Near the
door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including
the khan-keeper, were reposing. The horses were foddered at the other
extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke
escaping by the doors. We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the
governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.
We now sallied forth to view the town. The castle, which occupies the
centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it
contains no regular troops, but merely some _redif_, or militia.
Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to
remark in the place. Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well
furnished; but the place is, on the whole, miserable and filthy in
the extreme. The total number of mosques is seventeen.
The afternoon being now advanced, I went to call upon the Mutsellim.
His konak was situated in a solitary street, close to the fields.
Going through an archway, we found ourselves in the court of a house
of two stories. The ground-floor was the prison, with small windows
and grated wooden bars.
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