Aside from the interest which attaches to it as the north-western terminus of the Bagdad Railway, Konia, the ancient Iconium, like so many other places in Anatolia, is extremely rich in legendary and historic lore. According to a local myth it was the first spot to emerge from the waters of the Deluge. It is mentioned in the legend of Perseus and the Gorgons. A local legend has it that the name was derived from the Greek word eikon—figure or image—referring to the mud figures, which, when breathed upon by the wind, were converted into living men and women. This is evidently a variant of the old myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. It was doubtless this pride in their great antiquity and a belief that Phrygian was the primitive language of our race that led the inhabitants of Iconium to claim a Phrygian origin. That Phrygian was really the oldest language they had no doubt. For, it was averred, the Egyptian King, Psametik, had conclusively proved this by showing that “infants brought up out of hearing of human speech spoke the Phrygian language.”

The Ten Thousand Greeks, in the army of Cyrus, halted here on their famous expedition to southern Mesopotamia. Cicero reviewed his troops here when he was proconsul of Cilicia. It was one of the important missionary centers of the early evangelizing activity of St. Paul. It was to this city that, accompanied by Barnabas, he directed his steps after he had been expelled by the Jews from Antioch.

In Roman times Iconium stood at the intersection of several important highways and was designated by Pliny urbs celeberrima—a most celebrated city. According to a venerable tradition, Iconium had for its first bishop Sosipatros, one of the seventy-two disciples, who was succeeded in the episcopal chair by Terentius, likewise one of this chosen body of disciples. Equally noteworthy is the fact that Iconium was the birthplace of St. Thecla, who is said to have been converted to Christianity by the Apostle St. Paul. She is the heroine of the Acta Pauli et Theclæ. From the earliest ages of the Church she was greatly venerated in Asia Minor, where she was known as the “Apostle and Proto-martyr among Women.” In the Greek Church her feast is celebrated on the twenty-fourth of September under the title of “Proto-martyr among Women and the Equal of the Apostles.”

And here, according to a venerable tradition on which oriental geographers set much store, is the tomb of “Plato the Divine,” who, under the name of Eflat, is revered by the local population as a thaumaturgus. The origin of this singular tradition in this part of Anatolia—so distant from the real burying place of the immortal philosopher—is one of the curiosities of Ottoman folklore.[178]

During two centuries—from 1099 to 1307—Iconium was the capital of the Seljuk Sultans of Rum[179] and is still regarded as one of the holy places of Islam. Many of its sultans were patrons of art and literature, and, during the zenith of its splendor, this Seljukian metropolis could boast of nearly as many colleges and students as Bagdad—the far-famed capital of the Abbasside Caliphate.

Its present chiefest title to fame is the tomb of the noted Jelal-ed-din-Rumi, usually known as Mevlana. He was famed for knowledge and wisdom and was the founder of the Dancing Dervishes and the author of the “Mesnevi,” a celebrated poem in Persian verse, in which is instilled the Sufi system of pantheism. His successors, as heads of the Dancing Dervishes, have their residence in Iconium and theirs is the right and the privilege to gird each Ottoman Sultan, on his accession to the throne, with the historic sword of Osman. This imposing function, which is performed in the Mosque of Eyub in Stamboul, has been likened to the coronation by the Pope of the Holy Roman Emperor.

By those who know them best the better class of Dancing, or, more properly, the Whirling Dervishes, are described as being a very tolerant and large-minded people. Thus it is said that “in the dangerous period in the winter of 1895–1896, when religious and national feeling ran high in Turkey, it was mainly owing to the Mevlevis that the softas of Konia were prevented from attacking the Christian population of the town.”[180]

But the orthodox Moslems, as represented by the softas and mollahs, do not regard with sympathy the peculiar ceremonial practices of the various orders of dervishes, especially their use of incense, music, and lighted candles in public worship. To the strict followers of the Koran the characteristic forms of worship of the Mevlevis and Rufais, more commonly known as the Dancing and Howling Dervishes, are as distasteful as are the ritualistic services of certain modern Anglicans to the conservative members of the Church of England. As to the esoteric doctrines of the dervishes, especially those based on the Mesnevi, they are declared by the doctors of Islam to be quite irreconcilable with both the Koran and the Hadith—the accepted traditions of Mohammedanism. It must be said that the bizarre performances of the Dancing and Howling Dervishes—performances which are resorted to as a means of detaching the minds of the devotees from all things earthly and attaining a state of spiritual ecstasy—are to the casual spectator but little different in kind from certain revivals of our southern negroes. The solemn dervishes, however, exhibit far more dignity and reverence in their devotions than do the excitable and noisy Africans in their camp-meetings and revivalistic gatherings.

