THUNDER-STORM IN THE FOREST. 
729 
blazing stroke, so profoundly dark the instantaneous change ; 
and so horrible was the crash, and the clap of thunder that 
accompanied it, both men and horses took fright, setting off they 
knew not whither; though not without the sad entanglement 
of the poor animals who carried the baggage, and a few falls of 
our own beasts over the uneven and saturated ground. How 
we arrived, it is not easy to describe, but at ten o’clock we en¬ 
tered our menzil at Kandag, drenched to the skin. The distance 
from Doozchee is called eleven hours, but I should calculate it 
twenty-five miles. 
November 26th. — This appears a large and flourishing village; 
at least as far as I could judge in the brief time from our entrance 
to our exit, for at four o’clock this morning we started again ; 
still riding for some hours in the dark, and feeling our way 
through woods, or occasionally crossing narrow tracts of plain. 
At the termination of twenty miles we came to the banks of 
the river Saccaria, the ancient Sangarius, where we halted at a 
lone house, to see if we could obtain a few eggs and some 
bread. From thence we immediately crossed the stream by 
a wooden bridge, so insecure as to threaten a fracture some¬ 
where at every step ; but its fragile structure may be supposed, 
since it is obliged to be annually re-erected after the mountain 
floods. The Saccaria takes its rise far to the south-east, and 
after many windings arrives at the point of this bridge, whence 
it pours on to the north-east, having been augmented by a 
stream from the Lake of Sabanja, till taking a bend rather to 
the north-west, it flows into the Black Sea not far from the pro¬ 
montory of Karbeh, the ancient Calpe. The whole undulating- 
sweep of this coast of the Euxine, from the gulf of Sam soon, is 
full of objects of interest; Heraclea now Ereckli, Sinope, &c. 
5 A 
VOL. II. 
