EDWARD RIGGS. 95 
has fixed his stronghold, and gradually about the base 
of it a town grows up. 
These castles by their very location are rendered pic- 
turesque in the extreme. And this appearance is en- 
hanced by many circumstances. Their long disuse has 
allowed them to fall into decay. Crumbling arches, and 
huge rents in massive masonry; broken columns and 
ivy-covered battlements produce endless variety of 
pleasing contrast. And then a new source of variety is 
in the different styles of structure employed in producing 
these results. These castles are not all the work of one 
dynasty or of one people. There is every stage of ad- 
vance in the art of architecture, from the primitive and 
massive cyclopean efforts of prehistoric races down 
through the chaste and painstaking products of Greek 
skill and the mathematical nicety and_ utilitarian 
shrewdness of the Roman, to the lavish ornamentation 
of the Seljookian, and later still the servile imitation or 
vandal destructiveness of the Ottoman Turk. These 
different types sometimes stand alone as characteristic 
specimens, but more frequently, in the castles at least, 
they are piled upon one another in strange confusion, 
demanding careful examination to discover the line of 
division, but rewarding such patient investigation by 
furnishing indubitable testimony to the successive steps 
in the historic narrative. 
A further point of variety is as regards their location 
with reference to the sea, some being on the coast, and 
others inland. Of the latter few ever fall under the eye 
of the tourist, and even of those on the coast,'aside from 
those mentioned in the vicinity of the capital, the ex- 
tensive castle on the hill behind Smyrna is about the 
only one known to the general traveler. But some of 
the most historic and picturesque are found on the 
Black Sea coast of Asia Minor. 
The town of Trebizond, near the eastern end of this 
