Yet Fellows, like the vast majority of the near 25 million foreign tourists who now visit Turkey annually, soon found himself captivated by the charm and hospitality of his Turkish Muslim hosts, adding, “It will be seen in the course of this narrative how this unfavourable idea of the Turkish character was gradually removed by personal intimacy with the people, generally in situations where they were remote from every restraint but those which their religion imposes.”

Today it is hard to believe that the beautiful southwestern coastline of Turkey, home to four international airports (İzmir, Bodrum, Dalaman and Antalya) and liberally peppered with tourist resorts had, according to Fellows, “not before been traversed by any European; and it is on this account alone that I am induced to lay my Journal before the Public.” Fellows' avowed mission then, was to travel through a part of the world virtually unknown to his fellow Britons and observe, record and recount what he saw. Yet he makes no secret of his chief interest, hardly surprising given that the great classical civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome were the cornerstones of imperial British culture. “As the most interesting period of the history of the country was the time of its occupation by the Greeks, so the remains of their cities form the chief attraction to the traveller.”

Fellows reached Antalya in early April, after an arduous two-week overland journey from İstanbul. Like so many visitors both before and after him, he was immediately smitten by what he saw. “Adalia, which is called by the Turks Ata'lia, I prefer to any Turkish town that I have yet visited; every house has its garden, and consequently the town has the appearance of a wood, -- and of what? Orange, lemon, fig, vine, and mulberry; all cultivated with the artificial care of a town garden, and now in fresh spring beauty.” Modern Antalya may be largely a mass of high-rise concrete apartment and office blocks, but its old town, Kaleiçi, is still much as Fellows described it, with “numerous fragments of ancient buildings, columns, inscriptions and statues … built into the walls with care and some taste.” The Greeks, a family of which Fellows lodged with, have long gone, victims of the population exchanges of 1923, as has the slave market, where Fellows could have bought a “very handsome fellow” of an Arab for between six and eight pounds sterling. Fellows spent almost two weeks exploring Antalya and its environs, before finally receiving the ferman (a ‘permission to travel' document from the local pasha) which freed him to set out for his primary goal, the then virtually unknown ancient cities of the craggy land of Lycia, west and south across the spectacular Gulf of Antalya.

Despite hailing from a supposedly seafaring nation, Fellows wrote, prior to his departure from Antalya's picturesque harbor, “I never was at sea without forming a resolution in future to travel by land.” But Lycia in 1838 was without roads, even the few tracks were not passable by loaded mules or horses, so land-lubber Fellows had little option but to sail. He could almost have been on a modern gulet cruise, putting ashore at the still delightful ancient seashore ruins of “highly picturesque” Phaselis, then Olympos and eventually, Finike (or Phineka as rendered by Fellows). Finike, of course, is now a pretty seaside town well known for its posh yacht harbor. Fellows, however, was forced to walk two miles upstream alongside a swamp-lined river to reach a decrepit customs shed, the governor's house and a couple of other ramshackle official buildings.

Short of supplies along the wild, dramatic shores west of Finike with spring rains beating down, Fellows' ship anchored offshore. The only inhabitants roundabout were nomadic shepherds who initially hid in the rocks assuming Fellows and his crew to be government officials come to conscript their male offspring into the Ottoman army. Eventually the fearful locals came out from their hiding places and took Fellows to their encampment. Here he feasted on freshly slaughtered kid, with yoghurt, honey and bread, in exchange for a sum the equivalent of 18 English pence. At Kekova, Fellows remarked on the “extremely clear water over the white marble rock” for which the region is famous today. Fed up with all things nautical, he paid off his crew and instead hired horses from the nomads to continue his journey onto Antiphellus, the modern resort town of Kaş. En route Fellows was delighted to find many ancient tombs scattered in the mountains, but the weather was inclement and his tent was nearly blown away one evening.

