which often renders its protection ineffectual in its distant dependencies;-these impediments, to which others might be added, are peculiarly felt in Asia Minor. A disguised dress, the assumption of a medical character, great patience and perseverance, and the sacrifice of all comforts, afford the only chances of investigating the country; and even these will be insufficient without an intimate knowledge of the language and manners of the people. Had Burckhardt been spared to science, these interesting provinces, the most highly favoured by nature, though wasted and desolated by the Turk, would have presented a still wider field for those eminent talents and that unsubdued courage, which enabled him to elucidate the obscure tracts of Egypt and Nubia.

Of modern travellers, two only have traversed this beautiful region for scientific purposes; Paul Lucas in 1705 and 1706, and Captain Kinneir in 1813 and 1814. But even the travels of these persons consisted merely of three or four routes instead of one; the state of the provinces and various incidental difficulties having rendered every deviation from the main road wholly impracticable. The fact is, that the most successful traveller can scarcely hope to effect more than a rapid passage along the principal roads, obtain a transient glance of some of the remains of antiquity, note the distances of places, their relative bearings, and the situations of remarkable towns or mountains.

It is, therefore, obvious, that the geography of Asia Minor, can be elucidated only by combining the journals of different travellers, and, from the information thus collected, making a gradual approximation to a detailed map of the country. To this object, Mr. Walpole has greatly contributed by the publication of Colonel Leake's valuable journal of his route through the centre of Asia Minor, from Constantinople to the coast of Cilicia. We should have been better pleased, however, if the dingy map of Asia Minor, in which the respective routes of Koehler, Browne, and Leake are professedly traced, had been omitted altogether. The reader is only encumbered with its

assistance.

Scientific geography is apparently a rugged and uninviting pursuit. It ministers, however, to nobler and more expanded science, and it is a requisite step to him who would acquire by actual survey or by reading, a minute and accurate view of the world which he inhabits, of man, modified by climate, religion, and polity, and of governments influenced reciprocally by the characters and dispositions of the different races subject to their control; the painful but necessary ascent to a vast eminence from which the mind may expatiate over a Jarge and comprehensive space of contemplation. For this reaVOL. XVII. N. S.

N

son, we have no hesitation in extracting Colonel Leake's concise but masterly review of the present state of the geography of Asia Minor.

The line' (he speaks of his own route from Constantinople to Cilicia) is one of the most important in the province; and the latitude and longitude of its Southern extremity having been lately ascertained by Captain Beaufort, it may be now laid down on the map with certainty. This and two or three other lines, of which the extremities are equally certain, furnish, together with a few observations of latitude in the interior of the peninsula, a good foundation for the skeleton of a map, where, however deficient we may be in filling up the outline, many points, and the direction of the principal ridges of the mountains, may be satisfactorily traced. In our further progress, we shall be greatly assisted by the knowledge of the coast already obtained; for this part of the geography of Asia Minor is in a much more advanced state than that of the interior, of which five-sixths are still a blank. By several partial surveys, by the observations of Beauchamp in the Black Sea, but, above all, by the surveys made by Captain Beaufort, of the southern and part of the western coast, in 1811 and 1812, it may now be said, that one half of the coast is accurately known in detail, and that of the other parts, no point of importance is much in error, so that future routes across the Peninsula, between two points of the coast, may be laid down with greater accuracy. It should be observed, that routes in a North and South, or N.E. and S.E. direction, are now by much the most valuable: the frequent passage of travellers from Europe to India, or from Constantinople and Smyrna to Persia and Syria, or in the opposite direction, having multiplied the longitudinal routes, whilst we possess very few in the transverse direction.

