would guard me" when the blasting began; at least, whatever was to be my fate, he was ready to share it!
We have been wandering about the muddy streets of the bazaar, immortalised by Pierre Loti. It is here, in these little Turkish booths—the tinker's, tailor's, and shoemaker's, the meat-man's, the baker's, and the sweet-seller's—that the inhabitants of Smyrna must do their shopping to-day. How can we think of Frank Street and its vast European "emporium," now no more than a smouldering heap of crumbling ruins?
Town-planning is as yet unknown in Turkey. Here, as elsewhere, the houses seem to be straggling upon the hillside, forming an architectural patchwork far more picturesque than the most correct symmetry.
We are now to ascend Mont Pegasus, and though I hate climbing, the sunset panorama of an Eastern city will reward a greater effort than this. To look on the fading sunlight in all its glorious magnificence of purple and scarlet and mauve, is to know we are in the presence of God; and if ever the world needed His guidance, it surely must seek Him now.
"That," I murmured, "is how God meant us to find His world—a life of sunshine, a death of beauty. No fear, no shrinking before what must come to all; but His glory reflected about us, as the sun's beauty is reborn for us in the infinite, waiting sea.
"Look up, and then turn your eyes down to man's work below our feet—black war, grey ruin and desolation!"
An English lady, Mrs. de C, the widow of a distinguished British Minister in Teheran and Bucharest, has just given me a more level-headed and fair description of the Smyrna fire than I have yet heard from any other eye-witness. Her husband was manager of the Aidin Railway, and had the luck to unearth a unique collection of priceless antiques along the route.
