254 Mr. Carter on the Delta of the Persian Gulf, 



18,500, and now it is 32,000 or 33,000. In this way it has 

 more than tripled in four centuries : and this is the spot which 

 is to form a rule for that before us*. 



Then, again, the Mesopotamian rivers bend their course 

 through a locality widely different from the Italian, the Eu- 

 phrates more particularly. It passes for 700 or 800 miles over 

 a level with much sandy desert, and carries its lingering stream 

 at a rate which will often glide over mud without disturbing itf, 



* Going back to a much earlier period, we shall, perhaps, find still less 

 reason to view either Adria or Spina as any sure landmarks for these great 

 fluviatile encroachments. Strabo (lib. v. 214.), Livy (lib. v. cap. 33.), Justin, 

 (xx. 1.), and all the best authorities state, that the Adriatic took its name 

 from Adria. But the gulf bore that title at a period of from 500 to 600 

 years b.c, for Scylax mentions the sea of Adria, if not the city. The latter 

 was probably of a date very ancient even to him. Yet we find from Justin, 

 about seven centuries later, that it was still " mari proxima". (Ibid.) The 

 unaided labours of the river had thus made no appreciable progress with 

 its delta, in a period probably very far more than that in which we have 

 seen that it has since tripled it. Ravenna, Strabo (ibid.) understood, 

 was built by the Thessalians in the marshes. SoZosimus (lib. v. C3p. 27). It 

 is supposed by Rubeus (Raven. Hist, incip.), Amati (Dissert. Rabic), and 

 other learned Italians, to be one of their settlements noticed by Halicar- 

 nassus(lib. i. cap. 16.) as made in this part long before theTrojan war. From 

 what Jor nan des about a.d. 552 (De Reb. Get. Linden., p. 109,) adds to 

 his account from Dion, it seems to have been as little in the waters then, 

 as any visitor to the spot will now find it. Bernard Justinian (De Orig. 

 Urb. Venet., lib. i, cap. 6.), a learned Venetian of the 15th century, tells us it 

 was then more than three miles, about its present distance, from the sea, 

 and that the efforts of five Roman emperors had been employed to accom- 

 plish the filling up of its canals and marsh. The sea, except by the labours 

 of man, has surely been little intruded on here. Yet Butrium, a very an- 

 cient, and supposed by Cellarius, Spretus, Amati, and others to be also a 

 Thessalian, town, seems, from what Strabo says of it, to have been founded 

 by the people of Ravenna, yet in the time of Pliny (iii. 15.) it was " nee 

 procul a mari". Of Spina we hear much, Strabo stating Qaoi it was once 

 situated on the coast, but was then 90 stadia inland. But" (pxai (says Cel- 

 larius) dicunt homines non probunt documentis". Halicarnassus (i. 16.) 

 says only that a city was built at the Spinetic mouth of the Fadus. Taking 

 this to be Spina, he probably means no more than the site mentioned by 

 Scylax, who notices the distance across Italy/row sea to sea,from city to city, 

 and that the Greek city on the river was 20 stad. from the Adriatic. That 

 this was the original site of Spina seems far from improbable, and Clu- 

 verius, Vossius,Gronovius seem all to agree that it was the city, Scylax thus 

 notices. Filiasi, Amati, Frissi, and other Italian writers are much divided 

 about its site. Now, bearing in mind that Ravenna, Butrium, and Spina 

 were probably all of nearly the same high antiquity, and, with Adria, near 

 to each other, and more or less subject to the operation of the same causes 

 of change, and connecting with this, and with what we have learned from 

 M. Prony, the great extent of marshy debateable ground between land and 

 water formerly existing in this part, and which might be reckoned as 

 either, we may, perhaps, view the storied amount of geological change here 

 as much more imposing than the true. 

 f De la Beche, Geol. Manual, p. 112. 



