Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/130

108 struck by the resemblance, yet with a writer of so high a character as Polybius, we must necessarily demur to an opinion which goes so far to impugn his general authority, since we find that he makes no mention at all of Strato's name; that he altogether disclaims having taken up his ideas from the tales of voyagers, and asserts that he has derived them from a careful investigation of natural causes only.

It is not a little surprising to observe that Dr. Clarke has given this surmise apparently as his own, deducing his inference chiefly from the shallows prevailing about Taganrog, and the mouth of the Don. 'From all this,' he says, 'it may not be unreasonable to conclude, that both the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, by the diminution their waters hourly sustain, will at some future period become a series of marsh lands, intersected only by the course and junction of the rivers flowing into them!' Now as he professes to have diligently examined, and greatly extols the accuracy of Strabo, particularly in his description of the coasts of the Crimea, it is hardly to be supposed that the passage in question should have escaped his observation, even if he should not have been aware of that of Polybius; and we can only imagine that, finding in his notes a memorandum to this effect, which had been originally inserted in order to recall the passage of Strabo to his recollection, he had forgotten, at the moment of writing, from whence he had derived the hint, and accordingly worked it up inadvertently as a suggestion of his own. His own voyage, at least. from Odessa to Constantinople, and the terrific sea he encountered in the deep waters of the Euxine, might have sufficed to show him that this ancient prophecy was as far as ever from its accomplishment.

To return, however, to our British frigate: on the 13th of November she arrived at Sebastopol, and remained there for the best part of four days; but, partly owing to the quarantine; partly to the jealousy of the Russian authorities, who would barely allow Captain Lyons to pull up the inner harbour in his boat attended by one of the boats of the Russian admiral; and partly from the state of the weather (for it snowed hard during nearly the whole of her stay), little or nothing could be accomplished either in the way of observation or discovery. That, however, is perhaps the less to be regretted, because Sebastopol and the adjacent country was a scene on which Dr. Clarke had bestowed his most particular attention, aided by the talents and experience of Professor Pallas; and because Captain Jones has given us a very copious and exact account of everything belonging to its modern appearance and