Anyone who knows the prosperous, bustling resort town of Kaş today will find it difficult to imagine it as it was in 1838. “We rapidly descended upon the singularly beautiful but wild and barren neighbourhood of Antiphellus, an active little trading harbour for firewood, containing two or three houses for official persons, and one or two boats to communicate with the important island of Castellorizo.” The route followed by Fellows must have corresponded fairly closely to the popular long-distance walking trail, the Lycian Way, though of course Fellows had no convenient red and white painted flashes to follow. Leaving Kaş and heading over the mountains towards Patara, Fellows came across many more of the beautiful free-standing Lycian tombs which still litter this landscape today, and which he describes as “having beautiful architectural designs cut in the rock.” Disappointed with the ruins at Patara (he describes the still-surviving Roman triple arched triumphal gateway as “not in pure taste”) he elects to head up the valley of the Xanthus River in search of remoter antiquities.

Today Xanthus is a tragically neglected ancient site, but its discoverer, Fellows, was so enraptured he set up camp amidst the romantic ruins, of which he writes, “I have not had time, and do not possess sufficient talent, to examine completely the objects here, which alone afford inducement to a man of taste to visit this country, even from distant England.” In fact Fellows was so enthralled with what he saw that a few years later he was to return and carry off the best of the antiquities to Britain. Fellows was also fascinated by the unique inscriptions he found which, despite the classical Greek style of the ruined buildings, contained many indecipherable non-Greek characters. Recording many of the inscriptions, and making drawings of the most impressive of the remains, he wrote, “The ruins are wholly of temples, tombs, triumphal arches, walls and a theatre. The site is extremely romantic, upon beautiful hills, some crowned with rocks, others rising perpendicularly from the river, which is seen winding down from the woody uplands, while beyond in the extreme distance are the snowy mountains in which it rises.”

Leaving ancient Lycia behind, Fellows headed north, through ancient Caria and Lydia, taking in numerous classical era sites (and purchasing a saz and a ney from a shepherd), before finally arriving at Ephesus in early May. With its celebrated biblical associations Ephesus has long held a peculiar fascination for Westerners, but Fellows wrote “[it is] a place so familiar to the mind that one cannot but feel disappointed at not seeing realised all the ideas associated with it.” He only spends a few hours exploring the then scant, unexcavated remains of what is now one of the premier jewels in Turkey's tourism crown. Fellows continued on to İzmir by way of ancient Laodiceae and Hierapolis, striking the line of what is now the major E96 highway near ancient Sardis. Then the road was a major caravan route carrying goods from Anatolia to Smyrna (İzmir) to be shipped abroad.

Fellows finally reached İzmir on May 13. Clearly relieved to have arrived in the then cosmopolitan port city unscathed he recorded thankfully, “I have escaped even the slightest accident, on a journey of three thousand miles, through a country little travelled, and in which there are neither carriages nor roads.” Spying a cortège of Europeans on their way to church he disparaged their dress in comparison to that of the local Muslims and declared “to their [the Turks] manners, habits and character I am become not only reconciled, but sincerely attached; for I have found truth, honesty, and kindness, the most estimable and amiable qualities, in a people I looked so little for them.”           

CHARLES FELLOWS

Fellows was born into a wealthy landowning family in Nottingham, England, in 1799. He spent time climbing in the Alps, as well as traveling and drawing in Italy, Greece and the Levant. Between 1838 and 1841 he made three trips to southwest Turkey, particularly Lycia, which he recounted in “Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, More Particularly in the Province of Lycia.” In 1844, having secured the backing of the British Museum, and with the permission of the Ottoman authorities, he organized an expedition to Lycia to remove some of the major works of art from Xanthus. Fellows paid all the expenses from his own pocket, and many of the antiquities he took from Xanthus, such as the Nereid Monument, the Harpy Frieze and the Horse Tomb, are exhibited in London's British Museum. Fellows was married twice and died in 1860. 

 KALEİÇİ, ANTALYA

 İZMİR

 OLYMPOS, ANTALYA

 PHASELIS, ANTALYA

 PATARA , ANTALYA

 ANCIENT TOMBS, FETHİYE

 RUINS IN FETHİYE