# Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History/Chapter 4

Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History by Henry John Elwes was first published in London in 1930, and edited by Edward G. Hawke
CHAPTER IV
ASIA MINOR, 1874
Elwes after his marriage gradually turned his attention to horticulture, In his early studies he received much advice and help from the late Mr. T. Atkins of Painswick, whose collection of hardy and Alpine plants was at that time unrivalled in this country. The development of his new interests is well illustrated in his account of a collecting tour in South-western Asia Minor.
In the winter of 1873–74 the late Lord Lilford was in the Mediterranean in his yacht, and asked me to accompany him on a trip to Cyprus. I accepted this invitation with pleasure, but, owing to an accident to the yacht, it was postponed after my arrangements for leaving home were made. So instead of joining the yacht at Naples as intended I took passage to Smyrna from Marseilles on March 6th, 1874. Passing through the Greek islands, where after an unusually severe winter snow was lying within 1,000 feet of the sea, we called at Syra on March nth. A walk into the country showed that vegetation was very backward, and, except a few Grape Hyacinths, Anemones and Genista, there was nothing of much interest in bloom.
On reaching Smyrna the next day in a storm of wind and rain I found that frost and snow had been so prevalent in the interior that it was too soon to travel. After consulting Mr. Whittall, I decided to go further south and see what I could do in Lycia; but, as there was no steamer for a week, I spent my time in collecting birds and what few plants I could find in flower near Smyrna. I engaged an Italian interpreter who spoke Greek and Turkish, and paid a visit to Ephesus, where I was befriended by Mr. J.T. Wood, who had for some years been engaged in excavating the Temple of Diana and other ruins for the British Museum. There were many woodcock and snipe and duck in the country round, and I found three rare and interesting birds new to me —Ruticilla mesolunca, Emberiza cinerea, and Sitta syriaca—besides a jackdaw, whose white collar was, like that of the Macedonian jackdaw, much more stiongly marked than in its English relative, I also found Crocuses, Cyclamens and Romuleas, but little else in flower; though that most beautiful shrub, Arbutus andrachne, with its russia-leather-like bark, was very striking.
On March 21st I embarked on a small Glasgow steamer which touched next day at Samos, where I went on shore. It seems a rich and well-cultivated island, and, the climate being milder than that of Smyrna, the almond trees were a mass of bloom. On March 23rd we called at Kalymnos, an island mostly inhabited by sponge divers, and later on at Cos, where I saw the celebrated plane tree.
Symi, another sponge fishers' island, was very barren looking, but I found the rocks covered with a most beautiful Cyclamen which I believe to be a form of C. persicum; the flowers are not so large as those of the ​plant which English florists have spoilt by high cultivation, but they were to my eye the best of any wild cyclamen that I know. Here I also saw a bulbous plant, with large plicate leaves, which I suppose to be an unknown species of Colchicum, but I was not successful in bringing it home alive.
Three hours after leaving Symi the boat reached Rhodes, but I had no time to go into the country. The next morning I landed at Macri, a small town in a gulf which affords one of the largest and best harbours in the Levant. Macri is very prettily situated at the foot of hills covered with scrub of Lentisk, Myrtle and Arbutus, with pine trees higher up and high mountains in the background: but, lying as it docs close to a large marshy plain, it is, like many places on the coast, so unhealthy in summer that most of the inhabitants migrate in May to their summer quarters, which are called "yailah," in the mountains.