Surrounded by a barren and desolate country, Konia, when seen from afar, looks like an oasis in the desert. It is situated on an elevated plateau well-watered by mountain streams and blessed with a salubrious climate. It was these attractive features that led the Seljukian Turks to choose it for their capital. Its luxuriant gardens and orchards have long been famous and add much to the city’s picturesqueness—especially when viewed from a distance. For when one enters the old Seljukian capital there is little to attract attention except a few mosques. Of the old Greek city practically nothing remains aside from the fragments of friezes, cornices, bas-reliefs, and ancient inscriptions which are found in the walls which surround the erstwhile Seljukian capital. Here, as in so many other places in Anatolia, the Turks, when requiring material for their mosques and palaces, converted the imposing temples of the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines into quarries for stone, and lime. As in Nicæa, a great part of the space within the walls of Konia is covered with crumbling ruins overgrown with weeds and bushes. The poet must have had such a scene in his mind’s eye when he penned the lines:

Modern Konia, a good part of which lies outside of the walls of the Seljuk capital of the thirteenth century, is composed of one-story buildings, constructed chiefly of wood and sun-dried bricks. But amid all the squalor and decay that distinguishes this historic city there are several mosques and medresses—colleges—which will well repay careful inspection.

Among the buildings deserving particular attention is the splendid tekke of the Dancing Dervishes, in which is the tomb of Hazret Mevlana, the founder of this peculiar order. It is popularly known as the “Blue Mosque” from the exquisite sapphire and turquoise blue tiles which until recently covered the cupola that rises above the great turbeh of the founder. There is nothing in Brusa, Stamboul, or Cairo that can surpass its rich and delicate traceries and arabesques, its profusion of jeweled lamps, its wealth, precious tapestries, wondrous faïence, its magic glories of color from the looms and kilns of Persia and India. But over and above all this wealth of ornamentation there is a religious atmosphere that does not exist in the ordinary mosque. For the dervishes, unlike the orthodox Moslems, make a special appeal to the emotions of their followers, and hence their widespread influence and popularity throughout the Mohammedan world.

There is, however, no attempt made here to affect the emotions through any of the plastic or pictorial arts. In this respect the Blue Mosque, like every other mosque in Islam, is absolutely devoid of paintings and statues. The reason is that Moslem law proscribes all representations of the human form, either in painting or statuary, as impious, because they are regarded “as encouragements to idolatry and as profanations of God’s chief handiwork.”[181]

According to one of the traditional sayings of Mohammed, “Whoever draws a picture will at the day of resurrection be punished by being ordered to blow a spirit into it; and this he can never do; and so he will be punished as long as God wills.” Nor does the Prophet leave any doubt as to the nature of the punishment, for he declares explicitly, “Every painter is in hell-fire.” In another saying, however, he greatly modifies this pitiless statement and tells the painter, “If you must make pictures, make them of trees and of things without souls.” It is because of this concession to artists that one may frequently see in Mohammedan houses pictures of flowers and trees and even of landscapes, provided there be in them no delineation of “the human form divine.” But in the homes of the strict adherents of Moslemism all images are rigorously tabooed, for, according to another saying of the Prophet, “Angels do not enter into the house in which is a dog, nor into that in which are pictures.”[182]

Konia is now a flourishing city of about sixty thousand souls. Most of its inhabitants, like those of Brusa, are pure Turks, who rigidly adhere not only to the religion but also to the manners and customs of their fathers. There is here, however, a goodly number of Greeks, Armenians, and Germans, besides whom there is also, among the employees of the Bagdad Railway, a sprinkling of Swiss, French, and Italians. Among the various institutions we visited, none gave us more agreeable surprise than those established here some decades ago by the Priests and Sisters of the Assumption from France, which are in a very prosperous condition. The Sisters have a school and dispensary, and their devoted care of the poor and sick has made them greatly beloved by all classes, irrespective of creed. Nowhere is the zeal of the ardent French nun seen to better advantage than in foreign missions, where her enthusiasm, notwithstanding the great difficulties she frequently encounters, never abates and where she exhibits a happiness that communicates itself to all who come in contact with her.

