Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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I remember, when a boy, seeing one of Offenbach’s comic operas entitled “The Princess of Trebizond,” the plot of which, I supposed, was pure fiction; but, since looking into things, it seems entirely probable that the main incidents actually occurred when Trebizond was an empire and a despot known as the “Grand Comnenus” ruled over that quaint, little, old town and the country that surrounds it. The ruins of the palaces the rulers occupied and the fortifications which they built to defend their capital still remain, and it is difficult to conceive anything more picturesque than the ancient walls and towers covered with ivy and other creeping vines. The Turks have utilized a good part of them, and from the deck of the ship we saw the ugly mouths of cannon yawning at us from the top of a castle that is at least one thousand, and perhaps fifteen hundred years old. The central part of the little city, where the Moslem population lives, is still partly enclosed by the old wall, while the Christian population live outside.