370 FROM nicholaef. 
CHAP. 
IX. 
Conse- 
quences 
which re- 
sulted from 
the Open- 
ing of the 
Thracian 
Bosporus. 
reference to existing natural phenomena. At 
the bursting of the Thracian Bosporus, whether 
in consequence of a volcano, whose vestiges are 
yet visible, or of immense pressure caused by 
an accumulated ocean against the mound there 
presented, the whole of Greece experienced an 
inundation : the memory of this was preserved 
by the inhabitants of Samothrace, so late as the 
time of Diodorus Siculus'; and its effects are 
still discernible in the form of all the islands 
in the south of the Archipelago, which slope 
towards the north, and are precipitous upon 
their southern shores. Not therefore to rely 
upon those equivocal legends of antient days, 
which pretend that Orpheus with the Argonauts 
passed into the Baltic over the vast expanse of 
water then uniting it with the Euxine, we may 
reasonably conclude, as it has been asserted 
by Tournefort, by Pallas, and by other celebrated 
men, that the Aral, the Caspian, and the Black 
Sea, were once combined ; and that the whole 
of the Great Eastern Plain of Tahtary was one 
prodigious bed of water. The draining, per- 
petually taking place, by the two channels of 
Taman and Constantinople, is by some deemed 
to be greater at this time than the produce of 
all the rivers flowing into the Sea of Azof and 
(l) Diodor . Sic. lib. 5. Biblioth, Hist. 
