Note (14) — Chapter V · OF THE ANCIENT PLACES ON THE SOUTHERN COAST OF ASIA MINOR.

Pomponius Mela gives a similar description of the Catarrhactes:—“Deinde duo validissimi fluvii, Cestros et Catarrhactes: Cestros navigari facilis, hic quia se præcipitat ita dictus. Inter eos, Perga est oppidum.” The Stadiasmus affords a still more accurate allusion to its present state, by using the plural τοὺς Καταῤῥάκτας, the Cataracts. The river on approaching the coast divides itself into several branches, which in falling over the cliffs that border the coast from Laara to Adália, form upon their upper part a mass of calcareous deposition, projecting considerably beyond the perpendicular line of the cliffs. Through the calcareous crust, the water makes its way to the sea; and being thus separated into several streams by a natural process, which has been rapidly increasing in its operation in the course of time, the river has now no determinate mouth (as it may perhaps have had in former ages), unless it be after heavy rains, when, as I saw it in passing along the coast, it precipitates itself copiously over the cliffs near the most projecting point of the coast a little to the west of Laara. Besides this natural peculiarity which divides the Catarrhactes into many branches, its main stream is further diminished by the derivations which turn the mills and supply water to the gardens and town of Adália.