Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/60

 14 FROM THE BLACK SEA TO THE CASPIAN

making an expedition against the Scythians prior to his in- vasion of Greece.^ We can see the place, as it is pointed out on the west bank under the height of Rumaili Hissar. A Turkish fortress, built in 1452, now crowns the elevation at this narrow span, and near it rise the buildings of Robert College, founded by American philanthropy within our own time ; while close to these halls of learning stands the very rock where Darius's throne is believed to have been placed as he watched his countless army crossing from Asia into Europe. How mighty have been the events that this storied height has looked upon since then !

As our craft steamed along, one could note that the shores, now narrowing and now expanding, were close enough at times to bear out the classic statement that persons might converse with those on the opposite side, or even that birds might be heard singing and dogs barking across its narrow banks.^ Soon we were close to the channel's mouth. Here lay the Symplegades, or Cyanean Rocks, of classic fame, guarding on either side the entrance into the Black Sea, and fabled to have dashed together ever and anon, crushing the venturesome bark that dared to pass between their hostile cliffs. One of these islands still stands on the left, near the European shore ; the other, to the right, adjoining the Asiatic bank, has gradually been washed away by the action of the waves till it has prac- tically disappeared.^ Happily since the day when Jason and the Argonauts slipped in between the clashing sides, these Wandering Rocks, as Homer calls them, have become forever fixed, so that our steam-driven ship sailed swiftly by, without a menace of the mischance that cost the oar-propelled Argo a part of her poop on that memorable voyage of antiquity.*

1 Herodotus, History, 4. 83-89, and * Homer, Od. 12. 59 fi. Apollo- cf. Justi, Geschichte Irans, in Grundr. uius Rhodius, 2. 651-620. Compare iran. Philol. 2. 442-443 ; see also many more references in Gruppe, Grosvenor, Constantinople, 1. 165. Gr. Myth, und Religionsgesch. pp.

2 Pliny, Nat. Hist. 6. 1. 2. 396, n. 13, 397, n. 3, Munich, 1906. « Grosvenor, 1. 199-205.

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