Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/295

Rh Halasarna. Near this site is a village called Cardamyla, in the church of which, called Agia Anargyre, is an inscription dedicated by a priest of Apollo. I could not hear of any village called Apostrophe, as marked in Ross's map.

Near Antimachia is the church of Christos Mos- copianos, in a field close by which are a quantity of blocks of marble, and fragments of columns, evidently from some temple, and others in the in-all of the church itself.

From Antimachia we went to Kephalas. Between these two points the great mountain-ridge of Cos is interrupted, as if by some natural convulsion. Just opposite this isthmus lies Nisyros, which seems as if it had been plucked up by the roots, and flung out of the mountain-chain into the sea, its formation so completely corresponds with the general character of the mountain-ridge of Cos. Hence the ancients, who never lost an opportunity of turning a physical phenomenon into myth, said, or rather sang, that Nisyros was broken off from Cos by Neptune. Seeing the island itself, I was reminded of a Greek vase on which Poseidon is represented upheaving the whole island of Nisyros in his arms to throw at the giant Polybotes. In this design, on the mass of rock which represents the uplifted island, a goat, a serpent, a shell, and other marine emblems are delineated, as symbols respectively of the mountain, lowlands, and the coast.$118$

The isthmus between Antimachia and Kephalas is exceedingly barren, with hardly any vegetation