228 FROM THE HELLESPONT 
CHAP, were strung in every valley, and every mountain 
t - ^-' > v^as consecrated by the breath of inspiration'. 
While more antient records tell of an Alcceus, a 
Sappho, and a Pittacus ; of Arion, and Ter pander ; 
with all the illustrious names o^ Lesbian bards and 
■with remains ot antiquity in it, and Greek Inscriptions. The Turkish 
burying-grounds are in general extensive, as they never put a 
body where one has been already deposited; and are also offensive, as 
they do not put them deep in the ground. In the mosque at 
Bournabat, I copied a Greek Inscription from a pillar sixteen feet in 
length : it commemorates the river Meles : the last part of the inscrip- 
tion is a Senarian Iambic. This river, before it comes to Smyrna, is 
crossed by two aqueducts, to the south-east of the city ; one of which 
may be 300 feet from one hill to the opposite ; and the other about 200 
feet. The Meles flows now through part of the town, turning a few 
mills; and empties itself in the sea to the north-east. In going out 
of the Frank-street, at the north end, and towards the careening- 
ground, you walk over soil which has been gained from the sea. The 
arrow-headed grass of Sweden, which Hasselquist found here, and 
which grows where the earth has remains of sea-salt, proved to him 
that the earth had here been covered with the sea. This circumstance 
makes it difficult to arrange the present topography, in some respects, 
■with the antient. 
*' The remains of antiquity, which the Acropolis of Smyrna presents, 
are few : the chief are, part of the castle-wall, perhaps of the time of 
Lysimachus ; the cisterns ; and the site of the Stadium, built as that 
at Ephesus was, with one side on vaults, and the other on a natural 
declivity ; exhibiting now sports of a less cruel kind than it did for- 
merly. In 1806, I saw cricket-matches played heie by some of the 
merchants. A Kiln and Ba2ar were built with marble brought from 
the Theatre ; and the only specimen of antiquity which was discovered 
while I was there, was a colossal marble foot. After Constantinople, 
there is no town in the Levant which presents a more beautiful and 
interesting prospect than that which is beheld fi-om the castle-hill, 
extending over the city beneath ; the bay with the sliipping ; the 
mountains beyond; the winding Hermus on tlie north side of theGulph ; 
and the biglily-cuhivated plain adjoining to the city of Smyrna." 
IFalpole's MS. Journal. 
(1) Where each old poetic mountain 
Inspiration breathed around. 
