THE PUPILS OF ST. JOHN

THE DIVINE.

CHAPTER I.

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.

"From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale;

The parting genius is with sighing sent,

With flower-enwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.”

Milton.

A GLANCE at the map of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, shows that it is a region where travelling is extremely difficult. The great peninsula is all seamed with ridges of steep hills, with valleys between them. When the valleys come down to the sea-coast, the water fills them up, and makes deep gulfs and bays, and when the mountains reach the sea, they stand out into it as capes and headlands; and further on, where all but their summits are submerged, these rise above the sea, and form the many rocky islands that are scattered through the waters of the Archipelago. Down every mountain height dashes a torrent, and

these torrents meeting together join into streams and rivers, that flow on along the valleys to the sea, bringing with them all the earth and fragments of stone or gravel they have washed off the mountains. When, in spring, the snow melts on the tops of the hills, these rivers swell and come out in floods, spreading all over the valleys, and covering them with the soil they have brought from above.

A traveller, riding along the sea-coast, would sometimes be hindered by having to clamber over steep ridges of hill, with sides of rock, making dangerous precipices; sometimes would have to cross rivers running fast enough to sweep him off his feet, and so icily cold from the snow that feeds them, that they would chill him to the bone, and might even cause his death; sometimes he would have to creep cautiously along the shore, taking care not to be lost in quicksands by the sea, or stuck in the bogs round the rivers, or overwhelmed by the water. All the way it would be very beautiful; the land side rising up in fine shapes of hills, many of them shining white with snow, and looking very near in the clear bright air, and the valleys between green with beauteous grass, and fine trees, and choice flowers. Out towards the west there would be the blue sea-blue and bright beyond our home imagination; and here and there with beautifully shaped rocky islands standing out, purple with a rich soft bloom, or brought into clear full light by full sunshine, and with white-sailed vessels passing between them. But, for all its beauty, it would be a very dangerous journey, not only on

account of the precipices, the rivers, and the bogs, but because there are plenty of robbers hidden in the narrow ravines of the hills, ready to leap out on travellers in difficulties, and either shoot them down with their long guns or make them prisoners, and threaten them till they have paid a heavy ransom. Indeed, it is hardly possible to travel at all without a guard of soldiers.

Another difficulty is that there are few towns, and the villages are mostly of very dreary huts, so that it is hard to get food or shelter for the night. But it is plain that this was not so always. By most of the rivers, in all the larger valleys, there are heaps of ruins. Fragments of stone piers run out into the sea, and here and there tall marble pillars stand up like sentinels over the heaps of broken stones around them; the hovels of the few inhabitants are built up confusedly of pieces of beautiful marble, carved with foliage or animals, and the goats and their kids nestle under overthrown altars, with inscriptions in old Greek letters, hidden by the luxuriant leaves of the acanthus.

Opposite the isle of Samos is the mouth of the river Cayster; and along the banks lies a whole world of these fragments. There are high hills crowned with pine-trees on either side above, and many of them are cut away into quarries of fine marble, which once built those ruined temples and halls, and still bear the marks of the tool, though it has not been lifted up on them for a thousand years.

At their foot lie broad meadows, forming a valley