TO THE COUNTRY OF THE CICONES. 81 
busily employed in completing the ceremony chap. 
of purification, by fumigating the mats, and '- . 
scouring the room which they conceived to 
have been defiled by the presence of Christians. 
The inconvenience, therefore, and the loss, 
which our visit to this liberal Moslem had occa- 
sioned in his family, will shew to what an 
extent the virtue of hospitality is sometimes 
carried among the Turks. This village of 
Tchafts-tcheyr is at the eastern extremity of 
the great plain of Tchouagilarkir, and it is 
the last which it contains towards the east. We 
rejoiced when we left it; being heartily tired 
of the sight of a country with so little variation 
in its appearance, and so disfigured by its fens 
and desolated soil. 
Our road from Tchafts-tcheyr offered a con- 
tinual ascent over a mountain, in an easterly 
direction, for an hour, mitil we arrived at a 
village called Kallia Gederai ; situate exactly 
midway between Thessalonica and Constantinople. 
This wild and elevated region is upon the 
heights of the celebrated promontory Slrrium, Serrium 
once inhabited by the Cicones, who assisted torj-. 
Priam against the Greeks; and whose capital 
IsMARUs was therefore destroyed by Ulysses, in 
his return from Troy. Serrium is mentioned 
VOL. vrri. G 
