The inhabitants are negligent and careless about what most vitally concerns their immediate welfare, vainly sweeping out and cleansing their own particular court-yards and houses, whilst the streets and the suburbs are teeming with the seeds of pestilence, and the dark night vapour is bestridden by direful disease and death. In Tersous there was only one resident Englishman, and that was the Vice-Consul, who had come there to die like his predecessors. There were no missionaries, not even a Catholic priest, though plenty of Italian and French Roman Catholics were attached to the various consulates, or employed as merchants and fishers of leeches. The native inhabitants, including a great many from Cyprus, were of all creeds, the greater part being Mahomedans.
During our stay, we were the guests of a hospitable native Christian, Signor Michael Saba, a notable merchant of Tersous; but almost all of those whose acquaintance I made, are since dead, our worthy host among the rest. He, poor man, fell a victim to a virulent fever, that swept away hundreds besides himself, within the space of a fortnight. Sad indeed is the change for the worse in the Tersous of the present day, to what that town must have been in the primitive days of the Christian church, when it boasted of its wealth and commerce, and sent forth to the world such accomplished men as the great Apostle St. Paul; who, speaking of his native home, could call it _A city of no mean repute in Cilicia_. Our stay in Tersous did not exceed the time absolutely necessary for the completion of my friend’s drawings and surveys; and then, nothing loth, we turned our backs upon the place, crossing the large handsome bridge built over the river, and so speeded on towards Adana. The country lying between Tersous and Adana, was very similar to that which we had traversed between Mersine and the former place, a flat country imperceptibly rising as we advanced. Most of this country was more or less cultivated; and we passed countless Turcoman encampments forming large villages, the whole of whose population was almost exclusively occupied in making those carpets, for which they are so much renowned. The great brilliancy of colour and duration of these carpets have acquired for them a very just celebrity. The Turcoman dyes, brilliant yellow, green, and purple (the latter possibly the celebrated Tyrian dye, now lost to the world), are a secret, for the possession of a knowledge of which, the princely Manchester manufacturers would, I imagine, willingly loosen their purse-strings; but no one in the East has hitherto been possessed of sufficient energy and patient inquisitiveness to coax this secret from the breasts of these wild sons of the wilderness. _En route_ we passed many old wells which supplied these people and their flocks with water during the summer months. At some of these wells we stopped and begged water for ourselves and horses, which was cheerfully supplied by pretty maidens, who, like Rebecca of old, had come to the well to supply their father’s flocks with water.