We touched with our very hands the spirit of this ancient race in the time of its glory, when we went into the museum and handled the pottery, the gods, the household ornaments, the memorials--found by peasants with their picks not far below the soil--of that time when Homer was born (it is claimed) in this city of the Ægean, when the Ionians held it, when Lysimachus made it great and beautiful, until it was one of the most prosperous ports in the world, crowded with Greek and Roman and Syrian ships trading between the West and East.
Lieutenant Casimatis took us to his little home away on a lonely road beyond the Turkish quarter, and we spent an evening with his family, a handsome wife and three beautiful children who sang little songs to us in French and Greek. The poor lady was nervous. Some shadow of fear was upon her because of that Turkish army beyond the Greek trenches. I hope with all my heart she escaped from Smyrna with her babes before the horror happened.... I drank to the welfare of Greece in the sweet resinous wine which Lieutenant Casimatis poured out for us. It was a sincere wish, but at the back of my mind was some foreboding.
We drove out one day to Boudja and Bournabat, past the slopes of Mount Pagus and away in the hills. Turkish peasants riding on donkeys or in ox wagons jogged along the dusty tracks. We passed Turkish cemeteries with tombstones leaning at every angle below tall, black cypress trees, and looking back, saw the brown roofs of Smyrna below, as in a panorama under the hot sun which made the gulf like molten metal.
In the country we lost touch with the Western world. It was Asia, with the smell and color and silence of the East. A camel caravan moved slowly in the valley, like a picture in “The Arabian Nights.” But at Boudja, and later at Bournabat, we were astonished to see English-looking girls in English summer frocks, carrying tennis racquets, and appearing as though they had just left Surbiton. These two villages were inhabited by British merchants who had been long settled there as traders in Oriental carpets, spices, raisins, dates, and the merchandise of the East. We called on one of them at Bournabat, and I rubbed my eyes when, with Asia Minor at the gate, we drove up to a house that might have been transplanted from Clapham Park in the early Victorian period, when Cubitt was building for a rich middle class.