Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/51

Rh were patches of tilled ground which had been cleared by the industry of the peasants, whose isolated cottages, perched high up above the valleys, gave a picturesque and lively appearance to the whole.

After resting an hour at Cavak, we pursued our journey over a plain, tolerably cultivated, and then entered again upon a hilly district, with less wood than that which we passed yesterday. At half-past 3 we reached Ladik, romantically situated at the foot of a range of high hills covered with verdure. Here we were lodged in the house of an Armenian, and fared much better than we did at Chakal-kieui. There are fifteen Armenian families at this place, with a church and priest: the Mohammedan population is reckoned at two thousand souls. Ladik, a name given by the Turks to several other towns in Asia Minor, which were called Laodicea, bespeaks for it an ancient origin; and this conjecture is confirmed by a few relics of ancient architecture still extant, among which is an octagonal building with Doric columns, supposed by Ainsworth to be the ruins of a Greek church. The modern town contains two large and wellbuilt mosques, about twenty smaller ones, and two convents of Derwishes. The minarets of the mosques, rising above the thick trees, reminded us at a distance of some of the village spires of our native land. Would that they were Christian temples!

Most of the Mohammedans here wear the green turban, a sign of their relationship to the arch-impostor, and their being a privileged race accounts for the tolerable degree of comfort and security which seemed to reign throughout the place. The houses are better built, and the streets more cleanly and regular, than in any of the villages which we passed through on our journey. This evening being the first of the Ramadhân fast, we were disturbed throughout the night by the frantic howling and whirling of the Derwishes in a large mosque close by our lodgings.

Oct. 5th.—Left Ladik at 7 For three hours our road lay over the same hilly country, where we met two foot guards placed here for the protection of travellers. Whether true or false, they strove to persuade us that banditti had been seen