The Sun.
London, England, 1824-01-29 00:00:00

THE TROAD.

The following interesting and novel observa-
tions on the long-doubted scenery of Troy are
extracted from the ingenious Topographical Dis-
sertation of Mr. Campbell on the scenery of Os-
SIAN'S Poems, by which he has placed the Celtic
Poet on firmer ground than that on which Dr.
JOHNSON left him :

" Here I Would be understood as writing of a
hilly country, which, of course, is less liable to
such revolutions as are known to have frequently
occurred -in low and level countries—such, for
instance, as the overflowing of Earl Goodwin's
estate, on the coast of Kent, now the Goodwin
Sands, and the abandonment of the sea in the
upper part of the Levant, particularly in the
supposed neighbourhood of the Troad. A proof
of.this is, that opposite to the Isle of Tenedos,
where, Homer informi us that the Greeks pulled
their ships and galleys upon the Darden beach,
there is not any beach to be seen ; but, on the con-
trary, a bold rocky coast, the lowest of whose
cliffs is many feet above the level of the sea.*
This fact I observed in person, and only mention
it to prove some great mutation of Nature in that
vicinity, or that Homer was ignorant of the
lo-
cality which his Muse embraced—a circumstance
rather improbable from the Father of .the Poets
having been a native of those parts, lam of
opinion that the abandonment of the waters in
the upper part of the Levant is, in some measure,
corroborated by the Sacred Writings, even though
the story of Hero and Leander should not be ad-
mitted as auxiliary evidence in this poetical case,
which I think should be admitted ; for, it is not
possible that the enemoured swimmer could have
made such sure and constant passages through
the waters of the Hellespont, had the currents
ran with the same velocity in his days as they
ran at in those of Lord- BYttoN.l- If I rightly
understand the Sacred Writings_ on one .point,
it is clear to my mind that the ships of Solomon
sailed from the ports of Tyre and Sidon to the
islands of the Eastern Seas; and, to bring home
the gold of Ophiy and peacocks feathers, they
found a Cnaeb.t.L. where are now the scorching
sands of the Istt,mus of Suez.. This course, how-
ever, is conjectural, arising from my hurried ob-
servations, for there may have.it waterslcana i
canals the
Red Sea ; but the rise of
the
English Channel is matter of historical record_
.chino 1100. I would farther observe, thatndtloie
Cornish traditional story of a country named
Leones, which extended from the Land's E
Cornwall round by the Scilly Isles, thence to •
Ushant, and Guernsey on the coast of France,
embracing the western part of the English Chan-
nel, appears to me in feature of probability,
Perhaps Strabo alluded to the country of
Leones, instead of the Scilly Isles, when he
wrote of the Tyrians trading thither for tin.—
" This I know, that on my visit to the isles or
" rocks of Scilly, I could discover no traces of
" mines, whether ancient or modern."---(Camp-
bell's Ossian, p. 20 and 21, vol. 1.)
* Mr. Hobhouse agrees with me on the appearance of the
Coast.
t I would engage. to swim from shore to shore of the Hel-
lespont in two-thirds of the time Lord Byron took to effect that
romantic object.