Nowhere in Anatolia, except probably in Brusa, has one a better opportunity to study the manners and customs and simple pastimes of the genuine Turk than in Konia. Theaters and operas, as we know them, they have not. From all social assemblages, like those in the western world, which are frequented by men and women alike, they are debarred by a custom that is more binding than the laws of the Medes and Persians.

But notwithstanding the total absence of all the entertainments that contribute so much to the pleasure of the people of Europe and America, the Anatolian has a way of spending his leisure hours that quite satisfies him. His amusements are simple indeed, but with them he is content.

Most of these center in the coffeehouse, which, to a great extent, takes the place of the restaurant in France and the club in the United States. Like the club and restaurant the Turkish coffeehouse

Unlike the club and restaurant, the coffeehouse serves no food or alcoholic liquors of any kind. Aside from the people who congregate there, and it is usually well-patronized, its attractions are as limited as they are simple. In the less pretentious places these are confined to coffee, tobacco, and, occasionally, the Medak, or story-teller. In the more sumptuous places of the larger cities there is also music, but it is generally of a very inferior quality, for the instruments employed are for the most part limited to a drum, a tambourine, and two or three rude guitars.

In Anatolia, as in all Moslem countries, the Medak is a most popular character. Not infrequently his ability is so marked that he attains the rank of a personage, and his services on festive occasions are in great demand and for them he is liberally remunerated. The admirable manner in which he can, unaided, fill the rôle of entire casts of the most diverse characters, his marvelous versatility in personating the people of different nations, and in imitating the tones, phraseologies, and even the facial expression of the multitudinous races of the Turkish empire are really astonishing and are to his audience a source of unending delight. Not a few of the Medaks, in addition to histrionic talent that would do honor to the best European stage, have a gift of expression and a facility of invention that make them the rivals of the most eminent Italian improvisatori. With such entertainers the Turks can readily forego our more elaborate forms of amusement, even if they were available.[183]

But the stories and drolleries of the Medak—although always a perennial source of pleasure—are not the chief attractions of the coffeehouse. These are partly supplied, as Lowell so playfully puts it, by

Although the use of tobacco was long forbidden in the Mohammedan world[184] and although its lawfulness is still disputed by a large number of Moslems, especially the Wahabis, the “scented weed” is now used almost universally from Morocco to Delhi and from Stamboul to Mecca. It is, however, well for the Moslems of to-day that tobacco and coffee were unknown in the time of Mohammed, as he would most likely have put them under the same ban as intoxicating liquors and games of chance.

Nothing more perfectly harmonizes with the temperament of the Oriental than the smoking habit, and it is doubtless this practice that contributes not a little to that remarkable patience and that wonderful repose which so distinguishes the Turk and the Arab from the nervous and overwrought American or European. An Oriental reclining on his cushioned divan with his bubbling narghile supplied with the rose-scented tobacco from Shiraz or Salonica is a matchless picture of contentment, and nothing that the hurry-scurry West can offer will excite his envy or disturb his peaceful reverie.

The invariable accompaniment of the narghile or chibouk with their aromatic and sedative narcotic is the zarf, with its small cup of foaming black coffee made from the prized Mocha berries of Arabic Felix.[185] Only in the East is this grateful and refreshing beverage properly prepared.[186] Let those who doubt this statement read of its virtues as celebrated by the Arabic poet, Abd-el-Kader Anazari Djezeri Hanbali. Only those will find his eulogy a wild extravagance who have never experienced the revivifying effects of the dark ambrosia that so gladdens the Bedouin’s tent and the pasha’s palace.

So much for the oriental coffeehouse and the pleasure and surcease of care and sorrow which it offers its listless, dream-loving habitués. What are the amusements of the women of the Orient? Let the distinguished English writer, Julia Pardoe, whose knowledge of Turkish life and manners was not surpassed even by that of the well-informed Lady Mary Wortley Montague, give a reply to this interesting but ill-understood question. In the quotation given she is writing about the women of Constantinople, but what she says of them can, ceteris paribus, be asserted of their sisters in other parts of the Ottoman Empire:

Since these lines were written, the liberty of the Turkish woman has been greatly extended, as have also her opportunities of obtaining a higher education, which were so long denied her.

From the foregoing it seems that the peoples of the Orient—both men and women—get quite as much pleasure out of life—in their own way, of course—as do our luxury-loving people of the Occident at the expenditure of far greater effort and wealth. But in this, as in other things—every one to his taste. De gustibus non est disputandum.

