274 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



August 20. — Early in the morning we set out for Courtiatch, a 

 low wooded mountain, about two hours distant from Ourangick. We 

 left our horses at a village at the foot of it and walked to the summit. 

 Courtiatch appeared to me a hill after the high mountains we had 

 lately seen in Greece. We observed ice prepared in pits much 

 below the summit, covered with dead leaves.* 



23. — Set out on an excursion to a large lake called Beshik Seir 

 Gul by the Turks, and Robios by the Greeks, twelve hours distant 

 from Salonica. After riding two hours through a cultivated corn 

 country, we descended into a low plain covered with marsh plants ; 

 here and there cultivated with spots of cotton and sesamum, mixed 

 with melon beds. We dined in a thick grove of oaks about three 

 hours distant from Salonica. On leaving the grove we came soon to 

 the Lake Yabasil ; rode by the side of it for two hours, then over a 

 tract of corn land to the head of Beshik Seir Gul ; we continued 

 our journey four hours by the side of the lake ; low mountains 

 covered with wood were on the left. We arrived late in the evening 

 at Beshik Seir, at the house of Osman Moolah, a Turk, who kept a 

 coffee-shop. 



24, — Rose in the morning early to fish. The Lake Beshik Seir 

 Gulf- is of very considerable extent; it is five hours in length and 

 one in breadth, and twelve in circumference, and has several villages 

 on its banks. The peasants were busily employed in the harvest, and 

 we with difficulty procured horses to draw a much rent and torn 

 drag-net. The names of seventeen different sorts of fish were obtained 

 from Osman ; of these we caught the first eleven. 



1. Muraena Anguilla 'A%£A<. 



2. Esox Lucius ToZ^va. 



* Ancient writers (says Beckmann, 3d vol. H. I.) mention the custom of preserving 

 snow in pits with branches of trees over it. Athen. Deip. iii. Plutarch also, in Sympos. 

 vi. 2., speaks of chaff, and unfulled or coarse cloth as employed for this purpose. 



f This is the Lake Bolbe, l£iV<v lj 9«A«o-cr«v, Thucy. iv. 103. Belon, in going from 

 Siderocapsa to Cavalla, passed the stream which runs from Beshik towards the sea. 



