ood in need of, or
chose to command. And this was owing to that Tablet of Authority from the
Lord which they carried with them.[NOTE 1]

So they travelled on and on until they arrived at Layas in Hermenia, a
journey which occupied them, I assure you, for three years.[NOTE 2] It
took them so long because they could not always proceed, being stopped
sometimes by snow, or by heavy rains falling, or by great torrents which
they found in an impassable state.

[Illustration: Castle of Ayas.]

NOTE 1.--On these Tablets, see a note under Bk. II. ch. vii.

NOTE 2.--AYAS, called also Ayacio, Aiazzo, Giazza, Glaza, La Jazza, and
_Layas_, occupied the site of ancient Aegae, and was the chief port of
Cilician Armenia, on the Gulf of Scanderoon. _Aegae_ had been in the 5th
century a place of trade with the West, and the seat of a bishopric, as we
learn from the romantic but incomplete story of Mary, the noble
slave-girl, told by Gibbon (ch. 33). As Ayas it became in the latter part
of the 13th century one of the chief places for the shipment of Asiatic
wares arriving through Tabriz, and was much frequented by the vessels of
the Italian Republics. The Venetians had a _Bailo_ resident there.

Ayas is the _Leyes_ of Chaucer's Knight,--

("At LEYES was he and at Satalie")--

and the Layas of Froissart. (Bk. III. ch. xxii.) The Gulf of Layas is
described in the xix. Canto of Ariosto, where Mafisa and Astolfo find on
its shores a country of barbarous Amazons:--

"Fatto e 'l porto a sembranza d' una luna," etc.

Marino Sanuto says of it: "Laiacio has a haven, and a shoal in front of it
that we might rather call a reef, and to this shoal the hawsers of vessels
are moored whilst the anchors are laid out towards the land." (II. IV. ch.
xxvi.)

The present Ayas is a wretched village of some 15 huts, occupied by about
600 Turkmans, and standing inside the ruined walls of the castle. This
castle, which is still in good condition, was built by the Armenian kings,
and restored by Sultan Suleiman; it was constructed from the remains of
the ancient city; fragments of old columns are embedded in its walls of
cut stone. It formerly communicated by a causeway with an advanced work on
an island before the harbour. The ruins of the city occupy a large space.
(_Langlois, V. en Cilicie_, pp. 429-31; see also _Beaufort's Karamania_,
near the end.) A plan of Ayas will be found at the beginning of Bk. I.
--H. Y. and H. C.

CHAPTER IX.