It may possibly assist the geographer, if I briefly subjoin the authorities on which all our knowledge of the geography of Asia Minor rests. The elder travellers may be confined to Tavernier, Tournefort, Paul Lucas, Otter, and Pococke. Tavernier informs us, that he began his travels by a visit to England in the reign of James the First. But he affords no geographical matter relating to the central parts of the Asiatic peninsula, except of the caravan road from Smyrna to Tokát, which passed by Cassabà, and across the salt country to the Kizil Ermak. Tournefort traversed Asia Minor only in one direction, from Erzerum to Angura, by Tokat, and thence to Brusa. Paul Lucas was sent out in 1704 by Louis the XIVth. But, unfortunately, Lucas was not well adapted by previous study even for those branches of investigation to which his attention was particularly directed by his employers, namely, the collection of coins and inscriptions. By assuming the medical character, he secured a good reception at the towns, and protection from the governors; but the banditti, which at this period infested every part of the country, obliged him always to travel in haste; and he was not qualified to derive as much advan

The position of its Northern extremity, Constantinople, is known by a variety of observations.

tage from his journeys as a more enlightened traveller might have done. The names of places are often disfigured by his careless mode of writing. His ignorance and credulity made him delight in the absurd tales which the traveller so often hears in these half-civilized countries, at the same time that he passes by many useful topics. But his itinerary is as correct as he was capable of making it; and, with all his faults, he has furnished us with a greater number of routes than any other traveller in Asia Minor. Next to Lucas, Otter is the most useful of the early travellers. He was a Swede, sent to Persia by the Court of France in 1734; and he passed from Constantinople through Asia Minor by Isnik, Eskisherh, and Adana. Among our own countrymen, Pococke is the only traveller of the last century who has published his route with sufficient precision to be useful to the geographer. His narrative is obscure and confused, and his journey in Asia Minor is, therefore, of much less importance than it might have been made by so enlightened and persevering a traveller. In 1739, having visited a great part of Ionia and Caria, he ascended the valley of the Mæander to Ishekli and Sandakli, whence he crossed to Beiad, Sevrihissar, and Angura.

Nieburh's route in 1766, an account of which would have been published had not a fire destroyed all the copper plates of his engravings, was through Erkle, Konia, Kutaya, and Brusa. He made the observations of latitude which have already been mentioned ; and Major Rennel is in possession of a copy of the map of his route, which had been struck off before the fire.

In 1797, Mr. Brown traversed the range of Taurus to Bostan, Kesaria, Angura, and Nicomedia. But among recent travellers, Captain Kinneir has made the most important additions to our geographical knowledge of Asia Minor. He was one of the many persons who crossed the northern part from Tokat by Amasia and Boli. This route has been laid down with great accuracy, but is of little use in connecting the geography of the northern parts, until the longitude of some of its points is known, and we have some other routes intersecting it in a direction North and South. Of several distinct routes in the ancient provinces of Mysia, Lydia, and Caria, we have many descriptions in Smith, Wheler, Spon, Chishull, Pococke, and Chandler.' pp. 187-192.

The catalogue which we have just extracted, we strongly recommend to the geographical student. We refer him also to the learned citation of authorities, upon which is founded our knowledge of the ancient geography of the interior of Asia Minor; and particularly to the fifth chapter, which contains many useful and recondite observations both on the ancient and the modern geography of part of the Southern coast of Asia Minor, and those districts of the peninsula which were traversed by General Koehler. The notes to this chapter evince the soundest judgement and the deepest erudition.

We reluctantly pass by several important papers in this valuable miscellany. The late Lieutenant Colonel Squire's travels through the ancient Cole Syria, is replete with interesting in

formation. We must find room, however, for a short extract from Mr. Fazakerley's journey from Cairo to Mount Sinai, which tends to elucidate a question in natural history as to the distinct races of the camel and the dromedary, on which Buffon, Gibbon, and other writers, seem to have been essentially mistaken.

I cannot quite satisfy myself about these two animals. Camels are generally said to have two humps on the back, and the dromedary but one; in this country, however, there are none with two humps, and the natives use "camel" and "dromedary " without reference to any distinction between them but to their comparative size and lightness; a dromedary here bearing the same relation to a camel, that with us a hunter does to a race-horse. In the Northern parts of Asia near the Caspian, and in the Crimea, as well as towards Constantinople, there is, I believe, a breed of camels with two humps; but here, as well as in Egypt, the slow camels that march with heavy loads, and the dromedaries used for purposes of expedition, have neither of them more than one hump. The camel and the dromedary breed together, and it is difficult in their mixed progeny, to say, to which tribe an individual should belong. "Camel" is occasionally used as a generic term to express all animals of this description. "Dromedary" is always used to denote a particular class.'

