all proceed to the sober duty of describing the Bay
of Navarino, as, it will be seen, a place of some interest in the annals
of ancient as well as of modern warfare.

With our usual _literary honesty_, (we trust a characteristic of our
whole conduct,) we have to acknowledge our obligations to the "Travels"
of M. Pouqueville for the preceding view. "The port of Navarino, certainly
one of the finest in the world," says Sir William Gell, in his interesting
_Journey in the Morea_, "is formed by a deep indenture in the Morea, shut
in by a long island, anciently called Sphacteria, famous for the defeat
and capture of the Spartans, in the Peloponnesian war, and yet exhibiting
the vestige of walls, which may have served as their last refuge. This
island has been separated into three or four parts by the violence of the
waves, so that boats might pass from the open sea into the port in calm
weather, by means of the channel so formed. On one of the portions is the
tomb of a Turkish saint, or santon; and near the centre of the port is
another very small island, or rock." The modern name of the island is
_Sphagia_.

Navarino, called by the Turks _Avarin_, and the Greeks _Neo-Castron_, is
the Pylos of the ancients, and the supposed birthplace of the venerable
Nestor--standing upon a promontory at the foot of Mount Temathia, and
overlooking the vast harbour of the same name as the town. It is surrounded
only by a wall without a ditch; the height commanding the city is a little
hexagonal, defended by five towers at the external angles, which, with
the walls, were built by the Turks in 1572, but were never repaired till
after the war with the Russians in 1770; the Turks having previously taken
it from the Venetians in 1499. At the gate of the fortress is a miserable
Greek village; and the walls of the castle itself are in a dismantled
condition.

"The town within the wall," says Sir W. Gell, "is like all those in this
part of the world, encumbered with the fallen ruins of former habitations.
These have been generally constructed by the Turks, since the expulsion
of the Venetians; for it appears, that till the long continued habit of
possession had induced the Mahometans to live upon and cultivate their
estates in the country, and the power of the Venetian republic had been
consumed by a protracted peace, a law was enforced which compelled every
Turk to have a habitation in some one of the fortresses of the country.
But the habitatati