tly macadamised. On the brow of the hill I met a numerous caravan
of camels coming from the interior of Asia. These ships of the
desert, variously loaded, were moving slowly to their port, and it
seemed to me as I rode past them, that the composed docile look of
the animals possessed a sort of domesticated grace which lessened the
effect of their deformity.

A caravan, owing to the oriental dresses of the passengers and
attendants, with the numerous grotesque circumstances which it
presents to the stranger, affords an amusing spectacle. On the back
of one camel three or four children were squabbling in a basket; in
another cooking utensils were clattering; and from a crib on a third
a young camel looked forth inquiringly on the world: a long
desultory train of foot-passengers and cattle brought up the rear.

On reaching the summit of the hills behind Smyrna the road lies
through fields and cotton-grounds, well cultivated and interspersed
with country houses. After an easy ride of three or four hours I
passed through the ruins of a considerable Turkish town, containing
four or five mosques, one of them, a handsome building, still entire;
about twenty houses or so might be described as tenantable, but only
a place of sepulchres could be more awful: it had been depopulated
by the plague--all was silent, and the streets were matted with thick
grass. In passing through an open space, which reminded me of a
market-place, I heard the cuckoo with an indescribable sensation of
pleasure mingled with solemnity. The sudden presence of a raven at a
bridal banquet could scarcely have been a greater phantasma.

Proceeding briskly from this forsaken and dead city, I arrived in the
course of about half an hour at a coffee-house on the banks of a
small stream, where I partook of some refreshment in the shade of
three or four trees, on which several storks were conjugally building
their nests. While resting there, I became interested in their work,
and observed, that when any of their acquaintances happened to fly
past with a stick, they chattered a sort of How-d'ye-do to one
another. This civility was so uniformly and reciprocally performed,
that the politeness of the stork may be regarded as even less
disputable than its piety.

The road from that coffee-house lies for a mile or two along the side
of a marshy lake, the environs of which are equally dreary and
barren; an extensive plain succeeds, on which I noticed several