But the Argonauts were not the only characters of mythology that may be met with up there. The city of Eregli, the first port at which the steamer touches after leaving the Bosphorus and entering the Black Sea, stands on the site of Heraclea, a famous town founded by Hercules in prehistoric days; and in a garden north of the town is the cavern called Acherusia, through which he is supposed to have descended to the infernal regions to encounter Cerberus, according to the story. Near this cave are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and of two temples which have been converted into churches, and on the mountain side are coal mines that were worked by the ancient Greek colonists before the dawn of history. Fuel was obtained from them, also, for the European battleships during the Crimean war. These mines are said to contain an excellent quality of steam and gas coal, but have never been developed because the Turkish government, for some reason or another, has not permitted it.
A poisonous honey made in the neighbourhood of Heraclea, according to Pliny the historian, is supposed to have been derived from yellow azaleas and purple rhododendrons, which abound on the hillsides in that neighbourhood. Even now the farmers cannot keep bees, because the honey they produce invariably makes people ill.
A little farther up the coast, the village of Bartan, known in ancient times as Parthenius, according to Greek fables was the home of Artemis, or the goddess Diana, as she is better known, who hunted deer and more harmful creatures among the forests upon the mountain sides and bathed in the waters of the river that comes bubbling down into the sea. Those who do not believe this story can find proof in nearly every picture gallery of Europe, for acres of canvas have been covered with paintings of Diana, the divine huntress, and her achievements in forest and field.
The next village, Amastris, was the birthplace of the wife of Darius, the great Persian king, and Dionysius, the Roman tyrant, and in a gossippy letter to the emperor Trajan Pliny describes Amastris as "a handsome city." It continued to be a port of importance as late as the ninth century. The Venetians and the Genoese occupied it in turn in the Middle Ages several times. The site of the ancient city is now occupied by an insignificant village, and the only reminder of the power and prosperity associated with its past are the ruins of a citadel, an aqueduct, and fortifications.
The port of Sinub is the ancient Sinope, the mother colony founded by Autolycus, a companion of Hercules, and the most important of all the Greek colonies on the Euxine or Black Sea. Here the cynic philosopher, Diogenes, was bom. It was also the birthplace of Mithridates the Great, who ruled Asia Minor and all the country surrounding it several hundred years before Christ. During the time of Pericles, Sinope was the strongest and most important of all the colonies of
Greece, having the only safe harbour on the southern coast. It was the terminus of the royal road which extended from the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia, following the valley of the Euphrates to the shores of the Black Sea. Sinub is surrounded by high-wooded mountains which were occupied by the fabled Amazons, and upon the island called Adasi, there was a temple to Mars erected by and presided over by two Amazonian queens.
One of the stories connected with Sinub, which, however, I do not vouch for, is that Mithridates, the Greek emperor, put his wives and sisters to death with his own hands in the palace whose ruins we saw one morning to prevent their falling into the hands of LucuUus and his Roman invaders.
There is much to see in all these little towns in the way of ruins, but the difficulty is that nobody can tell you anything about them. They are not esteemed by the people and no archaeologist has ever undertaken to investigate them. They represent successive civilizations, first Greek, then Roman, then Persian and Venetian, and, finally, the Byzantine periods of occupation and culture, each of which was founded upon the fragments of those which preceded it. No country has had so much history, but it is impossible to fix dates or circumstances. Asia Minor and that coast have been in the midst of the current of events from the beginning of things. Every great conqueror has occupied that country in turn, down to the final invasion of the Turks, whose supremacy was established in the fifteenth century and has been maintained ever since.
It was difficult to adjust ourselves to the realization that the little towns where we went ashore as the steamer stopped are the same that were occupied by Alexander the Great, by