ch
advances towards the east and the shores of Asia, meets and repels
the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is
bounded by the harbor; and the southern is washed by the Propontis, or
Sea of Marmara. The basis of the triangle is opposed to the west, and
terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division
of the circumjacent land and water cannot, without a more ample
explanation, be clearly or sufficiently understood.

The winding channel through which the waters of the Euxine flow with
a rapid and incessant course towards the Mediterranean, received the
appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history,
than in the fables, of antiquity. A crowd of temples and of votive
altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested
the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion of the Grecian
navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the
dangers of the inhospitable Euxine. On these banks tradition long
preserved the memory of the palace of Phineus, infested by the obscene
harpies; and of the sylvan reign of Amycus, who defied the son of Leda
to the combat of the cestus. The straits of the Bosphorus are terminated
by the Cyanean rocks, which, according to the description of the poets,
had once floated on the face of the waters; and were destined by the
gods to protect the entrance of the Euxine against the eye of profane
curiosity. From the Cyanean rocks to the point and harbor of Byzantium,
the winding length of the Bosphorus extends about sixteen miles, and its
most ordinary breadth may be computed at about one mile and a half. The
new castles of Europe and Asia are constructed, on either continent,
upon the foundations of two celebrated temples, of Serapis and of
Jupiter Urius. The oldcastles, a work of the Greek emperors, command
the narrowest part of the channel in a place where the opposite banks
advance within five hundred paces of each other. These fortresses were
destroyed and strengthened by Mahomet the Second, when he meditated the
siege of Constantinople: but the Turkish conqueror was most probably
ignorant, that near two thousand years before his reign, continents by
a bridge of boats. At a small distance from the old castles we discover
the little town of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, which may almost be
considered as the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as
it begins to open into the Propontis, passes be