32 MIDWINTER IN TIIESSALY 



court, where ripe oranges and lemons gleam among their 

 rich verdure, and palm-fronds cast nickering shadows 

 across paved garden-paths, and you pass on, wondering 

 what manner of life the men, and most of all, the rarely 

 seen women, pass in these old-world abodes. 



Entrance to the mosques is rarely refused to Christians, 

 except on festivals, and it is to the top of the highest 

 minaret in the town that we are bound. The narrow 

 spiral staircase affords no more than head-and-shoulder 

 room ; the steps are foul with summer-blown dust, with 

 bones brought in by owls and kites, besides other vener- 

 able rubbish ; and, after what seems interminable gyration, 

 we emerge upon the airy gallery which encircles the top 

 of the slender tower. It is a crazy perch, for the whole 

 structure sways sensibly in the strong wind, and it seems 

 as if a moderate kick would send the frail parapet clatter- 

 ing down on the tile-roof far below ; but, if your head is 

 steady, the view well repays the labour of the ascent. 

 Beneath your feet cluster the flat-roofed houses ; here and 

 there a chimney rises, crowned with an immense stork's 

 nest, making one wonder how the domestic economy of 

 the bipeds within the house can be reconciled with that 

 of the bipeds without. From the dusky labyrinth of 

 streets spring twenty-six minarets, like silvery bodkins, 

 besides the one to which we are clinging. Then let your 

 eye travel over the splendid prospect lying beyond the 

 town. Full forty miles the fat plain is spread east and 

 west, and five-and-twenty north and south, with hardly a 

 tree to break the level, save where the peasants' cots 

 cluster round the fortified granges of the landowners. 

 The northern horizon is closed by the massive rampart of 

 mountains which marks the latest shrinkage of Ottoman 



