es were destroyed and strengthened by
Mahomet the Second when he meditated the siege of
Constantinople; but the Turkish conqueror was most probably
ignorant that near two thousand years before his reign
Darius had chosen the same situation to connect the two
continents by a bridge of boats. At a small distance from
the old castles we discover the little town of Chrysopolis
or Scutari, which may almost be considered as the Asiatic
suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as it begins to
open into the Propontis, passes between Byzantium and
Chalcedon. The latter of these two cities was built by the
Greeks a few years before the former, and the blindness of
its founders, who overlooked the superior advantages of the
opposite coast, has been stigmatised by a proverbial
expression of contempt.

"The harbour of Constantinople, which may be considered as
an arm of the Bosphorus, obtained in a very remote period,
the denomination of the _Golden Horn_. The curve which it
describes might be compared to the horn of a stag, or as it
should seem with more propriety, to that of an ox. The
epithet of _golden_ was expressive of the riches which every
wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure
and capacious port of Constantinople. The river Lycus,
formed by the conflux of two little streams, pours into the
harbour a perpetual supply of fresh water, which serves to
cleanse the bottom and to invite the periodical shoals of
fish to seek their retreat in that convenient recess. As the
vicissitudes of the tides are scarcely felt in those seas,
the constant depth of the harbour allows goods to be landed
on the quays without the assistance of boats, and it has
been observed that in many places the largest vessels may
rest their prows against the houses while their sterns are
floating in the water. From the mouth of the Lycus to that
of the harbour, this arm of the Bosphorus is more than seven
miles in length. The entrance is about five hundred yards
broad, and a strong chain could be occasionally drawn across
it, to guard the port and the city from the attack of an
hostile navy.

"Between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the shores of
Europe and Asia receding on either side include the Sea of
Marmora, which was known to the