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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 Excerpt:...of the peasants were in the plain, a league distant from Cerasovo. The road to this town is highly romantic. There every one has his vineyard, olive-trees, and a house, which is inhabited only when the season for making wine and oil is at hand. Few of the fields were cultivated; and these few produced, for the moment, corn, tobacco, and cotton. The most luxuriant imagination of the poet cannot conceive any thing more beautiful and rich than this immense plain. It is on all sides bordered by mountains, which, in this country throughout, but here especially, present the boldest and most picturesque outlines; the relievo of which is strikingly embellished by the ever-varying hues of the atmosphere, and the gorgeous tints of an eastern sky. A thousand rills, descending from the hills, distribute beauty, verdure, and fertility, to the plain; and terminate in three broad lakes, named by the country people Nez£re; which, during the ardours of summer, serve as inexhaustible reservoirs; renewing by the abundant dews, their evaporation produces, morning and evening, the freshness of the thirsty plants, and serving the purposes of the agricultor in the cultivation of rice, cotton, Indian corn, &c. The ancients, who displayed in general so much taste in the choice of situations for their cities and buildings, could not be otherwise than struck by the beauty and advantages of these regions: hence we find every position in the surrounding hills, that admits of defence, occupied by ruins. Above the modern village of Papadodes exist the walls of a very extensive city. The acropolis, the semicircular seats of the theatre, the foundations of a temple, are quite distinct. I visited, also, the ruins of another large city, on the north side of the plain; within whose w...