74 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



commemorated in Samothrace, when that island most 

 likely was separated from the main coast.* It was then 

 the Cymmerion Chersonesus, from a rocky island be- 

 came a great peninsula, and Phanagoria of the Moeotis 

 began to exhibit the cones of deposit from which mud 

 is ejected to the present time. The Euxine, Caspian, 

 and Mediterranean, have shoal water and islands al- 

 most exclusively on the north, and the deepest sea on 

 the south ; but the Euxine alone witnesses percussions, 

 which still continue to elevate the highlands of the 

 Crimea. From the year of the death of Mithridates, 

 to the present period, many severe earthquakes have 

 shaken the promontories of the coast, and caused de- 

 structive avalanches. At Sevastopol, the ancient Sinus 

 Portuosus of Mela, iron rings, originally fixed in the 

 rocks, probably by the Genoese, to secure vessels, in 

 natural docks, close to the shore, are now risen so high 

 above ground, as to be no longer available for that pur- 

 pose ; and, in the autumn of 1844, a sudden heaving 

 of a volcanic disturbance, caused the sea to recede from 

 the whole line of the northern coast, leaving all the 

 vessels then close in shore stranded. 



In the Caspian, Baku, like Derbent, had its walls 



* The effects of this sea wave are clearly marked on the 

 east coast of Attica and Peloponnesus. It broke across the 

 isthmus, and left marks of its violence in the Saronic and 

 Corinthian gulfs. Traditional recollections of these enor- 

 mous catastrophes are depicted in the language of St. John 

 " and every island fled away, and the mountains were not 

 found ;" Rev. xvi. 20. Patmos was in the direct line of this 

 convulsion. 



