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I also observed the following record of an offering to Jupiter, the saviour, by the persons whose names are mentioned:

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ΑΡΑΔΙΟΣ ΠΡΟΞΕΝΟΣ

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A circumstance occurs annually at Rhodes which deserves the attention of the literary traveller: it is the ceremony of carrying Silenus in procession at Easter. A troop of boys, crowned with garlands, draw along, in a car, a fat old man, attended with great pomp. I unfortunately missed bearing testimony to this remarkable example, among many others which I had witnessed, of the existence of Pagan rites in popular superstitions.* I was informed of the fact by Mr. Spurring, a naval architect, who resided at Rhodes, and Mr. Cope, a commissary belonging to the British army; both of whom had seen the procession. The same ceremony also takes place in the Island of Scio.

From the neighbouring Island of Syme, so famous for its divers, women come to Rhodes for employment. They are the porters and water carriers of the island; and appear distinguished by a peculiar mode of dress, wearing white turbans on their heads. Their features have, moreover, a singular character, resembling those of the Tzigankies, or gypsies in Russia. In Syme, and in the Isle of Nisyrus, now called Nisari, whose inhabitants are principally maintained by the occupation of diving for sponges, the following singular custom is observed. When a man of any property intends to have his daughter married, he appoints a certain day, when all the young unmarried men repair to the sea side, where they strip themselves in the

* Even in the town of Cambridge, and center of our university, such curious remains of ancient customs may be noticed, in different seasons of the year, which pass without observation. The custom of blowing horns upon the first of May, (old style) is derived from a festival in honour to Diana At the Hawkie, as it is called, or Harvest Home, I have seen a clown dressed in woman's clothes, having his face painted, his head decorated with ears of corn, and bearing about him other symbols of Ceres, carried in a wagon, with great pomp and loud shouts, through the streets, the horses being covered with white sheets; and when I inquired the meaning of the ceremony, was answered by the people, that "they were drawing the HARVEST QUEEN." These ancient customs of the country did not escape the notice of Erasmus, when he was in England. He had observed them, both at Cambridge and in London; and particularly mentions the blowing of horns, and the ceremony of depositing a deer's head upon the altar of St. Paul's church, which was built upon the site of a temple of Diana, by Ethelbert king of Kent, in the time of Melitus, first Bishop of London, as appears from a manuscript in the Cottonion collection. "Apud Anglos." says Erasmus, mos est Londini, ut certo die populus in summum templum Paulo sacrum inducat longo hostili impositum caput feræ, cum inamœno sonitu CORNUUM VENATORIORUM. Hac pompa proceditur ad summum altare, dicas fomnes afflatos furore." Delia Erasmi Ecclesiastae, lib. i.Op. tom. V. p. 701. See also Knight's Life of Erasmus, Camb. 1726 p. 297 † Syme retains its ancient appellation; derived from Syme, a daughter of Jalysus, according to Stephanus Byzantinus.

presence of the father and his daughter, and begin diving. He who goes deepest in the sea, and remains longest under water, obtains the lady.*

A north wind had prevailed from the time of our leaving the Dardanelles. It changed, however, as soon as we had put to sea from Rhodes, which induced us to stand over for the Gulph of Glaucus, now called Macri Bay, situated between the ancient provinces of Caria and Lycia, in Asia Minor;† a place difficult of access to mariners, and generally dreaded by Greek sailors, because when sailing toward it with a leading wind, they often encounter what is called a "head wind," blowing from the gulph causing a heavy swell in its mouth, where they are also liable to dangerous calms, and to sudden squalls from the high mountains around. The appearance of all the south of Asia Minor, from the sea, is fearfully grand; and perhaps no part of it possesses more eminently those sources of the sublime, which Burke, has instructed us to find in vastness and terror, than the entrance to the gulph into which we were now sailing. The mountains around it, marking the confines of Caria and Lycia, are so exceedingly high, that their summits are covered with deep snow throughout the year; and they are visible, at least to one third part of the whole distance, from the Asiatic to the African continent. From Rhodes they are distinctly seen, although that island is rarely discerned from the mouth of the gulph, even in the clearest weather. Of this gulph it is not possible to obtain correct ideas, even from the best maps, as it is falsely delineated in all that have yet been published. It inclines so much toward the south, after passing the isles which obstruct the entrance, that ships may lie as in a basin. Its extremity is quite landlocked, although no such notion can be formed of it, from the appearance it makes, either in D'Anville's atlas, or any more recent publication. The air of this gulph, especially in summer, is pestiferous. A complete mal-aria,† prevails over every part

