THE BOSPHORUS. 
745 
of little use, works more suitable to the present system of war¬ 
fare have been constructed near it, in the erection of a consi¬ 
derable battery of heavy guns d fleur d’eau. Baron de Tott was 
the engineer. These two fortifications, ancient and modern, are 
answered on the European side by castles, supposed to stand on 
the same ground which had sustained the temple of Jupiter 
Serapis ; while this Genoese old fortress on the Asiatic bank is 
said to cover the remains of the corresponding temple of Jupiter 
Urius. About mid-way between this latter and Scutari, and at 
the commencement of a bay, we find some particularly clear 
fountains, held in peculiar veneration by the Greeks. They 
lie near a pretty village, embosomed in trees; also are not far 
from another very extensive stronghold, called the Old Castle of 
Asia, and known to be the work of the early emperors. It 
commands the narrowest part of the strait; and that is supposed 
to have been the point whence Darius threw his bridge of boats 
across, in his Scythian expedition. Another fortress, of the 
same era, answers it on the opposite bank, called the Castle of 
Europe. This last is now used as the exterminating dungeon of 
many hundreds. I was shewn the little water-gate, under which, 
having once passed inwards, no one has ever been seen to re¬ 
turn. These sanguinary towers of suspicion and silent murders, 
could not but throw a gloomy shade over the smiling waves of 
the Bosphorus. 
December. — The plague not decreasing, I remained in close 
quarters with my hospitable entertainers; shut out, indeed, from 
the city itself, but yet within sight, as well as hearing, of the 
disasters to which treachery, as well as fatalism, amongst some of 
its inhabitants subjects the rest. In short, the conflagrations y n#ye^ f *r 
which take place in Constantinople are almost as noted as its 
5 c 
VOL. II. 
