her voyage, passing Cape Emineh, the extremity of the ancient range of Hæmus, which projects into the sea, evidently the same name with Hæmoni; which, as well as Emona, a small town fort, once standing at the extremity of the range, retains the traces of the classical appellation of the Balkan.
Standing on from thence towards the gulph of Bourgas, she passed the town of Missembri, the ancient Μεσημβρία of Arrian and Strabo, &c., and which Herodotus[1] says was founded by the Byzantines, who, at the approach of the invading forces of Darius, fled from their native city, and took refuge in the Euxine. Arrian says, there was here a harbour, and that its distance from Cape Emineh was ninety stadia; which same space, measured upon the chart, is now about nine geographical miles. From Mesembria to Anchialus, he says, are seventy stadia more; and at seven geographical miles we now find the town of Ahiouli, preserving, no doubt, the remnant of its ancient name; and, in both instances, we have a result of ten stadia to the geographical mile, or six hundred to a degree.
At Bourgas, the frigate again anchored; but as the plague was raging there, had no communication with the shore, and only remained during a single night. From thence she passed Siseboli, the ancient Apollonia, and another colony of Miletus, where was a temple of Apollo, from which, as we learn from Pliny[2], in a chapter upon ancient and colossal sculpture, Lucullus carried off to Rome a statue of the god, which he afterwards erected in the Capitol, whose height was thirty cubits, and its cost one hundred and fifty talents, or, as some read the place, five hundred talents. The modern name of Siseboli retains nothing apparently of the ancient Apollonia; but we recognize in it, without any difficulty, the traces of a name it is said by D'Anville to have borne in after times, Sozopolis. The Blonde here entered the harbour in fifteen fathoms water, where she found two Russian two-deckers, a frigate, and other vessels; but, without letting go her anchor, she proceeded on her return; and after passing Cape Naida, she saw nothing more of the land until she again reached the Bosphorus.
The facts of her voyage are few, and of themselves uninteresting; except always that, simple as they are, they form a feature in our naval history which we cannot elsewhere find throughout its range. In the paucity, however, of our information, relative to the actual state of the shores of the Black Sea, they are worth recording; and, taken in connexion with the different periods of the Greek and Roman settlements in this sea, they cannot but possess a very considerable interest for the geographer, however imperfectly I may have succeeded in illustrating them.