To this passage, the following quotation from the Fauna Orientalis of Forskal, is subjoined by the Editor, and it throws too strong a light over this physical problem, to be omitted.

"Camelus vulgaris. Djammel. Animal natam ad tolerandos labores et incommoda orbis meridionalis. Os et gingivæ mirâ cartalagine inductæ ne noceant spinæ plantarum deserti, quæ omnes fere armatæ sunt, quasque cetera animalia horrent; quarum vero belluo camelus est. Dromedarius. Hadgin. A camelo non specie sed propagatione variat; corpore apto et gracili. Cursu equo citatior. Bactrianus. Bocht. Gibbo dorsi duplice. Exoticus, et proceribus tantum inter animalia rariora reservatus.” Common Camel. Djammel. An animal framed for labour and to sustain the inconveniences of Southern climates. His mouth and lips are covered with a thick cartilage, to protect them from the plants of the desert, which are for the most part prickly. Dromedary. Hadgin. Varies from the camel, not in species, but in breed; of a light and slender frame, and quicker than the horse. Bôcht. Has two humps on his back. An exotic animal, and kept only amongst other rare animals for persons of consequence.'

Mr. Wilkins has communicated to Mr. Walpole's collection, an ingenious dissertation on the Sculptures of the Parthenon. Our article has already reached a somewhat unusual length; but every topic that relates to the noblest monuments of human genius, has so awakening an interest, that we should not do justice to ourselves, were we hastily or frigidly to dismiss it. The

M. P. for Lincoln.

Elgin Marbles, as they are called, (we do not enter into the question of their acquisition,) constitute a school of sculpture, of which the models, though they appear little better than mutilated and shapeless fragments, are the most exquisite that have in any period adorned this department of art. It was under the creative bands of Phidias and the protection of Pericles, that sculpture started at once to life and maturity. Of that great artist, the reputation had hitherto rested on the slender notices of historians. It was reserved to our own time and country, to have his genius embodied in actual specimens before our eyes, to confirm the truth of history, and to prove, that the revolution of twenty centuries has not only added nothing to this beautiful art, but that even its most triumphant efforts in later times, have been vain aspirations after an excellence which has perpetually eluded pursuit; an excellence, the exclusive boast and glory of that splendid era.

Such being our impressions, we cannot suppress our regret at observing, that Mr. Wilkins begins his disquisition with a remark which considerably derogates from the transcendent merit of these beautiful remains. We were aware, indeed, that this gentleman, in his evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons, had unluckily adopted an hypothesis, of which we had hoped that Mr. Payne Knight, who first started it, would remain the exclusive proprietor; that Phidias never worked in stone, and consequently, that the sculptures lately in the Parthenon, and now transferred to England, were the work of inferior artists and assistants. But this extraordinary notion has been so triumphantly refuted by M. Visconti, that we can hardly persuade ourselves that Mr. Wilkins still adheres to it. Yet, what conclusion are we to draw from the position with which he begins his paper?-that the slight notice taken by Pausanias of the sculptures of the two pediments of the Parthenon, justifies the inference, that, however estimable they appear in the eyes of modern criticism, they excited no strong 'sensation in the mind of the writer accustomed to the contemplation of works of higher pretensions.' We concede, however, to Mr. Wilkins, that it is somewhat singular, that so minute a chronicler as Pausanias generally was of these matters, should have made so slight a mention of the great ornaments of the Parthenon. There might, in our opinion, be various reasons for this circumstance. The very celebrity of the great works of the Parthenon, which every successive traveller had described, which every person who had sojourned in Athens had seen, and of

"Lettre du Chev. Canova, et deux Memoires lus à l'Institut Royal de France, sur les Ouvrages de Sculpture, &c. &c. &c. Par le Chev. Viconti." Londres, 1816.