The only family of European descent I found here was that of a Mr. Vassito, who with his two sons was very civil and gave me all the help he could in getting horses for my journey into the interior of Lycia. This province, which both to an archaeologist and to a naturalist is one of the richest and most interesting in the Levant, has been well described by Fellowes, and by Spratt and Forbes, who in 1S40 travelled here and described the innumerable ruins which arc found all over the mountains. But no English naturalist has ever explored its beauties; and though the country was then and still is in a very primitive and unsettled condition, I know of none so near Europe which would probably afford so many novelties both in botany and in entomology. After getting lodgings in a Greek house I went to explore the country, and found a yellow Fritillary described by Baker as F. Forbesi, which has not been found elsewhere, and a beautiful form of the winter flowering Iris, which flowered in November in my garden, and was figured in the Botanical Magazine, Plate 6343, as Iris Cretensis Janka, but is now considered to be a form of the Algerian Iris unguicularis. The rocky ground was in places covered with the most beautiful leaved Cyclamens I ever saw, and a tall yellow Spurge and a white flowered Cistus were also coming out.
On March 25th I went to the other side of the bay, where many of the great white herons were feeding on the marsh, and found some terrestrial Orchids already showing flower. Ophrys, Orchis, and Serapias are all very numerous both in species and in quantity in Lycia, and their tubers are collected and dried under the name of Salep, which is used as a food and considered, as it was formerly in England, as very nourishing for invalids.
The next day I went to meet a Turkish hunter on the other side of the bay, where many wild pigs were said to be found, and beat some marshy thickets of Oleander and thorny creeping shrubs with dogs. One of the Turks was an old soldier who had been at the siege of Silistria, and, like all the old soldiers I met in Asia Minor, was very friendly to Englishmen. But their system of hunting was not scientific, and though several pigs were found I had no shot till the afternoon, when, standing in the reeds in a thicket between two hills, I heard the dogs give tongue, and a large grey boar rushed towards me. I let him come within fifteen yards ​and then fired as he rushed past. Though he did not fall till he had run fifty yards or so, when the dogs came up I found him shot through the heart and quite dead.
I had some trouble in getting horses, but succeeded with the help of the chief of police in hiring some for twenty piastres a day. A mounted zaptieh was sent with the party to help us in case of need, so that on March 28th I was at last able to make a start.
The horses were very fair, and we travelled over the dry rocky hills, covered with stunted evergreen oak and Pinus halepensis, across the watershed which separates Macri from the valley of the Xanthus river. Alpine Choughs and Blackheaded Jays, with Emberiza cinerea, were the most interesting birds, and a sweet scented Daphne, Cistus and Mediterranean Heath were in flower. The soil was mostly red stiff loam from the hard limestone rocks which form the hills, and notwithstanding the wet winter was already very dry. We reached a small, poor village called Minara about four o'clock, where I found bad lodging in. a Turkish hut. I visited the ruins of the ancient Pinara, discovered and described by Fellowes. The theatre remains very perfect, and there are thousands of tombs and chambers cut out of the rock in the cliffs round the site of the town, which must once have been a populous place, though now surrounded by a barren and rocky wilderness.
On the next day's ride to Tortuca I crossed a spur of the Cragus mountain and found many large Valonian Oaks, Quercus Ægilops, whose acorn cups are collected in quantity for farming and were then a valuable article of export, I saw many Alpine and common swifts, and in the pine forest above the village both green and spotted woodpeckers. But by far the most interesting bird was the little nuthatch, only found in Asia Minor and Syria (Sitta Krueperi). It is confined to these rocky pine forests where it breeds in holes of trees like its European congener, whilst Sitta Neumayeri, the Syrian nuthatch, is essentially a rock-haunting bird.
From what Spratt and Forbes had written I expected to find big game abundant in this neighbourhood. But the inhabitants seemed poor and stupid, and there was very little grass among the rocks at this season, Bears and red deer probably exist higher up in the mountains, and there were certainly wild goats, Capra ægagrus, on the sea cliffs, for I saw some small ones and a fine pair of horns thirty inches long in the village. But however interesting this part of Asia Minor may be to an archaeologist or a naturalist, there is not enough game to attract a sportsman. I went on from here to Junok, near the ruins of the ancient town of Xanthus, and in the valley near the sea found spring much more advanced and the trees coming into leaf. Here for the first time I found very comfortable quarters in the house of an old Turkish officer, Mehemet Aga by name, a Turk of the old school who had served in the Russian war of 1828, as well as in the Crimea, and who, though a poor man, was very hospitable and seemed really pleased to receive me in his house.
