Beyond the gate the mountains retreated, and we climbed up a little dell, past two or three Turcoman houses, to the top of a hill, whence opened a view of the principal range, now close at hand.  The mountains in front were clothed with dark cedars to their very tops, and the snow-fields behind them seemed dazzlingly bright and near.  Our course for several miles now lay through a more open valley, drained by the upper waters of the Cydnus.  On two opposing terraces of the mountain chains are two fortresses, built by Ibraham Pasha, but now wholly deserted.  They are large and well-constructed works of stone, and surrounded by ruins of stables, ovens, and the rude houses of the soldiery.  Passing between these, we ascended to the shelf dividing the waters of the Cydnus and the Sihoon.  From the point where the slope descends to the latter river, there opened before me one of the most glorious landscapes I ever beheld.  I stood at the extremity of a long hollow or depression between the two ranges of the Taurus—­not a valley, for it was divided by deep cloven chasms, hemmed in by steeps overgrown with cedars.  On my right rose a sublime chain, soaring far out of the region of trees, and lifting its peaked summits of gray rock into toe sky.  Another chain, nearly as lofty, but not so broken, nor with such large, imposing features, overhung me on the left; and far in front, filling up the magnificent vista—­filling up all between the lower steeps, crowned with pine, and the round white clouds hanging on the verge of heaven—­were the shining snows of the Taurus.  Great God, how shall I describe the grandeur of that view!  How draw the wonderful outlines of those mountains!  How paint the airy hue of violet-gray, the soft white lights, the thousandfold pencillings of mellow shadow, the height, the depth, the far-reaching vastness of the landscape!

In the middle distance, a great blue gorge passed transversely across the two ranges and the region between.  This, as I rightly conjectured, was the bed of the Sihoon.  Our road led downward through groves of fragrant cedars, and we travelled thus for two hours before reaching the river.  Taking a northward course up his banks, we reached the second of the Pylae Ciliciae before sunset.  It is on a grander scale than the first gate, though not so startling and violent in its features.  The bare walls on either side fall sheer to the water, and the road, crossing the Sihoon by a lofty bridge of a single arch, is cut along the face of the rock.  Near the bridge a subterranean stream, almost as large as the river, bursts forth from the solid heart of the mountain.  On either side gigantic masses of rock, with here and there a pine to adorn their sterility, tower to the height of 6,000 feet, in some places almost perpendicular from summit to base.  They are worn and broken into all fantastic forms.  There are pyramids, towers, bastions, minarets, and long, sharp spires, splintered and jagged as the turrets