After passing the river and Sangiac castle, we came to the seaside, and to a coffee-hut, at which we alighted, and tarried twenty minutes. At one we opened the isthmus, or neck of the peninsula, the southern boundary of the gulf. The Clazomenians anciently inhabited on the north side, bordering on the Erythreans, who were within it. The Teians were on the south, with a port north of their city. Hitherto our course westward had been chiefly beneath the northern termination of mount Corax.

The isthmus appears as a wide pleasant valley, and the land being mostly level, we could discern across it the blue tops of the island Samos. Its width P was reckoned fifty stadia, or six miles and a quarter; and the periplus or circumnavigation of the peninsula, a thousand stadia, or one hundred and twenty-five miles. The distance of Smyrna from Ephesus, in a straight line, was only three hundred and twenty stadia, or forty miles; but if you coasted, near two thousand two hundred stadia, or two hundred and seventy-five miles; owing principally to this peninsula. Alexander the Great, to render the communication easier, ordered, that a navigable cut should be made through the plain here, intending to join the two bays, and by converting the whole cherronese into an island, to surround the city Erythræ and mount Mimas with the sea. A dike, or canal, running up the valley, is a monument of that attempt, which failed, when the workmen came to the rock. We passed it over a bar of sand at the mouth. The inbat blowing fresh, and the waves dashing over, two of our horses

r In Pliny, seven miles and a half.

started aside, floundered deep, and wetted our baggage. A like accident in fording another water afterwards occasioned some delay.

We continued our journey along the shore. The hills on our left were covered with low shrubs, and villages, some of a clean dry aspect, and several not immediately discernible, though near, the mud-built cottages being exactly of the same colour with the soil. As we approached Vourla, the little valleys were all green with corn, or filled with naked vinestocks in orderly arrangement, about a foot and a half high. The people were working, many in a row, turning the earth, or encircling the trunks with tar, to secure the buds from grubs and worms. The shoots, which bear the fruit, are cut down again in winter. We saw another species, which produces very large grapes, running up and spreading on the branches of trees planted for their support. A mart like Smyrna diffuses cultivation through all its vicinity.

Vourla is distinguished at a distance by its numerous windmills. On entering the town we saw nobody, the houses were shut up, and a silence and solitude prevailed, which, before we recollected what we had lately seen, suggested to us the terrible idea, that the inhabitants had left it, to avoid the cruel distemper from which we also were flying. It is a place of considerable extent, the buildings dispersed on eminences, with a pleasant plain toward the sea. The water and air are reputed good. The Turks have seven mosques, and the Greeks two churches. At one of these is a small bass-relief, representing a funereal supper, with a short inscription 9. Another Inscript. Ant. p. 6.

We were re

is fixed in the wall over a fountain. commended by letter to an Italian, a practitioner in physic, who attended us about the town, and shewed us every civility in his power. A cursory view of this place was sufficient to convince us, that it did not stand on the site of Clazomene.

CHAP. XXIV.

WE SEARCH FOR CLAZOMENE-DISCOVER THE MOLE-PASS
OVER-THE SITE-ISLETS -WE REPASS
VOURLA.

ORIGIN OF

WE were assisted by the friendly Italian in our inquiries for a ruined city in that neighbourhood; and in the evening procured a man to conduct us, as we supposed, to the site of Clazomene. We set out early in the morning, when he carried us back to the opening of the isthmus, and shewed us, for Clazomene, a piece of ordinary wall, which has enclosed a cistern on the top of a hill, with some scattered rubbish on the slope. There, it is likely, was anciently the settlement of the Chalcidensians, probably a colony from Chalcis in Euboea, belonging to Clazomene. Above them was a grove sacred to Alexander the Great, where the games called Alexandrea were celebrated by the Ionian body.

Finding our guide ignorant, and at a loss which way to go, we adopted the surer direction of ancient history; remembering, that the Clazomenians, to be more secure from the Persians, had settled in an island, which, by command of Alexander, was afterwards changed into a peninsula by the addition of a mole. We crossed the plain of Vourla, slanting toward the sea, and soon discovered this monument

also of that great mind, which delighted in correcting or subduing nature by filling up or forming paths for the deep; which here still bore visible marks of his royal pleasure, and now raged, as it were indignant, but in vain, against the barrier which he had appointed.

The mole was two stadia, or a quarter of a mile in length, but we were ten minutes in crossing it, the waves, which were impelled by a strong inbat, breaking over in a very formidable manner, as high as the bellies of our horses. The width, as we conjectured, was about thirty feet. On the west side it is fronted with a thick strong wall, some pieces appearing above the water. On the opposite is a mound of loose pebbles, shelving as a buttress, to withstand the furious assaults of storm and tempest. The upper works have been demolished, and the materials, a few large rough stones excepted, removed.

We computed the island to be about a mile long, and a quarter broad. The city was small, its port on the N. N. W. sides. Traces of the walls are found by the sea; and in a hill are vestiges of a theatre. Three or four trees grow on it, and by one is a cavet hewn in the rock, and affording water. The soil was now covered with green corn.

s South side, enclosed with a mole. R.

A cave is mentioned by Pausanias, p. 211. It is thus described by Randolph: "Nothing remains but the cave, which is "cut out of firm rock, almost square, supported with four pil"lars of the same rock. To the eastward is part of an altar, and "in the middle is a well, but the water is brackish, and not fit to "be drank." State of the Islands in the Archipelago, 1687.

t Room, the sides ornamented with niches, probably a sepulchre. R.

A vaulted room, with a chimney at one end, and a hovel or two made with stones piled, are all the present structures; and these are chiefly frequented by fishermen, and by persons employed to watch and to drive away birds when the grain ripens. Referring to this confined situation of Clazomene, a famous sophist, when importuned to adorn his native city by residing in it, rather than at Smyrna, replied, "The nightingale refuses to sing in a cage."

By Clazomene is a cluster of islets ", all once cultivated, now neglected and barren. Their number was eight, but I could count only six. One is called Long Island, and by some the English Island, because, as they relate, a party of our countrymen from Smyrna, landing on it for their diversion, were attacked suddenly, and murdered there by banditti or pirates. Some of these islets, and perhaps even of the Enussæ without the gulf, may owe their origin or increase to the river Hermus.

After making the circuit of the island, we sat down by the isthmus to dine, when our attention was engaged by a large company landed at the scale or road of Vourla, which is westward from the mole, and had in it some small-craft, with a few houses and a mosque on the shore. An irregular discharge of guns and pistols followed, in compliment, as our guide told us, to the new aga or governor, who was then arrived. In the mean time the inbat increased

" Three of them were called Marathusa, Pele, Drymusa. It is probable the names of all of them are contained in a passage of Pliny, lib. v. c. 37.

u These islets are formed by rocks rising out of the sea on the opposite side of the bay to the Hermus, too far distant to be affected by it. R.