Among the ruins I found many beautiful Ophrys and other orchids in flower, and warblers and magpies were abundant on the borders of the marshy plain. At the next village, Bayeerzan, I lodged in the Oda, a ​room kept for strangers' lodgings in most Turkish villages, but I was not able to collect much owing to the very sharp rocks, overgrown with bush, which cover the country and make walking very difficult off the paths.
Nine hours' ride from here I reached Cassaba, crossing a pass 3,000 to 4,000 feet above sea level, where the snow was only just melted, and where I shot a wood-pigeon out of a flock which were not as yet paired. The scenery in the valley of Cassaba is very curious, the hills being composed of soft sandstone which is weathered by the rain into innumerable little conical hills and ravines, very bare of vegetation except terrestrial orchids. At Cassaba there was a Kaimakam, a very poor specimen of the modern Turk, who invited me to go out shooting next day; though he brought a lot of beaters and dogs, the beat was so badly managed that the wild pigs all escaped without a shot. On April 4th I left Cassaba for Myra, about eight hours' ride through the Dembra gorge, the most beautiful valley I have seen in Asia Minor. We had to ford the river twenty or thirty times, and on its bank I found a rare Fritillary, which was described by Boissier as F. Lycia. Lower down this gorge opens out into a plain in which the village of Dembra or Myra stands near the sea, and there I lodged in the house of a Custom-house official. I was told that a bear had been killed near here in the winter, but whether the bear of this region is the Syrian bear, as I suppose, or a variant of the brown bear, I cannot be sure. Vegetation here was well advanced and the wheat, already two feet high, looked splendid. After it is cut in May there is said to be time for the people to go up to their summer villages and sow barley, after harvesting which they come down again to the plains in time to sow wheat. What a contrast to our English climate, where wheat is often ten or twelve months from sowing to harvest. A fine læmmergeyer sailed over my head here, and on the shore I shot a specimen of the African cuckoo, Coccystes glandarius, just arrived from the opposite coast. Choughs were also seen in the gorge and a rare bunting.
On April 5th, being Easter Sunday, I stayed at Myra and visited the ruins of the ancient city about a mile from the village. Though not so extensive as some of the ruins in Lycia the amphitheatre is in very good condition, the arches and the double corridors at the sides being perfect. There are also large rock tombs with fine sculpture above some of them.
Next day I returned by the same route to Cassaba and found a very graceful species of Thalictrum with white flowers as large as a shilling, and some nice ferns, irises and other plants. At Cassaba I packed up the living plants I had collected as well as I could, including a great number of Ophrys and Orchis tubers, and started to return to Macri by another route, which led for six miles up a steep hill by a rocky path difficult for horses. Neither at Cassaba nor at the large village of Ahoory could I get barley for the horses, food of all sorts being now unusually scarce and very little to be got for ourselves. Turks seem to be able to do with less than almost any people, and I never lived so badly on any journey as during this trip in Asia Minor, where not even coffee was procurable in many of the villages and we had to content ourselves with bad bread, onions and sour milk. After leaving Ahoory the road became better and ​gradually led up to a great forest of pines, succeeded higher up by cedars and junipers. The ground in some places was a perfect garden of spring flowers. Two or three species of Crocus, Cyclamen vernum, Scillas, Chionodoxas, two species of Colchicum, and quantities of Anemone blanda covered the ground; and I have no doubt that anyone staying long enough in this range of mountains in summer, when the snow has melted on the higher summits, which rise to something like 10,000 feet, would gather a rich booty in plants, birds and butterflies. But though it is now over forty years since I visited Lycia, I have never heard of anyone going there on purpose to collect.
