I embarked on the eleventh, in the afternoon, in a small Turkish vessel, and a fresh north wind carried us in four hours to the rocky promontory of Posidonium (today Bosburun, the point of ice), a distance of eight miles.  Here the sea was running very high, and our reis, or helmsman, who was squatting on the high and delicately carved stern of the ship, was beginning to chant his Allah ekber—­God is merciful—­when the wind died down so completely toward dusk that we did not reach Mudania before eight o’clock next morning.

The horses were soon ready, and up to Brussa I passed through a country that was doubly charming after the lonesomeness of Roumelia, which had been all I had seen for six months.  Everything is under cultivation, planted less with corn than with vines and mulberry trees.  The latter, which serve as food for the silkworms, are trimmed low like bushes, with the crowns cut off, as we do with willows.  Their large bright green leaves cover the fields far and wide.  The olive trees grow here in groves of no mean size, but they have to be planted.  The whole richly cultivated country reminds one of Lombardy, especially of the hilly landscape near Verona The distant view is as magnificent as the foreground is lovely.  On one side you see the Sea of Marmora and the Princess Islands, and on the other the glorious Mount Olympus, whose snow-clad peak rises above a broad girdle of clouds.  The flowering vineyards filled the air with rich scent, assisted by caprifolium blossoms in luxuriant growth, and a yellow flower the name of which I do not know.

When we had crossed a ridge of low hills, we saw Brussa stretched out before us in a green plain at the foot of Mt.  Olympus.  It is indeed difficult to decide which one of the two capitals of the Ottoman rulers is more beautifully situated, the oldest or the newest, Brussa or Constantinople.  Here the sea and there the land bewitches you.  One landscape is executed in blue, the other in green.  Relieved against the steep and wooded slopes of Mt.  Olympus, you see more than one hundred white minarets and vaulted domes.

The mountain rises to the regions of almost perpetual snow, and supplies the inhabitants of Brussa with wood to warm themselves in winter and with ice for their sherbet in summer.  A river, called Lotos, winds its course through rich meadows and fields of mulberry trees, where giant nut trees with dark foliage and light green planes, white minarets and dark cypress trees rise to the sky.  Vines climb up the mighty trunks and attach themselves to the branches, whence they droop again to earth, while Caprifolium plants and thriving creepers superimpose themselves on the vines.  Nowhere have I seen such a wide and thoroughly green landscape, except from the tower of Luebbenau, overlooking the woods along the Spree.  But here you have in addition the richer vegetation and the glorious mountains which surround the plain.  The abundance of water is surprising; everywhere brooks are rushing along and springs are gushing from the rocks, ice cold and boiling hot, side by side.  In every part of the city, even in the mosques, water is bubbling from countless fountains.