But much as one may be interested in the mosques and medresses and the customs of the people of Konia, the traveler of a practical turn of mind will find more to engage his attention in the splendid barrage which was constructed about a decade ago, some twenty odd miles to the south-east of the city, for the irrigation of the broad plain of Konia. It is the work of a German company, which, by utilizing the waters of two neighboring lakes—the Beushehr and the Sogla Geul—has enabled its enterprising managers to irrigate nearly a hundred and fifty thousand acres of valuable land which would otherwise remain arid and unproductive. It is notable as being the first undertaking of the kind in Asia Minor, and has already been of untold value to the inhabitants of Konia Plain. The success of this important work is sure to lead to the construction of similar reservoirs in other parts of Anatolia, with the happy result that many broad stretches of this long-neglected and deserted country will eventually be restored to their former fertility and populousness.

Time was, as history informs me, when Asia Minor, which has long been presented in many parts by pictures of utter barrenness and desolation, was one of the most fertile and productive and flourishing in the world. It was from this land, as DeCandolle[189] has shown, that Europe received many of its most important fruits and cereals, as well as many of its most valuable shrubs and trees. From Asia Minor came the peach, the plum, the cherry, and the apricot, the quince and the mulberry, and probably also the apple and the olive. From it also came wheat, barley, oats and lucerne and numerous other useful cultivated plants. It was doubtless for these reasons that an old legend located in this region the cradle of our race.

Before leaving Konia it may be noted that it was on the route of the Crusades led by Godfrey de Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa. Godfrey’s forces found the city abandoned by the enemy, but the army of Barbarossa was forced to take the city by storm and compel the Sultan to sue for peace.

After leaving the old Seljukian capital we found little worthy of note until we reached the famous chain of the Taurus Mountains. For a great part of the distance our train passed over a level plain, sparsely populated. Here and there were small villages with mud-built houses surrounded by diminutive tracts of land under cultivation, not unlike those that are everywhere visible in northern Mexico.

What impressed us here, as in other parts of Anatolia, was the paucity of its inhabitants and their total failure to utilize the marvelous natural resources of the country. Although the area of Asia Minor is equal to that of France, its population is but one-fifth of that of the French Republic. And yet the natural resources of the country are enormous, and if properly conserved would suffice to support several times its present population. Rich in valuable minerals of all kinds, its untold treasures of ore are left unmined. Its flora, too, is as varied as it is valuable. The oak, for instance, counts more varieties here than in any other part of the world. Fifty-two species occur in Anatolia, twenty-six of which are not known to exist elsewhere. But in this part of the world, forestry is an unknown science. Worse still. Not only is arboriculture practically unknown, but thousands of valuable trees are every year wantonly destroyed. If the water, mineral, and forest resources were properly conserved and developed, Asia Minor would again be as it was in the long ago—one of the most populous and flourishing regions of the globe.

But as it is now, this country, once so famed for its wealth and its splendid cities, for its “powerful and opulent kingdoms, Greek or Barbarian, of Pontus and Bithynia and Pergamus—Pergamus[191] with its two hundred thousand choice volumes”—is so poor and neglected that its people frequently suffer from famine and from all the miseries consequent on improvidence and failure to utilize the vast treasures within their reach. It is to be hoped that the advent of the railroad and the introduction of irrigation and the promised establishment of an efficient forestry will ere long materially improve the present sad economic condition of the country, and that fair Anatolia will once more be covered, as of yore, with flourishing marts of commerce and magnificent cities where there are now crumbling columns of Greek temples and scattered fragments of Roman palaces and amphitheaters—a veritable “sepulchre of the past.”

The plain which we now traversed was for a considerable distance gravelly land, alternately marshy and dry and not infrequently very saline. Rocks of a volcanic character were often visible. There were little evidences of life except here and there long droves of heavily burdened donkeys and camels and occasional flocks and herds of wandering Turkomans.

Trains of camels in the deserts of Asia and Africa have always had a peculiar fascination for me. Like the llama trains of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes they seem to be specially adapted to their environment and to the work which they are called upon to perform. Before the invention of the steam engine both, in their sphere, were all but indispensable—the sure-footed llama on dizzy mountain heights, the thirst-resisting camel in torrid, interminable deserts. Even since the appearance of the locomotive these useful animals are apparently as much in demand as ever. For, in addition to transporting merchandise, as formerly, where railroads do not exist, they are still in constant use in delivering goods to such roads as are already in operation.

