FROM THE HELLESPONT TO RHODES. 
in 
as cruel, the instant they board a vessel, put every individual 
of the crew to death. They lurk about the isle of Fourmi, iu 
great numbers ; taking possession of bays and creeks the least 
frequented by other mariners. After they have plundered a 
ship, and murdered the crew, they bore a hole through her 
bottom, sink her, and take to their boats again.* 
# An extract from Mr. Walpole’s Journal, containing an account of his journey 
from Smyrna to Halicarnassus, will here give the reader some information concern¬ 
ing the coast along which we were now sailing. 
“ As many of the monuments and superb remains on the coast of Asia have been 
minutely and faithfully described in the Ionian Antiquities, and by Chandler, I shall 
not repeat their remarks. The various inscriptions which l copied, both on the coast, 
and in the interior of the country, many of them entirely unknown, cannot obtain 
room here. I shall state a few miscellaneous remarks, which occurred as I travelled 
along the coast southward to Halicarnassus. 
“ The country between {Smyrna and Ephesus is very mountainous: in one part of 
the road, near the Caister, you pass the base of the ancient Gallesus, under most 
frightful precipices, the habitation of some eagles: a few pines are seen on the sides- 
of the mountains ; lower down is the arbutus, in great abundance, with its scarlet 
fruit, called now, as anciently, papaocuA.a (see He'sych.); and by the torrents, occa¬ 
sionally crossing the road, is the plane and the oleander. The fields arejaid down in 
cotton plantations, Indian corn, and wheat; among these are olive trees, with vines 
growing around them. The present inhabitants of Ephesus are a few fishermen, who 
live in huts on the banks of the Caister, over which they ferried me. This river 
winds through a muddy plain, in some measure formed by it, and through lofty reeds, 
with a slow yellow stream, without any of the swans which the ancients describe; it 
empties itself into the sea, at the distance of an hour from the morass, near the sup¬ 
posed site of the famous temple of Diana. The subterranean vaults and passages,, 
close to the east of this marsh, (into which I descended with a rope, and found only 
bats above^and water below,) are imagined by some to be the remains and substruc¬ 
tion of this temple. The church of St. John, built at Ephesus by Justinian, and 
which Procopius says was very magnificent, may have been raised from the materials, 
presented by the temple of Diana; and this will in some measure account for the 
little that can be seen or known of the latter. Near these remains, to the southwest 
of the stadium, is anarch; on the top of this,.climbing by the wall, as no ladder was 
to be found, I copied a Greek inscription, in perfect preservation. The agha of the 
place rode about with me the first time I was at Ephesus; and imagined that every 
inscription I copied, pointed out the situation or sum of a hidden treasure. The 
bushes in the plain, among which are the agnus cdstvs and centanrea bcmdicta , con¬ 
ceal many remains of antiquity. The Ephesians were supplied with their marble 
from the hill (Prion) whereon part of their city was built; and porphyry and granite, 
of which gigantic specimens are lying in the plain, were brought up to the town by 
means of the river, and by the canal into the actual morass which once formed the 
port. 
“ As you advance southward from Ephesus and Scala Nuova, (anciently Neapolis,) 
the high mountain, Mycale, covered with arbutus, wild olive, and ilex (from which 
the peasants make charcoal,) presents itself; and soon after a lofty white summit is 
seen to the,south; this is the top of Mount Titanus; called now, from its form, 
Bisbcr-mach, Five-fingers. The most commanding view of this was from the Acropolis 
of Priene, from which I descended, on the southeast side, by a way almost impassable, 
resting at times to contemplate the ruins of the temple of Minerva at Priene, and to 
cast my eyes over the plain of the Meander, toward the Lake of Myus, on the north¬ 
east side of which rises Mount Titanus in all its majesty. In the “ Ionian Antiqui¬ 
ties’’ a minute detail of the architecture of the temple of Minerva has been publish¬ 
ed; and in Chandler’s Inscriptions, n a faithful copy from the inscribed marbles that 
lie among the ruins. From the summit of the Acropolis of Priene I saw to the south 
the vast accretion ofland, marshy, and muddy, occasioned by the Meander. Priene, 
once on the coast, was, in the time of Strabo, five miles from the sea. I crossed the 
river, winding through tamarisks, in a triangular boat; its breadth here was about 
thirty yards: at a later season of the year I passed it again, higher up, in Cana, over 
a wooden bridge, sixty paces long. From the summit of the theatre of Miletus, facing 
the northwest, is a good view of the mazes of the river. The distance of the sea from 
the theatre ! conjecture to be seven miles. The high mountains which are to be passed 
in going from Miletus, and the site of the temple of Apollo, near the promontory Po* 
