Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/135

Rh upon the Caspian, are called by it as well as this: but still may be a Greek version of the ancient name, which the Tartars may have adopted when they became possessed of the country.

In crossing from this place to the harbour of Sebastopol, Dr. Clarke saw the vestiges of the ancient wall which defended the isthmus of this smaller Chersonesus, and found the distance to be five miles, nearly the same which is assigned by Strabo, who supplies the deficiencies of Arrian upon this coast. For as far as Arrian's account alone is concerned, it is difficult, or rather impossible to identify the places he thus mentions between Theodosia and Chersonesus; and the more so, because he has omitted some of the most striking natural features of the coast. For instance, he does not even vouchsafe a name to the great southern headland of the Crimea, the Criû-Metopon or Ram Head, so much spoken of by Strabo and others, which, looking across the Euxine to the promontory of Carambis, on the coast of Asia Minor, still called Kerempéh, divides it, as it were, into two parts, by a line which the imagination readily supplies between the thirty-first and thirty-second degrees of longitude; and which, in the estimation of the ancients, gave to the whole sea the shape of the Scythian bow: two points of land, indeed, so remarkable, that many navigators of Strabo's time, as he reports, affirmed that they had, in sailing between them, seen both lands to the northward and southward at once,–an affirmation which Dr. Clarke repeats, without any reference to Strabo, as a matter of fact, although he had himself been in no situation to verify it.

The distance from the one Cape to the other, measured by the compasses on the French chart, is one hundred and forty-four geographical miles, which Strabo calls two thousand five hundred stadia; and even supposing a ship therefore to be placed exactly midway, the distance from either promontory must be seventy-two geographical miles; so that for the land to be seen from the deck of a frigate at that distance, it must be three thousand five hundred feet high, according to strict computation, while some hundreds of feet more must be added to make it really and in practice visible. Major Rennell states the distance to be one hundred and thirteen geographical miles; and adds, that 'the high land of the Crimea is visible from Carambis,' but does not give his authority for that fact. Of the height of Cape Carambis I can find no statement; and Tournefort, who so diligently traced the whole coast from Constantinople to Trebisond, gives no estimate of it, although he mentions having doubled it, and calls it Cape Persilio. With respect to the Criû-Metopon, Dr. Clarke, who had been upon it,