After crossing a pass at about 5,000 feet elevation, the road descended along the side of a very steep gorge to some farms inhabited in summer by the people of Alioory, but then quite deserted. Farther on I reached a place where some Albanian Greeks had started a sawmill and were cutting the pines into boards for export. There we stayed for the night and slept in a wooden hut with some wild-looking Greek woodmen. There was a slight hoar frost on the ground in the morning. Going into the forest I found for the first time the fine large snowdrop which now bears my name, and which has since been exported in large quantities from the mountains near Smyrna and has become common in English gardens. I saw tracks of wild pigs and also of bear, but could find none among the men who had any idea of hunting; their one object seemed to be to cut and burn the forest, which is no doubt by this time largely destroyed. For eight miles beyond the mill the road led through the same pine forest, in which were four or five sawmills, and then crossed the wide bed of a mountain torrent which had at some time been dammed by landslips. Tits, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and finches, including the Serin finch, were the common birds of this forest, but on a march of this sort, when one cannot stop long to go off the road, one cannot do more than sample the birds and plants. The only way to collect properly would be to bring a tent and provisions so as to be independent of the dirty villages and their inhabitants. But it must be remembered that this trip was only undertaken as a reconnaissance, when the voyage to Cyprus was prevented.
From Arsa I descended to the valley of Xanthus, where the river was unfordable owing to melting snow, and I had to go two hours upstream to reach a bridge. After this the road lay through a fine plain with large scattered pine trees, more like a park than anything I have seen in Turkey, only the grass is wanting and the sun very hot. In the evening I reached Macri and found the steamer had left for Smyrna the day before. So I arranged with a man to provide horses at eighty piastres each to go to Mughla, and the same zaptieh, Ibrahim, whom I liked very much, was to accompany me. A bear was reported by the hunters who went with me before, but they were not at all inclined to go after him, and the men who knew the place could not be found, so, knowing the wandering habits of bears, I thought it only a waste of time to go after him alone. I sent on the horses to a place six hours on the road to Mughla, and crossed the gulf in a boat to a little port called Godjik, where I found a very bad lodging. The road from here was oyer a very different and ​much less beautiful country, but I found some new plants, among them Tulipa undulatifolia, which was afterwards figured from my bulbs in the Botanical Magazine, Plate 6308, and two new Fritillaries, one of which was named after me by Boissier and figured as F. acmopetala by Baker in the Botanical Magazine, Plate 6321. This is a late plant of no great beauty, which seems quite hardy in England. The other was Fritillaria dasyphylla Baker and is figured on the same plate as the last.
An hour from Godjik I passed the place where the last English traveller, who followed this road twenty years ago, was murdered by robbers, who at that time were worse than now. But since 1876 I believe the country has again become unsafe, and it is likely to remain so until better government is instituted in Asia Minor. It is very hard for travellers to know what risk they run in such countries. As a rule English consuls magnify the danger, and the local authorities will not let anyone travel if they know that brigands are about. But though I always had a gun or rifle in my hands, and never carried more money than was necessary or stayed long enough in one place to allow an attack to be planned, yet I had two very narrow escapes of being captured in Greece and Macedonia.
Between Godjik and Mughla I had to cross the Dalaman Chai. Owing to snow melting in the mountains the ford was very deep, and my guide would not lead as he said that I, being the heaviest man on the strongest horse, ought to go first. After several attempts in which my horse almost lost his footing, a local peasant came and showed 119 the best place to cross. I stayed that night in a village called Ortaga, where another old soldier, who had pleasant reminiscences of English officers under whom he had served in the Crimea, was very friendly and did his best to get us what little food was procurable.
