Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/80

54 use of private individuals. In the Turkish quarter, and along the shore of the southern harbour outside the town, are large gardens, which are all irrigated from a well by means of a water-wheel turned all day by a donkey. The sight of the donkey going his home circuit, and the creaking sound of the wheel, combined with the pleasant shade of the trees, seem always to invite a siesta. The soil of these town gardens is rich, friable, and black with the cultivation of many centuries. I often explore them in quest of inscriptions, and, sometimes finding a door open, walk into the garden of some rich Turk, and find his apples of the Hesperides guarded Ijy a black eunuch, who warns me off with great indignation.

The country round Mytilene is still what Cicero described it nearly 2,000 years ago, pleasant and fertile.$25$ Beyond the town to the south, the land bends in, forming a bay, bounded by a lofty mountain-ridge. Between this ridge and the sea the coast slopes gradually to the foot of the mountain, and is covered with luxuriant verdure, in which the foliage of the olive predominates, blending its silvery masses most happily with the tender green of the pomegranate, the myrtle, the fig-tree, and the bay. These slopes are studded with country houses and villages, as high up the mountain as cultivation is possible; above, on the steep rocky sides, flourish the cistus and other mountain plants and shrubs, scattering their aroma through the pure and delicate atmosphere.

In the deep ravines with which the face of the mountain is channelled, the course of the winter