n the morning we were again in the saddle, riding
toward the East through a valley and between high mountains, along the
same road which Walther von Habenichts once followed with his twelve
thousand crusaders. The hills were covered with olive trees and
flowering bushes filled with nightingales. At sunset we reached the
extensive lake of Isnik. The gigantic walls and towers on the opposite
shore used to protect a powerful city, for which the crusaders often
fought. Today they surround the few miserable huts and rubbish heaps
which centuries ago were Nicea. It was here that an assembly of one
hundred learned bishops expounded the mystery of the Trinity, and
decided to burn all who held a different view. What would these proud
prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would
come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and
their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the
Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even
their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and
when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of
the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the
people.

The Moslems, who abhor all pictures, have covered with whitewash the
paintings in the Greek churches. In the Cathedral of Nicea, where the
famous council was held, there glistens even today through the white
coating of the wall, where the high altar used to be, the proud
promise, I.H.S. (_in hoc signo_, i. e., under this sign, the cross,
you will win). But directly over it is written the first dogma of
Islam, "There is no God but God." There is a lesson of tolerance in
these faded inscriptions, and it seems as if Heaven itself wished to
listen as well to the _Credo_ as to the _Allah il allah_. One of the
chief pursuits of the honest Turks is what they call _Kief etmek_,
literally "creating a mood." It consists of drinking coffee in a
comfortable place and smoking. Such a place _par excellence_ I found
in the village where we made a stop. Imagine a plane which extends its
colossal branches horizontally for almost one hundred feet, burying in
its deep shadow the nearest houses. The trunk of the tree is
surrounded by a small terrace of stone, below which water is gushing
from twenty-seven pipes in streams as thick as your arm, and rushing
off as a lively brook. Here, with their legs crossed, the Turks sit,
practising--