ISLANDS BELONGING TO TURKEY IN EUROPE, 

 BEING PART OF ANCIENT GREECE. 



The principal of these islands, so celebrated in the Grecian histo- 

 ry, is vJandia, the ancient Crete, famous in remote antiquity, for being 

 the birth-place of Jupiter, the kingdom of Minos the legislator, and 

 for its hundred cities. This island is situate between 35 and 36 de- 

 grees of north latitude, being 180 miles long, and 40 broad, almost 

 equally distant from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and contains 5220 

 square miles. The famous Mount Ida stands in the middle of the 

 island, and is no better than a barren rock; and Lethe, the river of 

 oblivion, is a torpid stream. Some of the vallies of this island produce 

 wine, irutts, and corn; all of them remarkably excellent in their 

 kind. The siege of Candia, the capital of the island, in modern times, 

 was of much longer duration and more bloody than that of Troy. 

 The Turks invented it in the beginning of the year 1645; and its 

 Venetian garrison, after bravely defending itself against fifty-six as- 

 sauits, tih the latter end of September, 1669, made at last, an honour- 

 able capitulation The siege cost the Turks 180,000 men, and the 

 Venetians 80,000. 



Negropont, the ancient Euboea, stretches from the south-east to 

 the noitn-wesi, and on the eastern coast of Achaia or Livadia. It is 

 ninety miles long and twenty-five broad, and contains about 13,000 

 square miles. Here the Turkish gallies lie. The tides on its coasts 

 are irregular; and the island itself is very fertile, producing corn? 

 wine, fruit, and cattle, in such abundance, that all kinds of provisions 

 are extremely cheap. The chief towns in the island are, Negropont, 

 called by the Greeks Egripo, situated on the south-west coast of the 

 island, on the narrowest part cf the strait; and Castel Rosso, the an- 

 cient Carystus. 



Lemnos, or Stalimene, lies on the north part of the iEgean Sea or 

 Archipelago, and is almost a square of twenty-five miles in length 

 and breadth. Though it produces corn and wine, yet its principal 

 riches arise from its mineral earth, much used in medicine, some- 

 times called terra Lemnia^ or terra sigiltala, because it is sealed up by 

 the Turks, who derive from it a considerable revenue. 



Scyros is about sixty miles in circumference, and is remarkable 

 chiefly for the remains of antiquity which it contains; about three 

 hundred Greek families inhabit it. 



The Cyclades islands lie like a circle round Delos, now called 

 Dilli, the chief of them, which is south of the islands Mycone and 

 Tirse, and almost mid-way between the continents of Asia and Eu- 

 rope. Though Delos is not above six miles in circumference, it is 

 one of the most celebrated of all the Grecian islands, as being the 

 birth-place of Apollo and Diana, the magnificent ruins of whose tenv 

 pies are still visible. This island is almost destitute of inhabitants. 



