TO AZOF AND TAGANROG. 
41o 
particular iu our inquiries concerning the site of 
it, both among the officers of the garrison and 
the other inhabitants. We also made such 
research as the time allowed us would permit; 
but not a trace of any former city could be dis- 
covered, neither had there ever been observed, 
as a vestige, any of those remains which infal- 
libly indicate the cities of the Greeks. Of these, 
broken pottery, as the most usual, owing to its 
incorruptible nature, almost always serves to 
point out the locality of Grecian cities, even 
when medals and other marks of their topogra- 
phy have not been found. It is natural to con- 
clude, that if the Greeks ever built a city upon 
this branch of the Don, it must have stood near 
to its banks, and not at any distance from the 
water. But the site of Azof is the only spot 
near the river where it has been possible to 
build. The rest is all a swamp, even the reeds 
of which are annually inundated. To the east, 
the south, and the south-east, the interior of the 
country exhibits a parched and barren desert : 
the rest is all one vast morass, consisting of 
deep fens and water. If, then, upon the more 
elevated soil, which affords a foundation to the 
fortress and to the present village of Azof, 
such a city as Tana'is once stood, the immense 
excavations carried on by the moderns, from 
time to time, in the formation, and the reparation, 
CIIAP. 
XIV. 