In the region of which I am now speaking, one, at times, sees only three or four camels at most; at others there are a hundred or more, all loaded to the limit of endurance. But whenever they appear in the gray, barren, undulating plain, they, with their drivers, at once give life and color to the landscape which is else but a dull study in monochrome. Their leader is usually a dirty, unkempt, diminutive donkey—in marked contrast to the stately animals that submissively follow him—which is frequently bestridden by a somnolent Turk wearing a faded old fez and voluminous red trousers, with his legs reaching almost to the ground. As the caravan gradually approaches one hears the jingling of the bells of the light-stepping donkey and the clanging of the larger bells of the heavy, lurching camel. But we also presently discover that both donkey and camels are decked with gaudy trappings adorned with beads and cowrie shells. These, however, are not solely for ornament, as one might suppose, but rather to avert the evil eye which, in the Near East, is even more dreaded than it is in any part of southern Italy.

How the camel carries one back to patriarchal times, to times even when the domesticated horse was known only in warfare! As a long line of betasselled camels came near our train one day, they seemed by their sneers and the lofty manner in which they held up their heads to be conscious of their ancient lineage and to resent the trespassing by the Bagdad Railway on what was long their exclusive domain. But to judge by the general appearance of the country—the old patched tents, the reed huts, the hovels of unbaked mud, the peculiar garb of the people, the primitive methods of agriculture, the simple manners and customs of the people—this part of Anatolia, notwithstanding the advent of the iron horse, is in almost the same condition as it was when Joseph and his brethren tended their father’s flocks in the land of Canaan.

If this part of Asia Minor was as arid and desolate in the days of Godfrey de Bouillon and Barbarossa—and we have no reason to believe it was materially different—we can easily realize what must have been the trials and sufferings of the Crusaders during their long march through “burning Phrygia” and inhospitable Lycaonia. Their route was through a dry, sterile, and salty desert, a land of tribulation and horror.[192] It was then, no wonder that, in view of the perils and sufferings entailed by an inland expedition, the later Crusaders preferred to make the journey from Europe to the Holy Land by sea.

So great, indeed, were the toils and dangers and disasters experienced by the Crusaders before they reached the Holy City of Jerusalem, that the brilliant French historian is moved to declare, “If great national remembrances inspire us with the same enthusiasm, if we entertain as strong a respect for the memory of our ancestors, the Conquest of the Holy Land must be for us as glorious and memorable an epoch as the war of Troy was for the people of Greece.”[194] Again he avers, “When comparing these two memorable wars and the poetical masterpieces that have celebrated them, we cannot but think the subject of the Jerusalem Delivered is more wonderful than that of the Iliad.”[195]

There are several passes through the Taurus, but by far the most important of them is the famous one long known as the Pylæ Ciliciæ, or Cilician Gates.[196] From time immemorial this celebrated pass has been the gateway between Syria and Asia Minor, between southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Crusaders passed through them. Asurbanipal, Cyrus the Great, and Sapor I led their armies through their narrow defiles. Cyrus the Younger and Xenophon pushed their way through them on their way to fateful Cunaxa. Alexander, Cicero, Harun-al-Rashid led their armies through this narrow passage. It was also traversed by St. Paul, by hosts of the Crusaders and by pilgrims innumerable from the earliest ages of the Church.

On our way across the Taurus we followed in the footsteps of Alexander and the Crusaders as far as the Vale of Bozanti. Here the Bagdad Railway diverges slightly eastward from the old military and trade route which passes through the Cilician Gates. As we preferred to follow the old historic route to passing through nearly eleven miles of railway tunnels, we left the train at Bozanti Khan and proceeded by carriage through the Cilician Gates to Tarsus.

We were well repaid for so doing, for we had, in consequence, one of the most delightful mountain drives in the world. On each side of the road were towering heights clothed with forests of pine and other evergreens, while rising far above these was the sky-piercing summit of Bulgar Dagh covered with a mantle of snow of dazzling whiteness. Further on our way

And, as if to give life and variety to the majestic scene, we saw circling the fantastic peaks and hovering above the beetling crags in quest of prey, a number of great bare-necked vultures, which seemed to be fully as large as the lammergeier of the Alps and no mean rivals of the condor of the Andes.

