TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 101 
present inhabitants of the Plain of Doriscus. chap. 
. III. 
We passed this river at a season of the year ^ ,.^. , - 
when the mouths of the Danube are sometimes 
frozen ; but there was neither the appearance 
of ice, nor any thing in the temperature of 
the water corresponding with the notions enter- 
tained of the Hebrus by the Romans, and 
particularly by Horace\ 
The remainder of our journey this day was 
rendered uninteresting, over the dreary plain 
we had to pass ®. We seemed to have bidden a 
long farewell to beautiful scenery ; nothing now 
being exhibited but the bleak inhospitable fields 
(5) "Thracane vos, Hebrusque nivali compede vinctus." 
Epiitolarum,Y\h. i. Epist. ad Florum, v. 3. p. 115. Venet. 1566. 
" Aridas frondeis hyemis sodali 
Dedicet Hebro." 
Carmin. lib. i. Ode 25. v. 19. p. 46. ed. Lamhini, Venet. 156G. 
(6) Mr. IValpole makes a similar remark in his Journal ; and has 
cit*d an author of the thirteenth century, who mentions the Hebrus 
under the name of Maritza : — 
" The banks of the Maritza are covered with tamarisks. Nothing, 
however, can be more uninteresting than the wide open plain through 
which this river runs. The general appearance of the country is not 
relieved by many marks of civilization or of culture : the eye, as it 
wanders over the bleak inhospitable Thracian plains, is arrested only 
by some of those artificial mounds of earth, marking either the site of 
some battle, or the spot where the bodies of the slain where heaped 
and entombed together; or, in later times, the place where the 
standards 
