90 RUINED CASTLES IN ASIA MINOR. 
locked lake. The shores begin to be dotted with resi- 
dences which cluster together at certain points in quaint- 
looking villages, nestling down amid a rich luxuriance 
of trees and vines. Most striking among the fresh 
green foliage are the brilliant rose-colored masses of the 
curious judas tree. while the graceful stone pines rise 
majestically on the crest of the hills. Neat modern 
kiosks peep out from amid the garden shrubbery, and 
the palaces of ambassador and pasha occupy choice po- 
sitions on the very edge of the water, while an oc- 
casional minaret raises its slender peak, bringing to 
mind that strange faith which prevails in this seeming 
fairy-land. The ‘‘Giant’s mountain” rises high on 
your left, where Mohammedan tradition seats the Bible 
hero Joshua, and depicts him, from this lofty seat, bath- 
ing one foot in the Black Sea and the other in the 
Bosphorus. In an enclosure on the top of the mountain 
a signiticant-looking mound, measuring some thirty-six 
feet in length, is called his tomb, but the assiduous at- 
tendant explains that it contains only his head. Nearly 
opposite this point, on your right, stretches away a wide 
plain, in which Peter the Hermit, is said to have en- 
camped his motley horde, eight hundred years ago, and 
in the middle of it stands an immense plane-tree, which 
tradition identifies as the very one under which that 
leader’s tent was pitched. 
As your steamer sweeps gracefully around another 
point and opens up another panorama, there rises di- 
rectly in front of you another and a grander pile of 
ancient castle. Knormous stone towers, some round, 
‘some square, and some hexagonal, follow each other up 
the steep hillside, connected together by huge parapeted 
walls. Hach of these immense towers has a double row 
of battlements, the inner parapet rising above the outer, 
and their heavy walls are pierced with slender loop-holes. 
This chain of walls and towers enclose a large irregu- 
