Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/99

 Boundaries, Climate, and Natural Divisions. 83 of the year when, owing to abundant rains, the country is covered with coarse tall grass where graze the herds of the Turcoman and Kurdish farmers. The camels and horses seen at Smyrna and Constantinople come from these provinces, which also supply those markets with mutton and beef. But towards the end of May the grass is sere and the landscape has resumed its tawny aspect, a few green patches alone announce the presence of moisture still lingering in the hollows and which will last until the autumn. The wools of Cappadocia were much prized in ancient days, and constituted the chief revenue of the native princes. If the plateau presented throughout the same character, there would be no need to seek on its surface monuments of the past. Hunters and woodmen build no cities, and arts are unknown to them. A fresh crop of grass, nowhere more abundant than on the spot where the nomad has pitched his tent for a season, will obliterate the trifling vestiges left by his temporal settlement. But this broad level Is succeeded by well-watered, undulating country, alternating with green pastures and ploughed fields, where the monotony of the foreground is forgotten in the infinite diversity of hill and dale in the distance and all around you. These rocks are of volcanic origin, and before their fires were extinguished threw up molten trachyte and porphyry, now hardened into perpendicular or overhanging cones and needles. The highest of these cones is the Argaeus, with an elevation of 4000 metres, resting upon an enormous base of lava more than thirty leagues round. The soil left on its broad slopes by the decomposition of igneous rocks is of marvellous fertility, and requires but little labour from the husbandman to produce almost everything. If all the mountains of Asia Minor have not the gigantic propor- tions of this mighty cone, they are sufficiently high — averaging 1000 metres above the surrounding level — to arrest clouds on their summits which resolve themselves in snow. This, as it melts, covers their broad sides with the richest vegetation ere it is lost in swamps and lakes without outlet. Thanks to these watercourses and rivulets, many of which have but a short run, thanks to diversity of elements contained in a soil where in a small radius rocks of different formation are met side by side, the inner uplands, even if they were cut off from the subjacent valleys and the coast- land, would yet feed a population far exceeding in number that of the present day. Cities and hamlets are for the most part sur-