LEAVE SARDIS.-THE HERMUS. 151 CHAPTER XIX. THYATIRA. Dismissal of Greek Servant.-Leave Sardis.-The Hermus.-Lose our Way.-The Gygean Lake.-A Praying Moslem.-Marmora.-The Khan. -Greek Dance.-Ruins.-Tumuli.-Plain of Thyatira.-Modern Town of Aksa.-Its Thriving Appearance.-Trade.-Causes of its Prosperity.Difficulty of Identifying Sacred Places.-Mosques.-Population.-Worship in Greek and Armenian Churches. In the morning our Greek servant was unwell; and, to my great surprise, I found that he had been plotting with our surrogees, or grooms, not to start early, and to travel but six hours to Marmora, instead of ten to Aksa, the ancient Thyatira. As he had done us but little service since we arrived in Jerusalem, and his health seemed such as to render it probable he could do us but little more, except on steamboats and in quarantine, where we had not much need of him, we dismissed him, and sent him to Smyrna, fourteen hours distant. The surrogees were now ready and willing to proceed to Aksa; so, taking a guide through the marshy grounds extending to the river, and then another, who stripped to the buff, and waded through the swollen stream, leading our luggage horse, while we followed, at nine o'clock we were among the tumuli, already described as the tombs of the ancient Lydians. The Hermus is a broad but shallow stream, and was so swollen by recent rains as to reach half up our saddle-skirts as we crossed. The direct road to Aksa crosses the river some distance to the west of the place where we forded it, and, bearing north by west, strikes the western end of the Gygean Lake. Our guides, being out of the path upon LOSE OUR WAY.-THE GYGEAN LAKE. 152 crossing the river at an unusual place, became confused, and bore north by east, and thus struck the lake near its eastern end. They were lost for four hours, during which time we literally wandered among the tombs, both ancient and comparatively modern; the former being the tumuli of the old Lydians, the latter cemeteries of the Mohammedan population, which has long since disappeared from the Sardian plains. Nowhere did I feel so forcibly the desolate condition of Asia Minor, as when I sat amid the foundations of Sardis, crossed those plains, now without an inhabitant, on which Cyrus, Xerxes, Darius, Alexander, Antiochus, and the Roman had marshalled their millions of warriors, and decided the fate of empires; and wandered amid those vast cemeteries which, for 2500 years, received the successive generations of cities and towns, of which now not a vestige remains. We travelled for two hours. along the bank of the Gygean Lake, in whose shallow waters grow fields of tall, beautiful reeds, of which great quantities of matting are made, and distributed through the country. The position and appearance of the lake, together with the formation of the valley around, have led some to suppose that the high ground on which the sepulchral tumuli are placed, and the tumuli themselves, have been raised from the material taken from its bed. I could not learn that it has any outlet. As we had lost four hours by missing our way, it became necessary to lodge at Marmora, a good Greek village in a valley extending northwest from the lake. In passing up the valley, I noticed by the roadside a Moslem shepherd performing his devotions amid his flock. He had put off his shoes, spread his sheepskin on the ground, and was prostrating himself so devoutly that he did not even look up at the passing Franks. GREEK DANCE.-RUINS. 153 Our khan at Marmora was, as usual, built around an open court, on the side of which farthest from the street we found an unusually clean room. As we were drinking tea out of our tin cups at dusk, we heard the sound of music in the court, and, on going out, I found a company of perhaps twenty young men singing and dancing in a circle around one of their companions, who was playing on a violin. They sung and danced alternately, while the old men and gay maidens of the village looked on with pleasure and approbation. It was the dance of the Palikar, the peculiar martial dance of the Greeks. Their hands were joined, and sometimes their arms locked; and he who stood at the head of the group controlled the movement apparently by violent gesticulations with his right hand, which he kept free. The prevailing step was quick, short, and violent, as was the whole action of the body. The spirit of the music, as well as of the dance, was strikingly martial. Next morning I took a rapid survey of the town, and found everywhere the comminuted remains of former grandeur. Fragments of marbles were scattered about the streets, built into the ordinary dwellings, and wrought into gravestones to adorn the over-crowded cemeteries. Occasionally were seen, uncovered by the gradual removal of the soil in the streets and roads, the conduits, formed of earthenware cylinders, as at Jerusalem and on the declivity above Sardis, for supplying water to a city which has disappeared, while the vast necropolis at hand attests its populousness. As we departed for Ak-hissar, the ancient Thyatira, nearly five hours distant, the rain fell in torrents. The road lay through a narrow lateral valley, connecting the Plain of Marmora with that of Thyatira. Near the junction of the plains stand three large tumuli, similar to 154 THRIVING APPEARANCE OF AKSA. those at Sardis. The gloomy forests of cypress-trees, which shade the interminable cemeteries that surround the city, were visible two hours before we reached the town. The plain in which it stands is not large, nor apparently very fertile, but surrounded by gray, desolate mountains, through which there are several passages by numerous valleys. The traveller in Asia Minor finds himself so constantly amid ruins, that he is predisposed, at first sight, to consider two dilapidated windmills on a rising ground on his right hand to be the remaining towers of some ancient fortification or castle. At 12 o'clock, five hours from Marmora, we entered the town of Aksa, and found it large and business-like. The khan was very large, and the area filled with camels and donkeys, the porticoes with boxes and bales of goods, and the airy and cleanly apartments occupied by groups of merchants and travellers, some of them richly dressed and equipped. We seated ourselves on some clean mats to be shaved and to dine. In the first case, the hand of the barber supplied the place of a brush, and in the other, our fingers that of knives and forks. Immediately after dinner I took a walk through the town, and was surprised at its extent and the appearance of business. The bazars are large, and well supplied with both Oriental and European goods, but the latter are evidently driving the former out of the market. The town contains about 1200 houses, of which 400 belong to the Greeks, 30 or 40 to Armenians, and the remainder to the Turks. There was an unusual profusion of broken marbles lying in the streets, worked into the mud walls of the houses, or used in the construction of mosques and baths, and in adorning the cemeteries. Along many streets flowed an abundance of most delicious soft water, which, since the days of |