The next day's journey was a ride of eleven hours, partly over prettily wooded hills where Valonia Oaks and a little-known tree peculiar to this district, Liquidambar orientalis (cf. Trees of Great Britain, 3, 505), are found, They were not, however, so large as one which I have since seen in the public gardens by the railway station at Montpellier, where the climate is very similar to that of Western Asia Minor. I also found two more new species of Fritillary, as well as the handsome Tulip, T. undulatifolia. We passed two of the large Circassian villages which have been planted all over the fertile parts of Asia Minor since the Crimean War, and are easily recognised by the little granaries raised on posts, and by the wattled enclosures round the houses and fields. These Circassians do not mix much with the Turks, who say they are thieves and much addicted to stealing horses and cattle, and as they are bold fellows and well armed, and not hospitable to strangers, I never stayed in one of their villages.
In the evening we forded another river, the Qamlam Chai, and stayed the night at a poor coffee shed on its banks. The country round here is very pretty, a good deal like some parts of the Highlands, though better wooded; it would be a very good field for a naturalist in summer, though the mountains are not so high as those in Lycia, In the afternoon I crossed a level plain of beautiful smooth grass and reached Mughla, the largest town I had seen since leaving Smyrna, at an elevation of about 3,500 feet. There I found a new khan outside the town, and met the only European ​resident, a young Italian merchant who traded in Valonia, and who dined with us and a Turkish officer in the khan. A hot south wind was blowing all the afternoon, which made travelling unpleasant for the first time since I started from Macri.
On April 15th and 16th, I had a long ride down a level valley, well cultivated with barley, and arrived after dark at a poor guard-house where I passed the night. I found some plants of interest, including still another species of Fritillary. I did not succeed in reaching Aidin, which is reckoned at twenty-four hours from Mughla, and slept in a factory on the bank of a river, where I saw a pair of the Great Spotted Kingfisher, Ceryle rudis. The next day I started early and got into Aidin in time to catch the train to Smyrna, whence I intended to go by the Austrian steamer to Constantinople. She was so crowded that I accepted Mr. Whittall's invitation to stay with him at Burnabat and wait for the French steamer on the 19th. But as she left before her regular time I missed her also, and I determined to spend the short time I had left in a trip to Cassaba and to return home via Brindisi.
I left by the afternoon train to Magnesia (Manisa). There I had to sleep in the waiting-room at the station, but I got a very fair dinner at a cookshop in the bazaar, consisting of kabobs, pilau and yaoort (sour curds and cream), for the small sum of two piastres—fivepence. The next day I started early up the mountain which lies above Magnesia, and which on the lower slopes is a garden of vines, figs, apples, pears and cherries. The blossom on these, mixed with scattered Judas trees in full flowei, was most lovely. Wild flowers were also numerous and I saw Peonies, Aubrietia and Alyssus in full bloom, whilst higher up quantities of Snowdrops, Crocus, Scillas, Ornithogalum, Anemone blanda and Chionodoxa made a lovely spring garden. Near the top, at about 4,500 feet, snow was still lying in patches among the scattered pines, but was melting very fast under a hot sun. I shot the rufous Desert Buzzard, Buteo desertorum, and saw Læmmergeyer, Egyptian and Griffon Vultures, as well as several of those beautiful little Falcons, F. Elornis, hawking about for insects in a strong wind. Rock martins and blue thrushes, warblers and pied wheatears (Saxicola Stapazina) were the common birds. I got back after a walk of nine hours in time for the afternoon train to Cassaba, where I was hospitably received by Mr. Hutchinson, the engineer in charge of the extension to Alashehr which was to be opened in a few months.
