I spent two or three hours next morning in taking a survey of Kiutahya.
The town is much larger than I had supposed: I should judge it to contain
from fifty to sixty thousand inhabitants. The situation is remarkable, and
gives a picturesque effect to the place when seen from above, which makes
one forget its internal filth. It is built in the mouth of a gorge, and
around the bases of the hills on either side. The lofty mountains which
rise behind it supply it with perpetual springs of pure water. At every
dozen steps you come upon a fountain, and every large street has a brook
in the centre. The houses are all two and many of them three stories high,
with hanging balconies, which remind me much of Switzerland. The bazaars
are very extensive, covering all the base of the hill on which stands the
ancient citadel. The goods displayed were mostly European cotton fabrics,
_quincaillerie_, boots and slippers, pipe-sticks and silks. In the parts
devoted to the produce of the country, I saw very fine cherries, cucumbers
and lettuce, and bundles of magnificent clover, three to four feet high.

We climbed a steep path to the citadel, which covers the summit of an
abrupt, isolated hill, connected by a shoulder with the great range. The
walls are nearly a mile in circuit, consisting almost wholly of immense
circular buttresses, placed so near each other that they almost touch. The
connecting walls are broken down on the northern side, so that from below
the buttresses have the appearance of enormous shattered columns. They are
built of rough stones, with regular layers of flat, burnt bricks. On the
highest part of the hill stands the fortress, or stronghold, a place which
must have been almost impregnable before the invention of cannon. The
structure probably dates from the ninth or tenth century, but is built on
the foundations of more ancient edifices. The old Greek city of Cotyaeum
(whence Kiutahya) probably stood upon this hill. Within the citadel is an
upper town, containing about a hundred houses, the residence, apparently
of poor families.

From the circuit of the walls, on every side, there are grand views over
the plain, the city, and the gorges of the mountains behind. The valley of
the Pursek, freshened by the last night's shower, spread out a sheet of
vivid green, to the pine-covered mountains which bounded it on all sides.
Around the city it was adorned with groves and gardens, and, in the
direction of Brousa, white r