702 
TOKAT, ANCIENT COMANA PONTICA. 
morning was estimated at nine hours, and I should call it about 
twenty-seven miles. This is a large and perfectly open town, 
built on the sloping skirts of two nearly insulated rocky hills, of 
craggy, broken and spiral forms ; but which in fact belong to a 
chain of a similar romantic range. Houses, without number, 
appear crowding together at the bases of these twin minor 
mountains, and pressing on each other down their approximating 
sides, and into the intermediate valley. Mosques and minarets 
vary the more regular roofs of the other multitudinous buildings. 
The summits of the surmounting heights have a particularly shat¬ 
tered appearance, augmented by the ruined state of the ancient 
embattled walls and towers which crown their pinnacles, and 
embrace every bold projection. This cloud-crested fortress is 
supposed to have been the old Berissa, and Comana Pontica of 
Strabo. If I may judge of the population of the town at its feet 
by the apparent extent, it must be very numerous; but no one 
could, or would give me information on the subject; it not being 
improbable that the suspicion of my turbaned host of Koyla- 
Hissar extended hither. Tokat carries on a considerable trade 
Iv 
in cups and other utensils of copper, its own manufacturing ; 
there being mines in its immediate neighbourhood, and some of 
a very high reputation, about fifty hours distant. They lie 
twenty hours from the city of Too-az, which gives its name to 
the district of Tokat, and where their joint pasha resides. These 
celebrated mines produce copper, lead, and silver, and have fifty 
furnaces constantly at work ; indeed, they principally furnish the 
latter metal for the mint of Constantinople. 
I made a hasty sketch of the general appearance of Tokat, 
and its singular fortress rocks *; but I was obliged to use my 
* See Plate LXXXVI. 