On April 21st I went up the line on an engine as far as the line was open to Salikly, about twenty-five miles from Cassaba, I intended to ride on to Alashehr, but could get no horses as at this season it is the Turkish custom to turn most of their horses out to grass and give them a two months' rest. I therefore determined to go up into the Bozdagh mountains, which run parallel to the line on the south of it and attain about 6,000 feet. The plain through which the line runs is very fertile and grows large crops of corn, cotton and tobacco; but that year both crops and stock had suffered much from the unusually hard winter. The lower slopes of the mountain are of hard red or whitish gravel, much cut up and worn by water into steep ridges and gullies, and as they were very dry ​and burnt up I found few plants or birds of interest till I got to a considerable elevation. I met a man coming down with a horse-load of apples in perfect condition; they are said to keep good till the new crop is ripe, and the same is said of the celebrated Cassaba melons, which were still fresh and juicy and of delicious flavour after being kept six months in a dry cellar. I brought a few home and showed them to a fruiterer in Covent Garden. He said that their looks would condemn them in the London market, however good their flavour might be, as appearance was more important in the public estimation than taste. I do not know any part of the Mediterranean where such fine and cheap fruit is produced as in Asia Minor, and there seems no reason why it should not be imported at a profit, as well as dried fruits, if proper arrangements for the storage and packing were made.
At about fifteen miles from the plain, the valley up which I rode opened out into a plain covered with fine grass and inhabited in summer by the people of Odenish; but though many horses and sheep were grazing there, very few people had come up, and the high mountain above was still covered with snow. On the other side of this plain I came to a pretty lake, a mile long, surrounded by houses, fields and gardens, in which nightingales were singing, and beyond these were small woods of oak, walnut, poplar and willow, in which I saw hooded crows, starlings, buntings and woodpeckers. After finding lodgings in a small and dirty house belonging to the man who came with me as guide, I went out to search for plants, but the flora there is not so rich and varied as in the mountains of Lycia at the same elevation. I found some tulips, croci, irises and other plants, but on the light sandy soil which prevails there they were not so fine as in the heavier red loam of Lycia.
The next day I returned by a shorter but much rougher road to Salikly, passing some men who were dragging down one of the figured walnut logs, which are collected all over Asia Minor and Armenia for export to Marseilles, where they fetch a high price, and are cut up into veneer and gunstocks. I also saw an encampment of nomadic Yuruks, who wander from place to place all over Asiatic Turkey, living in black haircloth tents very like the tents used by the Tibetan nomads, but longer and more comfortable, with a cane-work shelter to keep the wind out. I also passed some hot sulphur springs, with a temperature of about 110°, which are used for bathing by people in the neighbourhood. On getting back to the station I skinned the few birds I had shot and returned to Cassaba, to Mr. Hutchinson's hospitable home.
On my last day in Asia Minor I rode out to see the melon gardens for which Cassaba is famed. The plants are raised on hotbeds and planted out in the trenches in May. I was told that the best variety, which was then grown for the Sultan's table, will not keep for more than a few days and has degenerated in quality of late years. My father, who brought home the seed of this variety thirty years before, said that the same thing had happened in England.
On returning to Smyrna I heard of a Greek who knew something about flowers, and who promised to collect bulbs in the summer; and this was the beginning of what has grown into quite a big business, as Galanthus ​Elwesii, Chionodoxa luciliæ, and some other species were afterwards imported in very large numbers and now form quite a marked feature in our spring gardens.
The boat from Macri in which I had sent my collections to Smyrna arrived just before I left for Corfu, but the next day in changing steamers at Syra the box which contained the greater part of the bulbs I had collected was stolen or mislaid. I had luckily kept a small number of most of the species in my big plant box, but I never recovered the lost box . I had a day at Corfu, where the country seemed much greener and the climate much softer and less arid than in the islands of the Ægean. In the gardens formerly belonging to the English Governor, which had by now become half-wild, I saw a great many beautiful trees and plants, especially terrestrial orchids, which though not so varied in species as in Lycia were in great abundance and beauty.
On the whole I was very well pleased with the results of this little expedition, which I have never found an opportunity to repeat. Though my friends, George Maw and Seebohm, both went to Smyrna, no one that I know of has since been in Lycia.
* ↑ See his Discoveries at Ephesus, 1876.
* ↑ Emberiza cinerea was discovered near Smyrna in 1836 by H.E. Strickland and has not been found elsewhere.
* ↑ Travels in Lycia, 1847.