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| Title | Constantinople and the scenery of the seven churches of Asia Minor |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Contributor (Local) |
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| Publisher | Fisher, Son, & Co. |
| Date | 1838 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Extent | 92 plates |
| Original Item Location | DR 427 .A44 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1817693~S11 |
| Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
| Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
| Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
| Identifier | exotic_201304_011 |
| Title | Page 30 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | exotic_201304_011_085.jpg |
| Transcript | 30 CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS ENVIRONS ', is highly prized; and Brusa silk is not only famous all over the East, but it is one of those articles which the Asiatic traveller sends home to his friends among his Oriental curiosities. But the circumstance which gives Brusa its greatest interest, is the mighty mountain on whose side it is built. Olympus, which literally means " all-shining," was a name by which many mountains were distinguished amongst the ancients, from their conspicuous appearance; but it seems to be applied to this vast and glittering object with peculiar propriety. It stands on a base of seventy miles in circumference, rising by itself from the plain in single and solitary grandeur. Situated in the immediate vicinity of Troy, it is by some supposed the place assigned by Homer, " Where Jove convened the senate of the skies;" and poetic fiction adds its interest to the beauty and magnificence of nature.* Ascending from the city, the traveller penetrates an immense forest, with trees of surprising magnitude. This is intersected by ravines of immeasurable depth, and his way leads along the edges of precipices of awful grandeur. He at length emerges on an extensive plain of the richest verdure, intersected with considerable rivers, rushing from the snowy ridges, which now rise before him like a vast wall. These rivers are distinguished for nourishing fish, which are nowhere else to be found in Asia Minor: congenial to the cool streams of this region, they perish and cease to exist when carried down by the currents into the heated climate below. When the venturous traveller climbs through the barrier of snow which lies before him, he issues at length upon a clear and open summit, which the region of snow girdles as with a broad belt. From the point of this cone, 10,500 feet above the level of the plain, he commands a magnificent prospect of Asia and Europe; the Euxine and the Egean, with the strait and seas that unite them, winding like rivers just below him; and feels that " the wide-seeing Jupiter" could not have selected a more judicious point to overlook the affairs of the nether world. A singular object marks this summit,—a circle of twelve large stones, resembling what we call druidical remains; but, from the Oriental region in which they are found, they recall the memory to the usages of a still more remote antiquity, when Moses " builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars," and Joshua set up " twelve stones" in the midst of Jordan, and ordered twelve more to be carried on men's shoulders, to be " set up in their lodging-place." f The snow of this mountain constitutes a considerable part of the treasures of the Turkish empire, as it does of its comforts and its luxuries. It is the exclusive property of the sultan, who farms it out to tenants, who vend it as more valuable than any produce of the soil. They are bound to supply the seraglio with a certain quantity, and the rest is disposed of to the population of Constantinople. It is sent down from the mountains cut into cuneiform wedges, and packed in felt, and caravans of mules are continually It is, however, more generally supposed that Olympus in Thessaly and Macedon is that designated by Homer. f Exod. xxiv. 4. Joshua iv. 3. |