a gaping crowd there. Here may have clanked
the harness and gleamed the arrows, of the
Persian horsemen of an elder time. Later still, the
solemn voice of some father of the primitive
Church may have told in accents, mournful, yet
hopeful, how life, a vain shadow, hasteneth ever
away to immortality. And while he spoke, would
it be strange if the flaunting woman whose years
and husbands counted equal, bade her slaves bear
on the litter faster, and tried to drown the
voice of the preacher lest it should find its way
to her heart and appal it? Would it be strange
if youth and genius turned with kindling glance
to listen, and, straightway weaned from the
world, gave up the dreams of ambition and the
hopes of love, to follow the Divine Master? If
the satrap, some perfumed and noble Felix, fresh
from the Byzantine court, were turned aside
from an ill deed and forgave a guiltless prisoner,
or ceased to exact some cruel tax, and, deigning
gracious words to the humble man of God,
vowed that in a convenient season he would
hear him further?

I am wandering wide away from what is now
the desolate place of such stirring memories.
The Maidan of Trebizond has nothing left to it
but its beauty. The atmosphere is wondrously
clear; the surrounding country delights the eye.
The houses of the town are bowers, shyly veiled
in trees and shrubberies. Corn-fields and
vineyards, ripe and golden, leap gladly up the hills,
whose summits are crowned with the stately pine
and the wide-spreading beech-tree. Their
undergrowth is the pale yellow honeysuckle on which
feed the bees, whose honey drove the troops of
Xenophon, the immortal ten thousand, mad with
its sweetness. Lofty mountains stretch from the
sea at Cape Joroz fifteen miles west of the city,
and, meeting the waves again far to the east,
form a magnificent picture; but near, around,
everywhere, are the awful footsteps of the
destroying angel. Where rose the palace stately
and fair, and the mart was once thronged with
eager faces and hurrying footsteps, the shrill
voice of some ragged beldame screams curses
on an intruding dog into her wretched hovel;
some keen-eyed Armenian moves thoughtfully
along; or some poor Greek beggar, whose ancestors
were masters of the soil, drinks as deep
of the cup of trembling as the Jews who sat
down and wept by the waters of Babylon.

It is an abrupt change from the old world
to the new, but if our fancy dwells for a short
while on these haunted lands, we come back to
the tame concerns of actual life with a start
and wonder. I hardly know how it is, that I
find myself lighting a cigar that I have let
go out, and examining about one hundred and
fifty horses tied together by ropes, and which
move round us in a circle. They are Turkish
caravan horses, and have been brought by their
owner for us to choose from for our further
journey. We are. going to ride a thousand
miles, and it is a serious business to select a
roadster for such long travel. So we eye the
cattle narrowly as they move round and round
us: a strong serviceable set of beasts, though
much disfigured by firing and by marks branded
into them for good luck.

I think I will have the black. He is a kind
of horse I like: high in the shoulder, deep in
the girth, broad-chested, and a pacer: with
tremendous hocks and thighs, flat powerful
forelegs, and sinews like iron. His legs are as clean
and hard and wiry as a reindeer's. He carries
his head well, and looks round good humouredly
as he lifts his haughty crest and neighs
from time to time. He is a nobleman of a horse,
and will make light of the stiff marshy soil
about Erzeroum and the up-hill work over the
corduroy roads of the Kara Kapan. My choice
is made: I will have the black.

"Wo! ho!—Harry, lead him away and put the
saddle on; we will breathe him this afternoon
on the downs, to find out how he likes the
jingling of a sabre and the feel of our valise
and pistol-holsters.—Stay! Here, Ameen
Katirgi, is a backsheesh for the mule-boy."

Ameen, the muleteer, is a slouching broad-
backed lout of some five-and-forty. He is deeply
marked with the small-pox, the scourge of the
East. There is a good-humoured cunning in
his hard-weather eye, and the deep wrinkles
around it. He has tramped the road, man
and boy, these thirty years, and owes the
shoes on his feet to British protection; for, his
horses were seized by the Turkish commissariat
during the war, and he would have been ruined,
as most of his brethren were, had he not been
saved by a certificate of employment in the
English service, and a fictitious sale of his cattle
to an Englishman. The pasha grumbled, but
he let it pass, and so Ameen considers himself
more than half a Briton.

Ameen intends to serve us well; but he looks
up at me sharply and wistfully out of the corners
of his eyes, as my hand caresses the black.

"The horse," says he at last, "is a sheytan—a
devil. He plunges, he kicks, he bites. All
black horses do."

"Ah, by the way," says one present, kindly,
"you must not choose a black horse. The Turks
have often a superstitious dislike to them."

"He is a fine beast," I answered.

"Yes," rejoins Ameen, "but he was born on
a Friday. See! His right ear is slit in
consequence."

"He will go none the worse for that," say I.

"But he shies, and is, as I have said, a
perfect devil," pleads the muleteer.

"Nonsense," here interposes an English
resident joining in the conversation. "He is the
best of the lot. He never shies, and it is therefore
important to have him in the van to cheer
on the baggage-mules. Hence the objection to
your riding him."

Then straightway commences the important
business of bargaining: which is carried on, as
everything else is, in a very peculiar manner in
these countries. When Ameen is first asked
how much he will take to furnish us with horses
from Trebizond to Tehran, he replies
emphatically, "Nothing!" He assures us that the
delight and honour he will feel in being permitted