inhabitants were then killed, with their bishop, or carried with their cattle into captivity by the Turks. In 1190, the German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, going by Laodicea with his army toward Syria on a croisade, was received so kindly, that he prayed on his knees for the prosperity of the people. About 1196, this region, with Caria, was dreadfully ravaged by the Turks. The sultan, on the invasion of the Tartars in 1255, gave Laodicea to the Romans; but they were unable to defend it, and it soon returned to the Turks. We saw no traces either of houses, churches, or mosques. All was silence and solitude. Several strings of camels passed eastward over the hill; but a fox, which we first discovered by his ears peeping over a brow, was the only inhabitant of Laodicea.

CHAP. LXVIII.

WE SET OUT FOR PAMBOUK, OR HIERAPOLIS-STOPPED— BEHAVIOUR OF AN AGA-THE CLIFF, &c.-QUALITY OF THE SOIL ABOUT THE MEANDER-HOT WATERS OF HIERAPOLIS ANOTHER CLIFF -POETICAL ACCOUNT OF THE CLIFF.

A PORTION of Messogis, opposite to Laodicea, appears as a white lofty cliff. We supposed it to be chalk. Pambouk, or the ruined city Hierapolis ", which we could see, is seated upon it, beneath the summits of the mountain. The distance was one hour and a half, north-north-eastward. The aga,

b Query, if extended so far east. R.

c Laodicea was six miles from Hierapolis. Antonin. Itiner.

with whom we had lately been embroiled, told the janizary, that he commanded at Pambouk, the aga of the district being absent, and that we had nothing to fear there, as we were under his protection. We relied on his assurances, and left Laodicea on the 30th of April in the afternoon; crossing the plain toward Pambouk.

We passed the Lycus on the west of Laodicea, near an ordinary bridge, and in about three quarters of an hour the Mæander; which here had two beams laid across it, with planks; the water deep in its bed, muddy, as usual, and rapid. Some men, who were digging a trench in the plain, left off, and waited our approach. They were headed by a chiaush, or the messenger of an aga, who commanded in a small village to the west of Pambouk. He stopped us at a narrow pass, seizing the bridles of the horses which were foremost. Our janizary galloped up, and interposing, was informed the aga insisted on bacshish.

We rode on to Pambouk, and, while our tent was pitching, the janizary went to the aga with our firhman, and a present of coffee and sugar. He was civilly received, the aga commiserating our late ill usage, of which he had heard, and complaining, that the same person had extorted from him an extravagant ransom for a stray beast; saying, he was a man of a bad character, of an imperious temper, and, from his superior power, the tyrant of that country. He demanded five okes of coffee; and some other claims were made for his officers, amounting in the whole to ten okes, for which money was accepted. He declared we had no danger to apprehend by day at Pambouk, but recommended our leaving the ruins

early in the evening. We enjoyed by anticipation the security he foretold.

Our tent stood on a green dry spot beneath the cliff. The view before us was so marvellous, that the description of it, to bear even a faint resemblance, ought to appear romantic. The vast slope, which at a distance we had taken for chalk, was now beheld with wonder, it seeming an immense frozen cascade, the surface wavy, as of water at once fixed, or in its headlong course suddenly petrified. Round about us were many high, bare, stony ridges; and close by our tent one with a wide basis, and a slender rill of water, clear, soft, and warm, running in a small channel on the top. A woman was washing linen in it, with a child at her back; and beyond were cabins of the Turcomans, standing distinct, much neater than any we had seen; each with poultry feeding, and a fence of reeds in front.

It is an old observation, that the country about the Mæander, the soil being light and friable, and full of salts generating inflammable matter, was undermined by fire and water. Hence it abounded in hot springs, which, after passing underground from the reservoirs, appeared on the mountain, or were found bubbling up in the plain, or in the mud of the river and hence it was subject to frequent earthquakes; the nitrous vapour, compressed in the cavities and sublimed by heat or fermentation, bursting its prison with loud explosions, agitating the atmosphere, and shaking the earth and waters with a violence as extensive as destructive; and hence, moreover, the pestilential grottos, which had subterraneous communications with each other, derived their noisome effluvia; and, serving as smaller vents to

these furnaces or hollows, were regarded as apertures of hell, as passages for deadly fumes rising up from the realms of Pluto. One or more of the mountains perhaps has burned. It may be suspected, that the surface of the country has, in some places, been formed from its own bowels; and in particular, it seems probable, that the hill of Laodicea was originally an irruption.

The hot waters of Hierapolis have produced that most extraordinary phenomenon, the cliff, which is one entire incrustation. They were anciently renowned for this species of transformation d. It is related they changed so easily, that being conducted about the vineyards and gardens, the channels became long fences, each a single stone. They produced the ridges by our tent. The road up to the ruins, which appears as a wide and high causey, is a petrification; and overlooks many green spots, once vineyards and gardens, separated by partitions of the same material. The surface of the flat, above the cliff, is rough with stone and with channels, branching out in various directions; a large pool overflowing and feeding the numerous rills, some of which spread over the slope, as they descend, and give to the white stony bed a humid look, resembling salt or driven snow, when melting. This crust, which has no taste or smell, being an alkaline, will ferment with acids; and Picenini relates, that trial of it had been made with spirit of vitriol. The waters, though hot, were used in agriculture.

Tamerlane, when he invaded this country, en

d See Strabo, p. 629. 437. Pausanias, p. 241. Vitruvius, lib. viii. cap. 3. Ulpian Pandect, lib. xliii.

camped for the summer at Tangúzlik, where many of his men were destroyed by drinking of a spring, which stagnated and petrified. I should have supposed that place to have been Hierapolis; but other hot waters, with a similar cliff, will be mentioned in a following chapter. The Turkish name Pambouk signifies cotton, and, it has been said, refers to the whiteness of the incrustation.

The shepherd-poet of Smyrna, after mentioning a cave in Phrygia sacred to the nymphs, relates, that there Luna had once descended from the sky to Endymion, while he was sleeping by his herds; that marks of their bed were then extant under the oaks; and that in the thickets around it the milk of cows had been spilt, which men still beheld with admiration; for such was the appearance, if you saw it very far off: but that from thence flowed clear or warm water, which in a little while concreted round about the channels, and formed a stone pavemente. The writer describes the cliff of Hierapolis, if I mistake not, as in his time, and has added a local story, current when he lived. It was the genius of the people to unite fiction with truth; and, as in this and other instances, to dignify the tales of their mythology with fabulous evidence, taken from the natural wonders in which their country abounded.

e Q. Smyrnæus, í. v. 128.

CHANDLER, ASIA M.