BLACK SEA. 



555 



Black 

 Sea. 



the base of an immense range of mountains. The whole 

 coast, on both sides, opened with a degree of inde- 

 scribable grand ur, and resembled a stupendous wall, 

 opposed to the great bed of waters, in which the 

 mouth of the Bosphorus was like a small crack or 

 fissure occasioned by an earthquake. 



" As we entered the straits," says Dr Clarke, " a 

 miserable lantern, placed upon a tower on either side, 

 presented to us all that was intended to serve as a 

 guidance for seamen during the night. Never were 

 light-houses of more importance, or to which less at- 

 tention has been paid. An officer of the customs put 

 off from the shore in his boat ; but contented himself 

 with merely asking the name of the captain, and did 

 not come on board. After passing the light-houses, 

 there appeared fortresses, the works of French engi- 

 neers i and their situation, on rugged rocks, had a 

 striking effect. Presently, such a succession of splen- 

 did objects was displayed, that, in all the remembrance 

 of my former travels, I can recal nothing with which 

 it may be compared. A rapid current, flowing at 

 the rate of a league an hour, conveyed us from the 

 Black Sea. Then, while we were ruminating upon 

 the sudden discharge of such accumulated waters by 

 so narrow an aqueduct, and meditating the causes 

 which first produced the wonderful channel through 

 which they are conveyed, we found ourselves trans- 

 ported, as it were, in an instant, to a new world. 

 Scarcely had we time to admire the extraordinary 

 beauty of the villages, scattered up and down at the 

 mouth of this canal, when the palaces and gardens of 

 European and Asiatic Turks, the villas of foreign 

 ambassadors, mosques, minarets, mouldering towers, 

 and ivy-mantled walls of ancient edifices, made their 

 appearance. Among these we beheld an endless va- 

 riety of objects which seemed to realise tales of en- 

 chantment ; fountains and cemeteries, hills, mountains, 

 terraces, groves, quays, painted gondolas, and har- 

 bours, presented themselves to the eye, in such rapid 

 succession, that, as one picture disappeared, it was 

 succeeded by a second, more gratifying than the 

 first. 



" On the following day, we were determined to ad- 

 venture an excursion as far as the islands anciently 

 called Cyaneae, or Symplegades, which lie off the 

 mouth of the canal. The accurate Busbequius con- 

 fessed, that, in the few hours he spent on the Black 

 Sea, he could discern no traces of their existence ; 

 we had, however, in the preceding evening, seen 

 enough of them to entertain great curiosity concern- 

 ing their nature and situation, even in the transitory 

 view afforded by means of our telescopes. Strabo 

 correctly describes their number and situation. The 

 Cyaneae,' says he, " in the mouth of Pontus, are 

 two little isles, one on the European, and the other 

 on the Asiatic side of the strait, separated from each 

 other by twenty stadia.' The more ancient accounts, 

 which represented them as sometimes separated, and 

 at other times joined together, was satisfactorily ex. 

 pinned by Tournefort, who observed, that each of 

 them consists of one craggy islai.d, but that, when 

 the sea is disturbed, the water covers the lower parts, 

 so as to make the different points of either resemble 

 insular rocks. They are, in fact, each of them join- 

 ed to the main land by a kind of isthmus, and appear 



as islands when this is inundated, which always hap- Black, 

 pens in stormy weather. But it is not clear that the " ' 



isthmus, which connects either of them with the 

 continent, was formerly visible. The disclosure has 

 been probably owing to that gradual sinking of the 

 level of the Black Sea, before noticed. The same 

 cause continuing to operate, may hereafter lead pos- 

 terity to marvel what is become of the Cyaneae ; and 

 this may also account for their multiplied appearance 

 in ages anterior to the time of Strabo. The main 

 object of .our visit was not, however, the illustration 

 of any ancient author in this particular part of their 

 history, but to ascertain, if possible, by the geologi- 

 cal phenomena of the coast, the nature of a revolu- 

 tion which opened the remarkable channel at the 

 mouth of which those islands are' situated. 



" Some time before we reached the mouth of the 

 canal, steering close along its European side, we ob- 

 served the cliffs and hills, which are there destitute 

 of verdure, presenting, even to their summits, a re- 

 markable aggregate of enormous pebbles, that is to 

 say, heterogeneous masses of stony substances, round- 

 ed by attrition in water, and imbedded in a hard na- 

 tural cement, yet differing from the usual appearance 

 of breccia rocks ; for, upon a nearer examination, 

 they appeared to have undergone, first, a violent ac- 

 tion of fire, and secondly, that degree of friction, by 

 long contact in water, to which their form was due. 

 Breccia rocks do not commonly consist of substances 

 so modified. The stratum formed by this singular 

 aggregate, and the parts composing it, exhibited, by 

 the circumstances of their position, striking proof of 

 the power of an inundation ; having dragged along 

 with it all the component parts of the mixture, over 

 all the heights above the present level of the Black 

 Sea, and deposited them in such a manner, as to 

 leave no doubt concerning the torrent which passed 

 towards the sea of Marmora. As in a field of corn 

 long agitated by a particular wind, we see the whole 

 crop incline towards one direction ; so, at the mouth 

 of the canal of Constantinople, all the strata of the 

 mountains, and each individual mass composing them, 

 lean from the north towards the south. On the 

 point of the European lighthouse we found the sea, . 

 still tempestuous, beating against immense rocks of 

 hard and compact lava ; these had separated prisma- 

 tically, and exhibited surfaces tinged by iron oxide 

 wherever a division was effected. 



" From this point we passed to the Cyanean Isle, 

 on the European side of the strait, and there land- 

 ed. The structure of the rock, of which the island 

 consists, corresponds with the nature of the strata 

 already described ; but the substances composing it 

 were perhaps never before associated in any mineral 

 aggregate". They all appear to have been more or 

 less modified by fire, and to have been cement- 

 ed during the boiling of a volcano. In the same 

 mass may be observed fragments of various colour- 

 ed lava, trap, basalt, and marble. In the fissures 

 are found agate, chalcedony, and quartz, but in 

 friable and thin veins, not half an inch in thickness, 

 and apparently deposited posterior to the settling of 

 the stratum, of which the island consists. The agate 

 appeared in a vein of considerable extent, occupying 

 a deep fissure not more than an inch wide, and coated 



