Tersous is in some parts handsomely built, in others it was disfigured by wretched hovels, whilst masses of putrifying vegetable and animal matter were all that met the eye or assailed the nostril. The inhabitants seemed equally distinct from each other. The occupants of the better sort of houses were stout, robust, and healthy-looking fellows, who lived upon the fat of the land, and inhabited Tersous only during winter, and a portion of autumn and spring, decamping with their families to the lofty and salubrious climates of Kulek Bughaz, and other pleasantly situated villages of the Taurus, as soon as the much-dreaded summer drew nigh. The inmates of the miserable hovels were, on the contrary, perfect personifications of misery and despair—sickly-looking, unfortunate Fellahin Christians and Jews, who must work, and work hard too, to enable them to inhabit any home, however humble, and are, consequently, tied down to the place hot weather or cold, martyrs to fevers, dropsy, and a few other like horrible complaints common to Tersous at all times of the year, but raging to a fearful extent during the months of June, July and August. The fevers are occasioned partly from the miasma arising from the marshes in the neighbourhood and the many stagnant pools and gutters in the town itself, but chiefly from the frightful exhalations occasioned by the mounds of putrifying camels, cows, oxen, goats, horses, and mules, which annually die off from a murrain raging amongst them, and whose carcases are dragged to the outside of the city’s old walls, and there indiscriminately piled up in the dry ditches around—a carnival for jackals and glutted vultures who are so amply provided for, that even they and the packs of savage curs that infest the streets of the town, grow dainty in their pickings and become worthless scavengers from excess of feasting.
This is a frightful but faithful picture of the suburbs of modern Tersous. The very streets are equally neglected; bestrewed with the disgusting remains of dogs, cats, and similar nuisances. Indeed, Tersous might be aptly termed a mass of corruption; and yet it has not been neglected by bountiful nature. The pleasant waters of the famed Cydnus, which murmur through the very heart of the town, render its banks on either side prolific with orange and lemon trees; the sweet odour from whose blossoms, the fever-wasted form, reclining in a pleasant shade on its banks, inhales with gusto, but alas! each breath is impregnated with the noxious poisons that float heavily on the atmosphere.
The inhabitants are negligent and careless about what most vitally concerns their immediate welfare, vainly sweeping out and cleansing their own particular court-yards and houses, whilst the streets and the suburbs are teeming with the seeds of pestilence, and the dark night vapour is bestridden by direful disease and death. In Tersous there was only one resident Englishman, and that was the Vice-Consul, who had come there to die like his predecessors. There were no missionaries, not even a Catholic priest, though plenty of Italian and French Roman Catholics were attached to the various consulates, or employed as merchants and fishers of leeches. The native inhabitants, including a great many from Cyprus, were of all creeds, the greater part being Mahomedans.
During our stay, we were the guests of a hospitable native Christian, Signor Michael Saba, a notable merchant of Tersous; but almost all of those whose acquaintance I made, are since dead, our worthy host among the rest. He, poor man, fell a victim to a virulent fever, that swept away hundreds besides himself, within the space of a fortnight. Sad indeed is the change for the worse in the Tersous of the present day, to what that town must have been in the primitive days of the Christian church, when it boasted of its wealth and commerce, and sent forth to the world such accomplished men as the great Apostle St. Paul; who, speaking of his native home, could call it A city of no mean repute in Cilicia. Our stay in Tersous did not exceed the time absolutely necessary for the completion of my friend’s drawings and surveys; and then, nothing loth, we turned our backs upon the place, crossing the large handsome bridge built over the river, and so speeded on towards Adana. The country lying between Tersous and Adana, was very similar to that which we had traversed between Mersine and the former place, a flat country imperceptibly rising as we advanced. Most of this country was more or less cultivated; and we passed countless Turcoman encampments forming large villages, the whole of whose population was almost exclusively occupied in making those carpets, for which they are so much renowned. The great brilliancy of colour and duration of these carpets have acquired for them a very just celebrity. The Turcoman dyes, brilliant yellow, green, and purple (the latter possibly the celebrated Tyrian dye, now lost to the world), are a secret, for the possession of a knowledge of which, the princely Manchester manufacturers would, I imagine, willingly loosen their purse-strings; but no one in the East has hitherto been possessed of sufficient energy and patient inquisitiveness to coax this secret from the breasts of these wild sons of the wilderness. En route we passed many old wells which supplied these people and their flocks with water during the summer months. At some of these wells we stopped and begged water for ourselves and horses, which was cheerfully supplied by pretty maidens, who, like Rebecca of old, had come to the well to supply their father’s flocks with water.
The town of Adana is of very unprepossessing aspect; its houses being very inferior, both in appearance and dimensions, to those of Tersous. They have, however, the advantage of being in a much healthier situation, though, owing to the inconvenient system of excluding windows, which might overlook the neighbours’ court-yards, the houses are insufferably close during the hot months; and have more the resemblance of miserable prisons, with well-secured doors, than of dwelling-houses. The Turks, who are seldom at home during the day, suffer very little inconvenience from the fact above alluded to. They, for the most part, have their little shops on either side of the prodigiously long street that constitutes Adana; and as these are covered in with thatch-work, and are moreover carefully watered by public water-carriers several times a day, the Dukkans afford a desirable retreat from the mid-day heat. If their wives and families suffer inconvenience from the sultry closeness of the weather, they are at liberty to lock their doors and resort to any among the number of pleasant gardens that embellish the suburbs of the town, there to make farah, and enjoy themselves till the hour arrives when the Dukkans are closed for the night, and the master of the house is expected home; then all scamper back to receive their hungry husbands, and if their dinner be not cooked, or be displeasing to their taste, to receive in addition a few lashes of the corbash, in the use of which they are pretty well skilled in Adana.
The inhabitants are all Moslems—the most intolerably bigoted and ignorantly proud people to be met with in the whole of the Sultan’s dominions. No professor of another creed dares to settle in any quarter of the town, but have their houses scattered around its