view over the plain. We could fee part of the white cliff of
Hierapolis. On enquiry, we found that we were now only a
journey of about four days from Smyrna, going the direft
road j and were affured, that the Plague raged there with
uncommon fury.
C H A P . LXXIII.
Mode of living— Mount Tmolus — The region named Catakekau~
mene — The river Hermus — Arrive at Ala-Jhahir.
O U R mode of living in this tour had been more rough,
than can well be defcribed. We had endeavoured to avoid, as
much as poflible, communicating with the people of the country
; and had commonly pitched our tent by fome well, brook,
or fountain near a village, where we could purchafe eggs, fowls,
fruits, wine, raki or brandy, and the like neceflaries; with
bread, which was often gritty and of the moft ordinary kind.
We had feldom pulled off our clothes at night; fleeping fome-
times with our boots and hats on, as by day; a portmanteau or
large ftone ferving inftead. of pillow or bolfter. But one confi-
deration had foftened the fenfations of fatigue, and fweetened
all our hardfhips. It was the comfortable reflection, that we
enjoyed our liberty, and were, as we conceived, at a diftance
from the plague ; but now we were about to lofe that fatisfac-
tion, and at every ftage to approach nearer to the feat of
infection.
We had agreed to vifit Ala-fhahir ' or Philadelphia ; and fet-1
ting out in the morning, afcended the mountain, which is Mef-
fogis, and turned to the north-weft, through a cultivated tract,
the way. good, to hills: green with flowering fhrubs, and in particular
with Labdanum. The air partook of their fragrancy,
Allahfcheyr The City of Gtd,
and
and difpenfed to $£ the fweet -odours of mount Tmolus. After
five hours we alighted, and dined beneath a tree by a well. We
■ then entered a deep narrow track, and came in two hours more
to a village, and pitched our tent on a dry fpot; with an old
caftle on the mountain on our left hand, and before us an extensive
plain, in which the river Hermus runs.
T his region, which is above, or to the eaft of, Philadelphia,
was named Catakekaumene or XJnderhurnt. By fame it was
reckoned in Myfia, by others in Maeonia or Lydia. It was five
hundred ftadia or fixty two miles and a half long, and four hundred
ftadia or fifty miles broad; and antiently covered with vines,
which produced the wine called by its name, and efteemed not
inferior to any in goodnefs. The furface of the plain, which is
now turf, was then fpread with afhes; and the range of mountains
was ftony and black, as from a conflagration, which fome,
who fabled that Typho was deftroyed there, fuppofed to have
been occafioned by lightening ; but earth-born fire was concerned
inftead of the giant and Jupiter. This was evident from
three pits, which they called Phyfie or the Bellows, diftant from
each other about forty ftadia or five miles, with rough hills
above them, formed, it was believed, by cinders from their volcanoes.
The wits of old obferving, that fuch places were peculiarly
fertile in vines, affirmed, alluding to the ftory of Semele,
it was no fiftion that Bacchus was begotten by fire.
T he river Hermus, which divides this plain, begun near
Dorylseum, a city of Phrygia Epiftetos j riling on the mountain
Dindymus, which was facred to Cybele the mother of the gods.
From this region it flowed into the Sardian, received the Phry-
gius, which feparated Phrygia from Caria, and alfo many other
ftreams from Myfia and Lydia, in its way to the fea.
I n the morning we defcended from the mountain, and winding
toward the left, foon after met a cow laden with the dwelling,
the goods, and chattels of a Turcoman family; a very
grotefque
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