72 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



of subsequent generations living in the vicinity, or 

 to have worn away the dangerous impediments of 

 Scylla and Charybdis, which intervened at the most 

 adjacent point for crossing from one coast to the other, 

 and probably not long before the foundations of 

 Zancle (now Messina) were laid. The event may syn- 

 chronise with the close of that transition era of convul- 

 sive phenomena, which includes the bursting of the 

 Thracian Bosphorus at the volcanic Cyanean islands ; 

 the Greek deluges; the separation of Eubcea from 

 Attica; and the passage of a large diluvian wave 

 across the isthmus of Corinth, which has left indelible 

 marks on all the coasts in the vicinity, and was parti- 

 cularly recorded at Dodona. * They were the neces- 

 sary precursors of the first swarming of the tribes that 

 came down the Hellespont, and commenced the heroic 

 age of Greece and Italy. 



In the Adriatic, at the summit of the gulf, we fincj 

 Adria or Hadria, said to have been built on the sea 

 shore by Tarchon, leader of the antique Etruscan 

 people, about the time of the Trojan war. The present 

 town, standing upon the rubbish of two others, is now 

 fifteen and a half miles distant from the nearest mouth 

 of the river Tartarus, which is still six miles within the 

 farthest point of land projecting in the sea. f It is 



* Scholiast upon the 16th Iliad, v. 233, quoting Thrasy- 

 bulus, an ancient author, and other comments. 



f Now Po di Levante, and most likely the oldest bed of 

 the Padus or Po ? The lowest stratum of ruins was at the 

 depth of more than twenty feet. 



