The morning was yet gray; the mists were hanging in wreaths about the mountains, and draping them in ermine; the dew was lying heavily on the dense vegetation; a few straggling peasants passed us on the outskirts of the sleeping city, some bearing scythes upon their shoulders, affixed to straight poles about eight feet in length—or carrying round spades of wood—or driving before them the animals who were to return laden with mulberry branches for the nurture of the silk-worms which are reared in millions at Broussa. The number of individuals constantly employed in providing food for these insects must be very great, as we have counted upwards of two hundred horses, mules, and donkeys, bearing closely-packed loads of boughs, passing in one day beneath our windows from the same gate of the city; and, as the immense plain is covered with trees, which are each year cut closely down to the trunk, the consumption may be imagined.
A little beyond the city we passed a mule-litter, closely covered with scarlet cloth, guided by two men, and followed by three Turkish gentlemen on horseback, attended by their servants, bound on some mountain pilgrimage; but we had not proceeded above half a league, ere, with the exception of a string of mules laden with timber, which occasionally crossed our path, we had the wilderness to ourselves.
The ascent commences, immediately on leaving the city, which on this side is bounded by a deep ditch or fosse, into which two mountain torrents, boiling and bellowing down from the neighbouring heights, pour their flashing waters. A narrow pathway, so narrow that two saddle-horses cannot pass in it, traverses a dense wood of dwarf oak and hazel, clothing the hill-side, above whose stunted summits we looked down upon the plain, and the minarets of Broussa.
A sudden turn in the road conducted us rapidly upwards, freed us from the hazel wood, and plunged us among masses of rock, over which our horses slid and stumbled, until we reached the foot of the next range of heights. Here the landscape began to grow in beauty; behind us was the city fenced with mountains, mapped out in all its extent, and as remarkable as that of Constantinople for the extraordinary and beautiful admixture of buildings and foliage, which I never remember to have seen elsewhere.