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48 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
school, which afterwards proved to be correct. Another
large building standing high up and with walls round it was
an abandoned Greek monastery. We noticed that the names
at the street-corners were painted in Russian characters. This
is a memento of the Russian occupation of the town for two
years (March 191 6 to February 191 8), during the War. The
Russians had administered the place on completely Russian
lines, and among other things had constructed good roads
from the coast to the interior, especially one to Kars. The
Turks do not do that sort of thing, and even the Turkish
inhabitants wished the Russians could have kept the town a
year longer, or occupied it a year earlier, so that they might
have made still more roads.
We ascended to a height where we could look down on
the town. The older and larger part of it lies to the west of
the bay where we anchored, and it was here that the oldest
Greek colony was situated. On a rocky ridge with narrow
gorges on two of its sides a little below us we could see the
ruins of an old castle and walls with towers and battlements.
These were the old fortifications of Trebizond, and the castle
with the imperial palace—relics of its past grandeur. On
a height a little beyond the town we saw a number of imposing
houses with fine gardens. Rich Greeks used to live in them,
but they had to leave when the Turks returned, all except a
few who were Russian subjects. The houses of these refugee
Greeks were then tåken over by Turks, in accordance with
the convenient law mentioned on p. 26. However, they do
not understand how to keep them in repair, and they are
rapidly deteriorating. The best house was that in which
the Russian consul lived.
During the Russian occupation of the town, after the
departure of the Turks, the Greeks, and to some extent the
Armenians also, plundered the Turkish houses by way of
reprisals for past massacres. On their return the Turks,
finding that their houses had been plundered, revenged
themselves by massacring Greeks and Armenians, and all of
these who were not killed fled from Trebizond in the same
way as they did from Samsum and the other coast towns.
This, however, had a disastrous effect on the trade of these
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