TO INEADA IN TURKEY. 
393 
anxiety, through dread of being again detained, chap. 
we bade a last adieu to Russia; steering along y — > 
the coast towards Aherman, in the mouth of the 
Dniester this we passed in the evening. For 
the rest of our voyage, the extracts from the 
author's Journal will be accompanied by a literal 
(1) Aherman and TCilia, in Lower Moldavia, or Bessarabia, were two 
celebrated towns. The fastis the 'o|/« of Herodotus, called by the 
Ramans Julia Alba, and by the Moldavians of the present day, Czetate 
Alba, or the White City. Kilia, in the Mouths of the Danube, was 
perhaps the antieut A»«lmwv. In the Histoire de la Moldavie et 
Valachie, (printed at Neuchatel in 1781,) whence this Note is derived, 
circumstances are mentioned concerning the celebrity of Aherman, as 
the place of Ovid's exile, which have all the air of a iable. It is 
impossible to examine Ovid's writings without being convinced, from 
his own language, that the place of his residence was Tomis , which 
was much nearer to the situation of Kdia; yet, says the author of the 
work now alluded to, speakiug of Akermun, “ It is famous in having 
been the exile of Ovid. There is a lake still called by the peasants 
Lacul Ovidului, Ovid’s Lake. Ovid left Czetate Alba, and retired to a 
village three leagues distant, of which the ruins are still visible. 
Near the cottage in which he lived, there is a small spring which bears 
his name, as well as the lake on the hanks of which he used to walk. 
The peasants pretend that he composed poems in the Moldavian 
language; but none have ever been found. 1 hey have still various 
traditions concerning him.” Similar absurdities exist about his tomb, 
which they pretend to shew to travellers somewhere near Odessa. It 
seems that those who would thus move him from the marshes of the 
Ister to the Tyros, or Dniester, have never read these lines of 
the poet : 
“ Q.uam legis, ex ilia tlbi venit epistola terra, 
Latus ubl ivquoreis additur Ister aquis.” 
J,ib. v. Trisl. E!eg. V 1 1. 
Nor can they surely har e considered the force of these words : 
“ Medio defendimur/s<»o.’* 
Lib. iii. Eleg. X. 
