Aegean.

The country reminded one of the California foot-hills in the dry season,
and me, particularly, of Honduras and the road from the Pacific up to
Tegucigalpa--gravelly brown hills and tangled valleys with sparse pines
and scrub-oaks; rocky slopes down which tinkled brown and white flocks
of sheep and goats; sunshine and scarlet poppies and fresh wind; and
over all a curious, quiet, busy web of war; a long shoulder, sharp
against the blue, with a brown camel train ambling down it; a ravine
with its arbor-like shelters for cavalry; wounded soldiers in carts, or
riding when they were able to ride; now and then an officer on his
cranky little stallion--the whole countryside bristling with defense.

Up one of the hot little valleys we climbed, left the carriage, and,
walking up a trail, cut into the bank, past men and horses hidden away
like bandits, and came at last to the top and several tents dug into the
rim of the hill. It was the headquarters of Essad Pasha, defender of
Janina in the last war, and division commander in this sector of the
front. He received us in his tent beside a table littered with maps and
papers--a grizzled, good-natured soldier, who addressed us in German,
and might indeed have passed for a German. He apologized for the
cramped quarters, explaining that they were likely at any time to be
bombarded, and had to live in what was practically a trench, and then at
once, in the Turkish fashion, appeared an orderly with tiny cups of
sweet coffee.

Things were quiet at the moment, he said. There was nothing but the
desultory crack-crack of snipers, coming from one knew not just where,
the every-day voice of the trenches--possibly the enemy were dismayed by
the loss of the Triumph. He had seen it all, he said, from this very