ECHOES OF THE WAR.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1350, 9 March 1916, Page 5

ECHOES OF THE WAR.

Mr. Stephen Grapham tells in Country Life of a recent visit be paid to Salonika, he describes it as “a gay little town in beautiful country” There is only one street of any importance, and that is the quayside. ove,r which look the windows of many hotels and cafes, and along which run electric cars. There aye lively bazaars in tbie background. The people on the streets ape an equal mixture of Greeks and- Jews, and several French newspapers are published in the town, so that the cosmopolitan crowd may find a common tongue One of these papers is clamorously on °ur side in the struggle the other clamorously against us. Both hold as their criterion the supposed commercial advantages to be gained by supporting one or the other faction in Europe. Outside the city northward ape wonderful moorlands and mountain white with acanthus and gemmed with myriads of gleaming flowers. Southward Mount Olympus lifts its wonderful white beacon to the sky.

“If you walk up to the suburb of SalaInych and look down upon the city of Damascus spread; beneath, you see the. flat and beautiful, plain to which Damascus is the key. Two days’ journey to the south-east it loses itself in the desert but from here, fap as the eye can peach, there is a mass of trees and grey foliage. Away to the east mountains ape just visible and behind you (if you could but see it over the shoulder of the hill) Herman stands white and shining in the distance. It is from a neighbouring summit that Mohammed is said to have gazed upon the city to have turned from it reluctantly with these words, ‘Man can have but one paradise, and my paradise is (fixed above.’ “Towards evening, when the level rays of the sun strike sideways down the shadowy mountains, the whole landscape glows with richness Like one immense fruit garden the orchards, white with almond and apricot blossom, open fanways on all sides from the city of Damascus The gleaming minarets are surrounded by this fragrant sin and the brown houses seem to r ;se from out of the engulfing plain. The deepest and most unbroken quiet reigns in these orchards. Goldfinches hop from branch to branch, and in the sun-splat-tered glades you can watch the figures of gardeners moving silently amongst the trees. “If you leave Damascus by the Bab Tuma you will travel for mile after mile through the finest fruit garden of Asia. These environs are the real •charm of Damascus For the town itself would inevitably pall upon you at last, as all Oriental towns do, but the orchards of Damascus would remain sweet for ever.