*Egmont and Heyman, vol. i. p. 266. When the antiquities obtained by our English ambassador in Athens were sunk, by the loss of a vessel in the Bay of Cerigo, together with the valuable journals of his secretary, Mr. Hamilton, relating to his travels in Greece and Egypt, that gentleman, with great presence of mind, sent for some of these divers; who actually succeeded in penetrating to the ship's hold, and in driving large iron bolts into the cases containing marbles, at the bottom of the sea, in ten fathoms depth: to these they afterward applied cords, and thus succeeded in raising part of the ship's cargo.

Cicero, [lib. i. De Divinatione,] places the city of Telmessus in Caria. It seems rather to have belonged to Lycia. The mountains to the north and west of it formed the boundary between the two provinces.

The name generally given, in the Mediterranean, to those mephitic exhalations prevalent during the summer months, where the land has not been properly drained. The mouths of all rivers are thus infested; also, all cotton and rice grounds; places called lagunes, where salt is made; all the plains of Thessaly and Macedonia, par

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of it. Sir Sidney Smith, being here with the Tiger, assured me, that in the compass of one week, from the time of his arrival, he had not less than one hundred of the crew upon the sick list For myself, I soon became a striking example of the pow erful influence of such air, not only from the fever which there attacked me, but from a temporary privation of the use of my limbs, which were not restored until we put to sea again. I have generally remarked, during my travels, that wherever the ruins of ancient cities exist, the air is bad; owing to the stagnant waters caused by the destruction of aqueducts, of conduits for public baths, and by the filling up of channels, formerly employed to convey those waters, which are now left, forming marshes and stinking pools. But it is not only to such causes that we may ascribe the bad air of the Bay of Macri. The lofty mountains, which entirely surround it, leave the gulph, as it were, in the bottom of a pit, where the air has not a free circulation, and where the atmosphere is often so sultry, that respiration is difficult: at the same time, sudden gusts of cold wind rush down, at intervals, from the snowy heights, carrying fever and death to those who expose their bodies to such refreshing, but deceitful gales. Yet the temptations to visit this place, notwithstanding the danger, are lamentably strong; there is no part of Grecian territory more interesting in its antiquities than the Gulph of Glaucas. The ruins of Telmessus are as little known as they are remarkable, in the illustration they afford concerning the tombs and the theatres of the ancients.

We had no sooner entered the mouth of the gulph, than we encountered the tremendous swell our pilot had taught us to expect. At one moment, a gust, as of a hurricane, laid our vessel upon her beam ends; at another, the sails were shaking, as in a calm, and the ship pitching in all directions. In this situation, night came on. Our captain, wishing himself well out at sea, was cursing his folly for venturing into such a birth; dryly observing, that "if we did not look sharp, we should get smothered before morning." Land around us on every side, increased our apprehensions; but patience and labour at last brought us quietly to anchor on the eastern side of one of the six isles in the entrance to this bay, behind which, vessels lie most commodiously, that visit this place for the purpose of watering. During the Egyptian expedition, ships came here

ticularly those of Zeitun, the ancient Lamia, and Thessalonica; the great marsh of Bentia; all the northern and western coasts of the Morea; and the whole coast of Romelia, opposite Corcyra, now Corfu.

to obtain wood and water for the fleet; but their crews being attacked by the natives of the coast, who are a very savage race of mountaineers, it was usual to send to Cyprus for those articles.

