TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 
by rams’ heads, a mode of decoration common to 
many of the altars o (Antient Greece 5 . The shores 
of this extremity of the Thracian Bosporus were 
once covered by every description of votive 
offering ; by tablets, altars, shrines, and temples ; 
monuments of the fears or the gratitude of 
mariners, who were about to brave, or who 
had escaped, the dangers of the Euxine. Owing 
to their peculiar sanctity, the different places 
in the mouth of the Strait were all included 
under one general appellation of 'IEPA. The 
remains of those antiquities were so numerous, 
even in the time of Tournefort, that he describes 
the coasts “ as covered by their ruins;' and 
almost every thing concerning them in antient 
history has been detailed with equal brevity 
and learning, in his description of the Canal of 
the Blade Sea 6 . 
(5) During a subsequent visit which we made to this isle, with the 
Commander of an American frigate, one of his boat's crew attempted 
to break off a part of the sculpture with a large sledge-hammer; 
instigated by an inferior officer, who wished to carry home a piece of 
the marble. We were fortunate in preventing a second blow, although 
some injury were done by the first. The loss the Fine Arts have 
sustained, in this way, by our own countrymen, in Greece and Egypt, 
cannot be too much regretted. A better taste seems, however, about 
to prevail. The example of Sir ./. Stuart, w ho prevented the destruc- 
tion of the granite Sarcophagus in the great Pyramid of Djha, by his 
positive orders to those of our troops in Egypt, who were under his 
command, deserves the commendation of all Europe. 
(6) See Voyage dn Lev. Lett. XV. addressed to the French Secretary 
of State. 
2 F 
435 
CHAP. 
XI. 
VOL. II. 
