HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. and there are volcanic cones broken up into a thousand fan- tastic forms, in strong contrast with the plain whence they shoot up. The formation is a coarse conglomerate, yellowish in colour, nowhere very hard, yet varying considerably in firmness and density. 1 The salt lakes, and generally the geological forma- tion of the soil, clearly indicate that the central plateau emerged from an inland sea. The waters, raised by successive volcanic efforts, were hemmed in on all sides by a double and triple belt of massive lofty ridges, which they had slowly to under- mine and pierce, ere they found an outlet into the oceans sur- FIG. 45. General view of Kumbet. 2 rounding the peninsula. At first the waters that escaped from the rocky walls were nothing but rivulets ; but ere long they gathered themselves into impetuous streams, as they descended the broad grades of the elevated tableland towards the Euxine and the Mediterranean. During their course they often helped to fill lakes that had suddenly emerged and as suddenly disappeared, in one of those upheavals which helped to build up the plateau, 1 A small fragment of the Midas rock has been handed to me by Professor Ramsay. I had it analyzed by M. Munier-Chalmas, who returned it with the following note : " The stone I examined is the result of volcanic agency in the Miocene or Pliocene period. It is a rhyolithic tufa, with fragments of pumice and obsidian. The microscope reveals the presence of broken crystals of quartz, orthose, oligoclase, and amphibole, sprinkled in the shapeless mass ; along with a fragment of an older rock or micaceous schist with blue crystals." 2 The above sketch is by M. Tomakieviez, from a photograph of M. Gustave Fougeres, of the French School at Athens. It faces the tomb we study and represent a little further on.