When daylight appeared, we observed a larger island than any of those we had before noticed, lying farther in the bay, toward the east, and entirely covered with buildings, like the small island in the Lago Maggiore of the Milanese territory in Italy, called Isola bella. These buildings proved afterward to be really the work of Italians; for upon hoisting out our boat and visiting the place, we found there the ruins of a Genoese town, of considerable size, to which the inhabitants of the town of Macri were accustomed to resort, during summer, to avoid bad air. Some of the houses, porticoes, baths and chapels, are yet almost entire; and the whole had a picturesque appearance, highly striking, in the approach to it from the water. After passing this island we rowed toward the town of Macri, situated in the midst of the ruins of Telmessus; the name of which city appears in the inscription we found there, proving the accuracy of D'Anville in the position assigned to it by him. Here the bay winds round a promontory, and iuclines toward the south; presenting a beautiful harbour sheltered on every side by a mountainous coast. We landed upon the modern pier, and having paid our respects to the agha in the usual form, by taking a cup of his coffee, proceeded to the ruins. They lie toward the east and west of the present town; or, in truth, all around it; whensoever the modern town was built, it arose from the ruins of the ancient city. The first and principal ruin appears from the sea, before landing, to the west of the town. It is that of an immense theatre, whose enormous portals are yet standing. It seems one of the grandest and most perfect specimens the ancients have left of this kind of building. The situation se lected for it, according to the common custom observed throughout Greece, is the side of a mountain sloping to the sea. Thus, by the plans of Grecian architects, the great operations of nature were rendered subservient to works of art; for the mountains whereon they built their theatres possessed naturally a theatrical form; and towering behind them, like a continuation of the immense curvature containing seats for the spectators, give a prodigious dignity to those edifices. Not only the moun tains, but the sea itself, and all the vast perspective presented before the spectators who were assembled in those buildings, must have been considered, by their architects, as forming parts

of one magnificent design. The removal of any object from the rest would materially have injured the grandeur of the whole. Savary, who saw this theatre at Telmessus, says it is much less than that of Patara,* and we found its diameter not half so great as that of Alexandria Troas; yet the effect produced by it seemed greater. Some of the stones used in its construction are nine feet long, three feet wide, and two feet thick. Three immense portals, not unlike the appearances presented at Stonehenge, conducted to the arena. The stones which compose these gates are larger than those I have described. The centre gateway consists only of five, and the two others of three each, placed in the most simple style of architecture. Indeed, every thing at Telmesses is colossal. A certain vastness of proportion, as in the walls of Tirynthus or Crotona, excites admiration mingled with awe; and this may be said to characterize the traces of the Dorian colonies over all the coast of Asia Minor. The grandeur of the people, as well as the sublime conceptions of their artists, were displayed not only in the splendour of their buildings, but in the size of the materials wherewith their edifices were constructed. The kings and people of Caria and of Lycia have left behind them monuments defying the attacks of time or of barbarians. Amidst the convulsions of nature, and the earthquakes desolating the shores of the Carpathian Sea, these buildings have remained unshaken. The enormous masses constituting the doors of the Telmessensian theatre were placed together without cementation or grooving; they are simply laid one upon the other and some notion may be formed of the astonishing labour necessary in the completion of the edifice to which they belong, when it is further stated that every stone in the exterior walls of the building appears sculptured in regu lar parallelograms, formed by bevelling the edges.t

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There were, originally, five immense doors leading to the arena, although three only remain standing at this day. The largest of these being the central place of entrance, consisted of five pieces of stone; two being on each side, as uprights, and one laid across. The uprights are ten feet two inches, and five feet eleven inches, making the whole height of the door eleven feet six inches. The breadth of these stones is three feet ten

*Letters on Greece," lib. ii. p. 48. Lond. 1788.

t In all descriptions of this kind, the pencil of the artist is so much superior to the pen of the writer, that it is doubtful, whether, after every endeavour to give an idea of this appearance, the account will be intelligible.

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