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ANTIQUE WELL. 
or pedestal, but here hollowed within for the purpose of sur¬ 
rounding the mouth of the well. Its outside bears traces of 
having been sculptured into festoons of entwining ivy, united 
with knots of ribband, and held by winged boys. The water 
raised through this marble cylinder is thrown into a large 
sarcophagus of the same material, but which is totally without 
ornament. Besides these memorials of the classic past, I saw 
numbers of the funeral columns, but all without inscriptions, 
amongst the tombs of the “ rude forefathers” of the present oc¬ 
cupiers of this little spot of ancient Bithynia. 
At half-past three o’clock we mounted fresh horses and set 
forth, taking a course westward over the remainder of the plain 
we had half crossed in the morning; it seemed well tilled, and 
apparently very productive. Having ridden eight miles, we 
forded the river Mandaris, and almost immediately after re¬ 
entered the wooded hills. Here another scene of forest gran¬ 
deur awaited us. From the time of our quitting Doozchee the 
clouds had been gathering before us in heavy black masses, from 
which rapid flashes of lightning occasionally burst forth ; but by 
the time we got fairly into the woods, night was then become per¬ 
fectly dark, and a motionless stillness rested on every object. 
To see or even feel our way in this black solitude seemed 
impossible, yet we were cautiously proceeding, when, in one mo¬ 
ment of time, the thunder began to roll, and the rain to pour 
down in torrents. Our horses instinctively halted for shelter under 
some branching elms in one of the glades, through which we hap¬ 
pened then to be passing ; but they had hardly taken their station, 
before we were dislodged again, by a sudden zig-zag shoot of 
lightning that struck some trees not far from us. We had seen them 
erect in the flash, but their fall we only heard; so sudden was the 
