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The invaders were seized with a sudden panic, possibly as much occasioned by the rage of the conflagration as the desperation of the foe; and, retiring to Mount Tmolus, took advantage of the night to retrace their march along the valley of the Cayster.
Slowly above the tree-tops the swans are waving their great pinions, to seek the stream of Cayster. All creatures recognize the day, and only one weeps to see the light. Evadne knew that on yonder shore waited the dreaded messengers who would gather the homeless into the Christian fold. She stayed to utter one farewell to the cold, the cruel marble, with its unvaried smile.
After a short ride I reached the borders of the plain of Ephesus, across which I passed along a road rudely constructed, and raised above the marsh, consisting of broken pillars, entablatures, and inscriptions, at the end of which two other paths diverge; one strikes off to the left, and leads over the Cayster by a bridge above the castle of Aiasaluk the other, leading to the right, or west, goes directly to Scala Nuova, the ancient Neapolis.
Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater, the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Caÿster and Maenander? Had she not made maps of it from her young husband's accounts and then with enthusiasm traced his steps by its stony, hilly streets from forum to stadium and from school to museum?
The Nymphs of the fountains, with dishevelled hair, mourned their waters, nor were the rivers safe beneath their banks: Tanais smoked, and Caicus, Xanthus, and Meander; Babylonian Euphrates and Ganges, Tagus with golden sands, and Cayster where the swans resort. Nile fled away and hid his head in the desert, and there it still remains concealed.
It was as if all the birds that have their homes and seek their food in the great salt marsh of Cayster had risen from the South and had flown over sea in one hour, for the heaven was darkened with their flight, and loud with the call of cranes and the whistling cry of the wild ducks.
The Greeks then sailed to Ephesus, debarked at Coressus, in its vicinity, and, under the conduct of Ephesian guides, marched along the winding valley of the Cayster whose rapid course, under a barbarous name, the traveller yet traces, though the swans of the Grecian poets haunt its waves no more passed over the auriferous Mount of Tmolus, verdant with the vine, and fragrant with the saffron and arrived at the gates of the voluptuous Sardis.
Now the Trojans had rest from war for a while, and Priam, with a heavy heart, bade men take his chief treasure, the great golden vine, with leaves and clusters of gold, and carry it to the mother of Eurypylus, the king of the people who dwell where the wide marshlands of the river Cayster clang with the cries of the cranes and herons and wild swans.
In short, altogether he is put out, and he vents his spleen on the swans, who follow him along the wave as he walks along the margin, intimating either their affection for himself, or their anticipation of the bread-crumbs associated with his image by the amiable note, half snort and half grunt, to which change of time or climate has reduced the vocal accomplishments of those classical birds, so pathetically melodious in the age of Moschus and on the banks of Cayster.
They were like great flocks of geese, or cranes, or swans on the plain about the waters of Cayster, that wing their way hither and thither, glorying in the pride of flight, and crying as they settle till the fen is alive with their screaming. Even thus did their tribes pour from ships and tents on to the plain of the Scamander, and the ground rang as brass under the feet of men and horses.
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