coin, of wine-taverns, and of feveral games in general ufe. The
female Lydians were much admired for the elegance of their
drefs, the beauty of their perfons, and their wonderful performance
of a grand, choral, circular dance, in honour of Bacchus.
C H A P . LXXIX.
Re-gain the road to Magnejia — The weather — A t Durguthli —
To mount Stylus— O f Stylus the city and Sale— To Magnefa
— O f Niobe.
A F T E R riding an hour by the fide of the calm and noble
lake, we turned to the fouth-weft to recover the road from
Sardes to Magnefia by mount Sipylus. We crofled the ridge,
and at eleven again forded the Hermus. The ftream was very
wide, rapid, and turbid. We entered on the road by three bar-
rows, ranging on the fide clofe by each other. We Hopped,
after two hours more, near a green barrow, at a neat coffee-hut
by Uran-lui, four hours from Sardes, Our dog, which we had
named Sart, here very wifely forfook us, and, as we fuppofed,
returned to the Turcomans, his old mailers.
T he mountains, when we moved from Bazocleu in the morning?
were all clear, except Sipylus, which was enveloped in
miff. On the way a Ihower or two fell, which cooled the air,
and had occafioned a delicious freftmefs and fragrancy. Now
Sipylus was quite hid j and thunder, with violent rain, proceeded
from the black clouds, in which it was enwrapped. At
half after four, the fun broke out, the clouds brightened, and
above them its fummit was difcernible. Thin fleeces were yet
hanging low on the fide o f the mountain beyond the Hermus.
A f t e r dining under a tree by a clear ftream we rode
brifldy on, and arrived in two hours at Durguthli or Cafabar.
This
This is a town of confiderable extent, in the'plain, with many
minarees of mofques riling amid trees. The khan was moft
exceedingly wretched, and our ftay, though for a Angle night,
teemed tedious. The place was a great thoroughfare; and the
accounts we received of the malady raging at Smyrna, became
at every ftage, as we advanced, more terrible as well as more
authentic.
E arly in the morning we went on toward mount Sipylus.
Qn our left was an opening into a plain, between that mountain
and the end of mount Tmolus 5 and beyond it was a lofty ridge
covered with fnow. Magnefia, with the river Hermus, is on
the north-fide of Sipylus. There muft be the jundtion of the
three plains, the Sardian, that of the Hermus, and the Cayf-
trian ; which have been deferibed as below, or to the weft of
Sardes; as contiguous j and as unrivalled in fertility and beauty.
We palled a wide water-courfe, and a river, and then a ftream,
after which we came to the extremity of the mountain.
Mount Sipylus was antiently noted for frequent thunder.
At Smyrna I had often liftened to the rumbling, and marked
the remote lightning, which gleamed from that quarter. A
city of the fame name as the mountain was once the capital of
Masonia or Lydia. It was recorded, that, in the time of Tantalus,
prodigious earthquakes had happened. Then many villages
were abforbed, the city Sipylus was fubverted, and marlhes
were changed into lakes. The credibility of this relation was
demonftrated, as Strabo remarks, by the dreadful effects of the
earthquake under Tiberius, and the overthrow of Magnefia.
Where Sipylus had flood was a marfh called Sale. The mountain
terminates on the north-eaft in a vaft naked precipice, and
beneath it was a very limpid water, with a fmall marfti, not
far from a fepulchre cut in the rock. There perhaps was Sale
and the fite of Sipylus.
L 1 We