We rode up the glen, following the course of the Cydnus, through scenery of the wildest and most romantic character.  The bases of the mountains were completely enveloped in forests of pine, but their summits rose in precipitous crags, many hundreds of feet in height, hanging above our very heads.  Even after the sun was five hours high, their shadows fell upon us from the opposite side of the glen.  Mixed with the pine were occasional oaks, an undergrowth of hawthorn in bloom, and shrubs covered with yellow and white flowers.  Over these the wild grape threw its rich festoons, filling the air with exquisite fragrance.

Out of this glen, we passed into another, still narrower and wilder.  The road was the old Roman way, and in tolerable condition, though it had evidently not been mended for many centuries.  In half an hour, the pass opened, disclosing an enormous peak in front of us, crowned with the ruins of an ancient fortress of considerable extent.  The position was almost impregnable, the mountain dropping on one side into a precipice five hundred feet in perpendicular height.  Under the cliffs of the loftiest ridge, there was a terrace planted with walnut-trees:  a charming little hamlet in the wilderness.  Wild sycamore-trees, with white trunks and bright green foliage, shaded the foamy twists of the Cydnus, as it plunged down its difficult bed.  The pine thrust its roots into the naked precipices, and from their summits hung out over the great abysses below.  I thought of OEnone’s

—­“tall, dark pines, that fringed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet;”

and certainly she had on Mount Ida no more beautiful trees than these.

We had doubled the Crag of the Fortress, when the pass closed before us, shut in by two immense precipices of sheer, barren rock, more than a thousand feet in height.  Vast fragments, fallen from above, choked up the entrance, whence the Cydnus, spouting forth in foam, leaped into the defile.  The ancient road was completely destroyed, but traces of it were to be seen on the rocks, ten feet above the present bed of the stream, and on the broken masses which had been hurled below.  The path wound with difficulty among these wrecks, and then merged into the stream itself, as we entered the gateway.  A violent wind blew in our faces as we rode through the strait, which is not ten yards in breadth, while its walls rise to the region of the clouds.  In a few minutes we had traversed it, and stood looking back on the enormous gap.  There were several Greek tablets cut in the rock above the old road, but so defaced as to be illegible.  This is undoubtedly the principal gate of the Taurus, and the pass through which the armies of Cyrus and Alexander entered Cilicia.