MERSINA. 43 



the open side of the box and as often as not straying 

 down into the street in front, consisting largely of fruit 

 and vegetables, bread and a variety of native delicacies ; 

 here and there on the shady side of the street a little 

 knot of men, seated on what ought to be the pavement, 

 engaged in a game of dice or cards amid a group of 

 interested onlookers, — the whole centre of the thorough- 

 fare filled during the day with a polyglot collection of 

 leisurely humanity, strolling ever backwards and for- 

 wards, with the infinitely superior air of those in whose 

 calculations of life time has found no place, among 

 w^hom camels, ponies, and donkeys, laden with the 

 various products of the country, pick their way with 

 stoical indifference. Passing through this central bazaar, 

 an open space, which with a stretch of imagination may 

 be dubbed a square, will be found, in the centre of 

 which a caravan of camels may perhaps be seen ; while 

 beyond this again on the outskirts of the town little 

 enclosures fill the view, surrounded by straggling hedges 

 of prickly-pear, amid which, half-hidden by orchards of 

 fruit-trees, stand the better-built houses of the Euro- 

 pean residents. Such is a description of many a coast 

 town of the Nearer East. Such is Mersina. 



I have said that its importance is due to its being 

 the seaport town through which passes the bulk of the 

 commerce of Cilicia. This is true ; but for the reason 

 that there is no other, for its natural disadvantages in 

 this respect are great. Nature, so prodigal of inlets 

 and harbours on the western extremity of Asia Minor, 

 has been severely frugal on the south, and the best 

 accommodation that Mersina can offer is that of an 

 open roadstead, in which ships have perforce to lie at 

 distances of from a mile to two miles from the coast. 

 It cannot compare with the advantages formerly offered 

 by the land-locked harbour of Tarsus, which went so 



