The remainder were compelled to emigrate, and their estates were confiscated. In 1475 the policy of expulsion of all Western influences was crowned by the Ottoman occupation of Caffa and Tana, the more northerly depôts of the Genoese in the Black Sea. European ships were expelled from these waters; where trade was banished ensued barbarism; and for three centuries these shores were forgotten by the West. A new era found expression in the Treaty of Adrianople (1829), which secured the free navigation of this sea. The first steamer made her appearance in 1836, and since then commerce has steadily increased. It flows along the shore, to be distributed throughout the interior, until it reaches the solid barrier of the Russian frontier. It is carried across Asia just outside that barrier on the backs of camels and mules. On the far side of the wall is heard the whistle of the locomotive, and the rumble of a train which not a bale of the hated products of European industry is permitted to invade.

Let the progressive states of modern Europe take heed lest their domestic rivalries result in the conversion of the Black Sea into a Russian lake, and the re-establishment of the old and melancholy order.