Page:Lands of the Saracen 1859.djvu/236

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226

LANDS OF THE SARACEN.


CHAPTER XVII.

ADANA AND TARSUS.

The Black Gate — The Plain of Cilicia — A Koord Village — Missis — Cilician SceneryArrival at Adana — Three days in Quarantine — We receive Pratique — A Landscape — The Plain of Tarsus — The River Cydnus — A Vision of Cleopatra — Tarsus and its Environs — The Duniktash — The Moon of Ramazan.

"Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." — Acts, xxi. 39.

Khan on Mt. Taurus, Saturday, June 19, 1852.

We left our camp at Chaya at dawn, with an escort of three soldiers, which we borrowed from the guard stationed at that place. The path led along the shore, through clamps of myrtle beaten inland by the wind, and rounded as smoothly as if they had been clipped by a gardener's shears. As we approached the head of the gulf, the peaked summits of Giaour Dagh, 10,000 feet in height, appeared in the north-east. The streams we forded swarmed with immense trout. A brown hedgehog ran across our road, but when I touched him with the end of my pipe, rolled himself into an impervious ball of prickles. Soon after turning the head of the gulf, the road swerved off to the west, and entered a narrow pass, between hills covered with thick copse-wood. Here we came upon an ancient gateway of black lava stone, which bears marks of