On the left of the picture is the great Aqueduct, striding across the valley of Buyukderé, and leading the waters of the Bendts, or reservoirs, to Pera;--a part of that great hydraulic system, by which the precious and necessary fluid is conveyed from the shores of the Black Sea for the ablutions of the faithful in the great city. [Illustration: T. Allom. J. C. Bentley. ENTRANCE TO THE BOSPHORUS FROM THE BLACK SEA. VIEVED FROM THE GIANT’S MOUNTAIN.] This spot recalls many interesting recollections of mythology, history, and natural phenomena. Here it was the Symplegades opened to invite, and closed to crush, the stranger who dared to intrude on these forbidden seas. Here it was the Greeks entered on the expanse of the Euxine, and disclosed new regions and new sources of wealth to their enterprising countrymen: and here it was the disruptured mountains first gave a passage to the waters of a vast internal ocean, which have continued ever since to pour down with impetuosity through the great chasm. As evidence of the first of these facts, the Cyanean rocks are still seen, but now firmly fixed in immovable positions; the one bound to the European, and the other to the Asiatic shore: as evidence of the last, the debris of a volcano are every where scattered about over a great extent. Besides scoria and rocks in various states of calcification, columns of basalt lie strewed along both shores; and immediately beyond the bay of Cabacos on the Asiatic shore is a basaltic formation of great beauty and regularity, supporting the promontory of Youm Bournou, with a colonnade as regular as that at Staffa in Scotland, or the Giants’ Causeway in Ireland. If, as the Vulcanists say, these are undoubtedly the productions of fire, here are still the proofs of that mighty rupture that formed the Bosphorus. From the awful convulsions connected with it, this entrance to the Bosphorus was called by the Greeks ἱερον, or “the Sacred;” it is now called by the Turks, Boghaz.