The narrow gorge known as the Cilician Gates answers perfectly to Cicero’s appellation of Pylæ-Tauri, gateway of the Taurus. And it corresponds almost equally well with Xenophon’s description of it when he declares it “but broad enough for a chariot to pass with great difficulty.” On both sides of the mountain torrent which rushes along the historic roadway are lofty and almost vertical precipices that could easily be so fortified as to convert it into a Thermopylæ, where a handful of men could hold a large army at bay. It was indeed by fortressing this pass that Mehemet Ali was long able, in defiance of the power of the Turkish Sultan, to retain control of Syria.

Shortly after emerging from the Pylæ Ciliciæ we catch our first view of the famed Cilician Plain, the Cilicia Campestris, which occupies so large a page in the history of this part of the world. Through it we see coursing like silver bands the distant rivers of familiar names—the Sarus, the Pyramus, and the Cydnus. The road in the vicinity of the pass is fringed with forests of pine and plane trees, under whose outstretched branches flows a leaping, laughing, tuneful stream which is ever making the same gladsome music as it did when St. Paul passed this way bearing the joyful tidings of the Gospel to the receptive peoples of Asia Minor. But as we near the plain we note a marked change in climate. Vegetation is not only more luxuriant but is almost semi-tropical in character. The road is bordered with laurel, bay, cedar, evergreen oak, wild fig, and wild olive. There are thickets of myrtle and oleander draped with wild vines and creepers, which greatly enhance the picturesqueness of the enchanting scene.

It was along this road, embowered in all the verdure and bloom of a semi-tropical climate, that the weary and footsore Crusaders passed after their long and toilsome march through the burning desert of Phrygia. Now that they had crossed the formidable Taurus, the greatest barrier athwart their long line of march, and were at last about to tread the sacred soil of the Holy Land, we can easily imagine the joy with which they chanted their favorite hymns, the enthusiasm with which they filled the air with their war cry, Dieu le veult. Clad in polished armor, shining brightly in the Syrian sun, and exultantly marching under their great banners, they form a magnificent pageant, worthy of the chivalry of the Ages of Faith and of the noble cause in which they have magnanimously pledged fortune and life. And as the Christian host moves onward towards its goal, “one pictures, above the lines of steel, the English leopards, the lilies of France, the great sable eagle of the Empire and then the other coats of the great houses of Europe—chevrons and fesses and pales”—ever triumphantly approaching the Holy City until at last they are privileged to “plant above the Holy Sepulchre the banner with the five potent crosses, argent and or, unearthly, wonderful as should be the arms of the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Still following in the footsteps of the Crusaders we finally, after the most delightful of drives, arrived at the old city of Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul the Apostle. This was the first city in which Baldwin and Bohemond and the Tancred the Brave flew their colors after crossing the Taurus. We had followed in their footsteps a great part of the way from the legend-wrapped Bosphorus to the romantic Cydnus—the Cydnus in which Alexander so imprudently bathed, where Cleopatra met Anthony and where legend long had it that Barbarossa lost his life. But the truth of history bids us declare that this great German hero—in whose footsteps we had so closely followed from his embarkation on the far-off Danube—perished not in the waters of the Cydnus but in those of the Calycadnus, several score miles to the northwest of the more famed Cilician stream. It was then in the Calycadnus—the modern Gieuk Gu—that “perished the noblest type of German kingship, the Kaiser Redbeard, of whom history and legend have so much to tell.” The spot where he met his fate was fabled to have been indicated long ages before by a rock near the river’s source, which was said to bear the portentous words Hic hominum maximus peribit—here shall perish the greatest of men.

But although history had declared that the heroic Römischer Kaiser was no more, his admiring subjects knew better. Like Charlemagne, Desmond of Kilmallock, Sebastian I of Brazil, Napoleon Bonaparte, and other worthies,[197] he still lives, but has retired into strict seclusion till, in the fulness of time, “he shall come again full twice as fair and rule over his people.” According to one legend the monarch is fast asleep in the castle of Bordenstein, or in the vaults of the old palace of Kaiserslautern. But according to another legend, he is held by enchanted slumber under the Kyffhauser mountain. All, however, agree that he sits

before a stone table “through which his fiery-red beard has grown nearly to the floor, or around which it has coiled itself nearly three times.” Here, like King Arthur, of whom it is written, “Arturus rex quondam rexque futurus,” he rests until