ions.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in exploring the ruins of
Aiasaluk, and next morning they proceeded to examine those of the
castle, and the mouldering magnificence of Ephesus. The remains of
the celebrated temple of Diana, one of the wonders of the ancient
world, could not be satisfactorily traced; fragments of walls and
arches, which had been plated with marble, were all they could
discover, with many broken columns that had once been mighty in their
altitude and strength: several fragments were fifteen feet long, and
of enormous circumference. Such is the condition of that superb
edifice, which was, in its glory, four hundred and twenty feet long
by two hundred and twenty feet broad, and adorned with more than a
hundred and twenty columns sixty feet high.

When the travellers had satisfied their curiosity, if that can be
called satisfaction which found no entire form, but saw only the
rubbish of desolation and the fragments of destruction, they returned
to Smyrna.

The investigation of the ruins of Ephesus was doubtless interesting
at the time, but the visit produced no such impression on the mind of
Byron as might have been expected. He never directly refers to it in
his works: indeed, after Athens, the relics of Ephesus are things
but of small import, especially to an imagination which, like that of
the poet, required the action of living characters to awaken its
dormant sympathies.

CHAPTER XXII

Embarks for Constantinople--Touches at Tenedos--Visits Alexandria--
Trees--The Trojan Plain--Swims the Hellespont--Arrival at
Constantinople

On the 11th of April Lord Byron embarked at Smyrna, in the Salsette
frigate for Constantinople. The wind was fair during the night, and
at half past six next morning, the ship was off the Sygean
promontory, the north end of the ancient Lesbos or Mitylene. Having
passed the headland, north of the little town of Baba, she came in
sight of Tenedos, where she anchored, and the poet went on shore to
view the island.

The port was full of small craft, which in their voyage to the
Archipelago had put in to wait for a change of wind, and a crowd of
Turks belonging to these vessels were lounging about on the shore.
The town was then in ruins, having been burned to the ground by a
Russian squadron in the year 1807.

Next morning, Byron, with a party of officers, left the ship to visit
the ruins of Alexandria Troas, and landed at an open port, about si