DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5541#0529
494
LAKH OF BULDUR.
[Chap, xxvni.
strongly impregnated with salt as to enable the inha-
bitants to collect it from the shores after the waters had
dried up, was only slightly brackish, with a strong taste
and smell of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. It was very
shallow; and so far from its being impossible for birds and
other animals to live in it, immense flocks of wild fowl were
swimming on the surface ; these were chiefly coots, with a few
wild ducks, and a large white wading bird with long black
legs and beak. It is therefore impossible that this can be the
Palus Ascania mentioned by Arrian* as being in Alexander's
line of march from Sagalassus into Phrygia, and of which he
says that the salt crystallizes naturally, and that the in-
habitants use no other. It has evidently been confounded
by modern travellers and geographers f with another not far
off, which agrees with Arrian's description. It may, how-
ever, possibly be the lake alluded to under the same name
of Ascania by Pliny,J who remarks that the water at the
surface was fresh, while that below was nitrous.
Passing round the head or N.E. extremity of the lake, I
observed an extensive plain to the N.E.; and on our left a
long but broken wooden causeway stretching across the
head of the lake through the water at some distance from the
shore. From thence traversing the marshes we continued
N.N.E., along the foot of the hills on our left, until at
two p.m. we reached Ketziburlu, a straggling village of
about 100 houses, surrounded with gardens and orchards,
which extend into the plain on the east. An insulated
conical hill, a bare mass of limestone, rises immediately to
the east of the village, on the summit of which are the
ruins of a Turkish Tekiyeh or shrine.
We were now approaching the high country whence
issue the feeders of the Marauder. I was told that three
hours to the north, on the road to Sandukli, a large river
suddenly rises in the midst of a Turcoman village in the
* Arrian, lib. i. c. 29.
t Col. Leake, Tour in Asia Minor, p. 115.
t Plm. Hist. Nat, lib. xxxi. c. 10. Cramer, Asia Minor, vol. ii. p. 297.
LAKH OF BULDUR.
[Chap, xxvni.
strongly impregnated with salt as to enable the inha-
bitants to collect it from the shores after the waters had
dried up, was only slightly brackish, with a strong taste
and smell of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. It was very
shallow; and so far from its being impossible for birds and
other animals to live in it, immense flocks of wild fowl were
swimming on the surface ; these were chiefly coots, with a few
wild ducks, and a large white wading bird with long black
legs and beak. It is therefore impossible that this can be the
Palus Ascania mentioned by Arrian* as being in Alexander's
line of march from Sagalassus into Phrygia, and of which he
says that the salt crystallizes naturally, and that the in-
habitants use no other. It has evidently been confounded
by modern travellers and geographers f with another not far
off, which agrees with Arrian's description. It may, how-
ever, possibly be the lake alluded to under the same name
of Ascania by Pliny,J who remarks that the water at the
surface was fresh, while that below was nitrous.
Passing round the head or N.E. extremity of the lake, I
observed an extensive plain to the N.E.; and on our left a
long but broken wooden causeway stretching across the
head of the lake through the water at some distance from the
shore. From thence traversing the marshes we continued
N.N.E., along the foot of the hills on our left, until at
two p.m. we reached Ketziburlu, a straggling village of
about 100 houses, surrounded with gardens and orchards,
which extend into the plain on the east. An insulated
conical hill, a bare mass of limestone, rises immediately to
the east of the village, on the summit of which are the
ruins of a Turkish Tekiyeh or shrine.
We were now approaching the high country whence
issue the feeders of the Marauder. I was told that three
hours to the north, on the road to Sandukli, a large river
suddenly rises in the midst of a Turcoman village in the
* Arrian, lib. i. c. 29.
t Col. Leake, Tour in Asia Minor, p. 115.
t Plm. Hist. Nat, lib. xxxi. c. 10. Cramer, Asia Minor, vol. ii. p. 297.