The conscientious member of the party, who "understood we had come mainly to inspect the ruins, and not for a picnic," and who had all day been very uncomfortable at the slight put upon antiquity by our light conduct in the face of so many centuries, now insisted upon at least a glance at the fine ruins in which we then were. They were well worthy of a close inspection, but I don't propose to inflict a description upon the reader. I may, however, mention a particularly picturesque minaret of very solid construction. Up the winding steps of this we all filed except the fat lady, who sat on the pavement below cross-legged, smoking a cigarette and smiling up at us benignly through the blue wreaths circling round her head from under the Paris hat.
After enjoying the view of the plain and the encircling hills with the satisfaction of persons who had "done" the thing and had not to do it again, we began to inspect the minaret itself and the dressed stone parapet against which we leaned; and there we found the name of the everlasting English (or American) snob who seems to pervade the universe for the sake of cutting or writing his name and the date of his visit upon every coign of vantage to which he can get access. Our Armenian friend, Mr. A----, pointed out that there were few Italian names in this record of fools, and scarcely any French or German; but Herostratus appears weak in comparison with our English and American travellers in the desire for cheap fame, for he had only to make a fire, a thing done in a very few moments, while the travelling snob must have worked industriously for an hour or two, and made his hands very sore, and probably spoiled a knife, in satisfying his aspirations.
The portals of this mosque are very fine. No doubt the greater part of the material for the building came from the ruins of Ephesus, but the portals and other principal points are of original design, and most undoubtedly erected by true architects and sculptors. They are Saracenic, not quite up to the examples we find in Spain and in Sicily, and in a modified and debased form in Morocco and elsewhere on the coast of Barbary. The inscriptions from the Koran are most elaborately and beautifully cut, and still in excellent preservation. The Moslem peasantry would not touch them, and the Christian rayahs are afraid to do so. There are, of course, no figures of men, or even of animals, but the charmingly correct arches and doorways, and the delicate tracery above them intermingled with Arabic characters, give a lightness to the portals which is hardly to be found anywhere east of the Alhambra or the Sevillian Alcazar.