District of troas. 
11 
!This beautiful bason is shaded by the oldest and finest oriental 
plane trees. Its waters take their course into the plain, where 
they fall into the Mender. The people of the place relate the 
same story of these springs as of the others at Bonarbashy, the 
supposed site of Ilium. They affirm, that they are cold in 
summer, and hot in winter, when it is said smoke ascends from 
them. The frost was on the ground at the same time we 
tasted the water, which was quite warm; yet buffaloes 
were swallowing it greedily, and seemed to delight in the 
draught they made. Its temperature is probably always the 
same. We found it equal to 69° of Fahrenheit. The shafts 
of two pillars of granite, of the Doric order, stood, one on each 
side of the fountains: and half the operculum of a marble 
soros* lay in the wall above them. Peasants brought us a few 
barbarous medals of the lower ages, with effigies of saints and 
martyrs. 
An hour after leaving this place we came to Beyramitch, 
a city belonging to the pacha of the Dardanelles, and present 
capital of all Troas. It is a large place filled with shops. The 
houses seemed better built, and more regularly disposed than 
in Constantinople. All the land around belongs to the pacha 
before mentioned, whom the Porte has nearly ruined by ex¬ 
torted contributions. In the yard of the khan, or inn, is a 
marble column, exhibiting a style of the Doric order, which I 
have observed no where but in Troas. Instead of being fluted, 
the shaft is bevelled, so as to present a polygonal surface. 
Others, of the same kind, were among the antiquities lying on 
the hill at Tchiblack. This column stands in the middle of a 
bason, serving as a public conduit, wholly constructed of an¬ 
cient materials. All these, together with an astonishing quan¬ 
tity of substances for building, were derived from ruius lately 
discovered upon a lofty bill, which we were told we should 
pass immediately after leaving Beyramitch, in our journey 
toward the source of the Mender; the pacha having made very 
considerable excavations, in search of marbles, and other ma¬ 
terials, there buried. In the streets of Beyramitch we noticed 
more than one soros of entire blocks of granite, which the in¬ 
habitants had procured from the same place. One of the in- 
habitants told us he had recently brought from thence certain 
* The substitution of soros for sarcophagus is not made with ,the smillest disposition 
to pedantry, but as it strictly applies to the ancient Greek tomb, gome remarks up- v 
this subject will be found in the following chapter, 
H 2 
