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40 CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS ENVIRONS J
few brave defenders were compelled to take refuge in their last fortress. Here they
displayed their flag inscribed with their determination to die, and their actions coincided
with the inscription. The Turks were permitted without much opposition to enter the
fortress, and, when it was filled with the crowd, the whole was blown into the air. The
last remnant of the Ipsariots, with an equal number of Turks, perished in one indiscriminate carnage. The broad flag which had floated over the self-devoted fortress, was brought
in triumph, and suspended on this wall. It was of large size, and inscribed IIAAII0T,
the Greek anagram of " Death or Freedom;" and while the passenger " contemplated its
scorched and torn remnants hanging over the mutilated remains of the brave spirits who
unfurled it, it forcibly recalled to his mind that desperate devotion which in all ages
distinguished the Greeks."
PASS AND WATERFALL IN THE BALKAN MOUNTAINS.
This celebrated chain presents continually to the traveller a succession of objects
sometimes minute and picturesque, sometimes vast and sublime. In the recesses between
the high ridges, the scenery is rural and pastoral, equalling that of Arcadia; on the
summits of the mountains, all seems thunder-splintered rocks and riven precipices, where
the ear is stunned with the roar of cataracts, as the eye is astonished and the senses are
appalled by the vast chasms through which they rush. The Balkans are seldom seen
covered with snows, and the waters are rarely arrested by ice. At no season is observed,
as in the Alps, frost-suspended waterfalls,
" Whose idle torrents only seem to roar;"
but the sound of the bursting cataract never ceases, and the mountain-streams, fed by
continued showers, do not depend on the solution of snows, but are always tumbling
down the steeps and rushing through the ravines.
The beautiful waterfall given in our illustration, occurs in the pass by Bazaar Jik,
not far from the village of Yenikui, half way up the mountain-side. In several parts of this
pass, the vegetation is extremely luxuriant. Sometimes vast forest-trees are seen rising
from the depths of chasms, and shooting their giant trunks, as they struggle up for light
and air, till they reach the summit, and then, and not till then, expanding their noble
foliage; while the eye of the traveller, looking down into the chasm from which they issue,
is lost in the immensity of the depth, and cannot trace the vast stems of the trees to the
ground. Sometimes the vegetation is of a very different character: the mountains are
celebrated for the abundance of plants and shrubs used in dyeing, and parties set out
every year, in the season, from Adrianople, Philopopoli, and other towns, to collect them.
Nothing can then surpass the rich and glowing hue which clothes the surface. The deep
crimson of the sumachs, with the varying colours of yellow, brown, purple, and the dark
tints of the overhanging evergreens, give a beautiful variety, exceeding perhaps that of
any other region on the surface of the earth. |
