THE RIVEN TOWER, (NEAR THE TOP-KAPOUSI.)
Reading edition
“’Twas studded with old sturdy trees, That bent not to the roughest breeze; ... But these were few, and far between, Set thick with shrubs more young and green, Luxuriant with their annual leaves, Ere strown by those autumnal eves That nip the forest’s foliage dead, Discolour’d with a lifeless red, Which stands thereon like stiffen’d gore Upon the slain when battle’s o’er.” Byron.
This very remarkable object overhangs the fosse, or ditch, surrounding the city, and is one of the two hundred and eighteen towers surmounting the walls. It is a singular monument of the last siege, when it was stricken by one of the marble balls used by the Turks in their heavy pieces of ordnance; which it is supposed must have been partially spent ere it fell upon the tower, as although its weight rove it to the very earth, cleaving through the solid masonry, and forcing the two portions asunder, it failed to overthrow either; and there, after the lapse of centuries, still stands, or rather leans, the ruin, nodding over the moat like the remnant of some feudal castle, amid the wild fig-trees and luxuriant foliage which now choak up the ditch, fill every rift and chasm of the mouldering walls, and contend with the dense coating of ivy, lichens, and other creeping plants by which they are clothed. This striking monument of the fall of the Greek Empire stands near the Top-Kapousi, or “Gate of the Cannon,” and, consequently, not far from the spot where fell the last and bravest of the Paleologi; and beside it grows a splendid specimen of the Pistacia Terebinthus, of unusual size, whose bright leaves and scarlet berries are perfectly magnificent during the season.
RIVEN TOWER NEAR THE TOP-KAPOUSI.
TOUR CREVASSÉE PRÈS DE LA CIME KAPOUSI. TRÜMMER DES THURMS AN DER SPITZE DES KAPOUSI.
W. H. Bartlett. E. Benjamin.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane, 1838.
Association is thus blent with natural beauty in wreathing about the Riven Tower a distinct and powerful interest for the imagination; while the extraordinary duration of the pile in so apparently insecure and threatening a state, when, to the eye, it seems as though the next gust of wind heaving its ivied drapery must inevitably prostrate it to the earth, cannot fail to attract the notice of the curious in gravitation, from whose law it appears to be so singularly exempt.