“The magic river in its tortuous wheel
Defrauds the mariner; and where his keel
Plough’d up the pliant wave−the rustic’s share
Delves in the soil, and plants his harvest there.
The moving waves to fixed furrows rise;
The sportive kid the dolphin’s place supplies.
The shepherd’s pipe delights the grazing sheep,
Where the hoarse sailor’s voice outroared the boisterous deep.”
Thus it happened that several celebrated towns, situated on its banks, are not now to be traced there. The city of Myus stood on a bay; the constant deposit of mud by the river obstructed the ingress of salt-water, and the bay was changed into an inland lake; the alluvial and marshy soil, generated by the slime, afforded a nidus to vast swarms of insects; and so Myus was infested, and called “the city of gnats.” The swarms at this day are an intolerable nuisance; towards evening, the inside of tents become black with them. Myriads of winged insects cling to the poles and canvass. The torture they give is so insupportable, that the sufferers blow them up with gunpowder, and often set fire to their tents, to get rid of a plague equal to any of those of Egypt. Miletus, celebrated for its woollen manufacture and rich dyes−the birth-place of one of the seven wise men, and the capital of Ionia−was ruined by the Meander; the capricious stream removed itself from its vicinity, and, for an easy and inviting approach, prohibited ingress by depositing inaccessible mounds of mud.
The process, which for revolving centuries marked this singular river, is still going on; deposits are daily made of soft soil, and that which had been left before, hardened into firm ground. This new-created land is stretching beyond the estuary of the stream, and the promontories which marked its mouth, as its barrier against the encroaching of the sea, are now so remote from it, that they are seen distant inland hills. A judicious traveller remarks, that it is probable the land will be pushed away, to join the island of Samos, and such a change will be wrought on this coast by the caprice of the river, that “barren rocks may be enamelled with rich domains, and other cities may rise and flourish on the bounty of the Meander.”