The river Meander is perhaps the most celebrated of all antiquity, and has been made a generic term, in most languages, to designate a winding stream; poets and historians equally commemorate it. It rose near the ancient city of Celene, and, increased by various tributaries, it fell into the Ægean between Miletus and Priene. So tortuous was its course, that it was counted to have made 600 windings in its progress to the sea. It afforded Dædalus the model for his labyrinth, and travellers have discovered in many parts the various accurate outlines of some of the most convoluted letters of the Greek alphabet. It was remarkable for the alterations it caused in the countries through which it wound its way−-obliterating old, and adding new tracts. This was so frequent, and attended with such damage, that an indictment lay against the river; and the person who suffered was remunerated out of the tolls of the bridges which passed over it. This constant undermining of its banks, and the fall of them into its current, was the probable cause of its devious course. The soil, obstructed in one place, was deposited in another; while the great quantity held in suspension, was suffered to fall when the waters, meeting the obstructions of the sea, no longer supported it in the current. In its mouth it formed great bars, and threw up new lands. The changes thus made were celebrated by the ancients as so many mythological and preternatural metamorphoses:−- “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.