Journal of a Tour in the Levant Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 edition. Excerpt: ...to get on, lest the torrents of Mount Ida should be too much swoln to admit of our proceeding; we set off in rain, rode all day in rain, and arrived in rain. We left Bairamitch at half-past eight, and encountered so furious a gust just out of its walls, that, our horses not being able to face it, we stood with our backs to it for ten minutes, resisting the clamorous advice of our surigees and janizary to return to the town, for we knew if we did, we should not be able to persuade them to advance again; we rode over the summit of the south range of Mount Ida, which we began to ascend at half-past eleven, and mounted for two hours before we reached the top, which was surrounded by other heights, with the intervention of very deep valleys; the whole mountain is covered with lofty pines, on its top we had a terrible thunderstorm, and being then in a thick grove of pines, it was as dark as in the early part of the morning, except when the mountain was illuminated by the frequent flashes of vivid lightning; we were so high that we counted only sixteen seconds interval between the peals of the thunder and the flash of the lightning; one flash of lightning came at the same moment with the thunder; indeed it was so tremendous that we thought ourselves lucky to escape the fate of Xerxes's soldiers, of whom many were killed, says Herodotus, by thunder and lightning on this mountain. The view from the top is most extensive and magnificent, but we were so completely enveloped in clouds to-day, that we could hardly see 200 yards before us; half way down on the south side, two large torrents joined each other, over which are built wooden bridges with stone foundations; their course was furiously rapid, and they rolled with great noise over a bed of stone; the...