Fig. 26.—THE CHANNEL OF SANTA MAURA.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 200,000.

Leucadia, or the “white island,” thus called because of its glittering chalk cliffs, is evidently a dependency of the continent. The ancients looked upon it as a peninsula converted into an island by Corinthian colonists, who cut a canal through the isthmus which joined it to the mainland; but this legend is not borne out by an examination of the locality. These Corinthians probably merely dug a navigable channel through the shallow lagoon which separates the island from the coast, and does not exceed eighteen inches in depth. In fact, if there were any tides in the Ionian Sea, the island of Leucadia would be converted twice daily into a peninsula. A bridge, of which there still exist considerable remains, formerly joined the island to the mainland near the southern extremity of the lagoon, whilst an island occupied by the citadel of Santa Maura—a name sometimes applied to the whole of the island—defended its entrance to the north. {78} Until recently this was the only spot in Western Greece where a grove of date-trees might be seen. A magnificent aqueduct of two hundred and sixty arches, which was also used as a viaduct, joined the citadel to Amaxiki, the chief town and harbour of Leucadia. This monument of Turkish enterprise—it was constructed in the reign of Bajazet—has sustained much injury from earthquakes. Amaxiki might be supposed to be haunted by fever, owing to the salt swamps and lagoons which surround it; but such is not the case: on the contrary, it is a comparatively healthy town, and its women are noted for freshness of complexion and beauty. To the south of it rise the wooded mountains which terminate in the promontory of Leucate (Dukato), opposite to Cephalonia. On the summit of this promontory stood a temple of Apollo, whence, at the annual festival of the god, a condemned criminal was hurled as an expiatory victim. It was celebrated, also, as the lover’s leap, whence lovers leaped into the sea to drown their passion.

Cephalonia, or rather Cephallenia, is the largest of the Ionian Islands, and its highest summit—Mount Ænus, or Elato—is the culminating point of the entire Archipelago. Mariners from the centre of the Ionian Sea can see at one and the same time Mount Ætna in Sicily and this mountain of Cephalonia. The forests of conifers, to which the latter is indebted for its Italian name of Montenero, have for the greater part been destroyed by fire, but there still remain a few clumps of magnificent firs. On its summit may be seen the remains of a temple of Jupiter. The island is fertile and populous, but suffers much from want of water. All its rivers dry up in summer, the calcareous soil sucking up the rain, and most of the springs rise from the bottom of the sea, far away from the fields thirsting after water. On the other hand, two considerable streams of sea-water find their way into the bowels of the island.

This curious phenomenon occurs a short distance to the north of Argostoli, a bustling town, having a safe but shallow harbour. The two oceanic rivers are sufficiently powerful to set in motion the huge wheels of two mills, one of which has been regularly at work since 1835, and the other since 1859. Their combined discharge amounts to 35,000,000 gallons daily, and naturalists have not yet decided whether they form a vast subterranean lake, in which beds of salt are constantly being deposited, or whether they find their way through numerous threads, and, by hydrostatic aspiration, into the subterranean rivers of the island, rendering their water brackish. The latter is the opinion of Wiebel, the geologist, and thus much we may assume for certain—that these subterranean waters and caverns are one of the principal causes of the severe earthquakes which visit Cephalonia so frequently. The island of Asteris, between Cephalonia and Ithaca, upon which stood the city of Alalkomenæ, exists no longer, and was probably destroyed by one of those earthquakes.

Ithaca of “divine Ulysses,” the modern Theaki, is separated from Cephalonia by the narrow channel of Viscardo, thus named after Robert Guiscard. The island is small, and all the sites referred to in the Odyssey are still pointed out there, from the spring of Arethusa to the acropolis of Ulysses; but the black forests which clothed the slopes of Mount Neritus have disappeared. The inhabitants are {79} excessively proud of their little island, rendered so famous by the poetry of Homer, and in every family we meet with a Penelope, a Ulysses, and a Telemachus. But the present inhabitants have no claim whatever to be the descendants of the crafty son of Laertes, for during the Middle Ages their ancestors were exterminated by invaders, and in 1504 the deserted fields were given, by the Senate of Venice, to colonists drawn from the mainland. Most of those immigrants came from the Epirus, and the dialect spoken by the islanders is much mixed with Albanian words. At the present time the island is well cultivated, and Vathy, its chief port, carries on a brisk commerce in raisins, currants, oil, and wine. Ithaca, as in the days of Homer, is the “nurse of valiant men.” The inhabitants are tall and strong, and Dr. Schliemann is enthusiastic about the high standard of virtue and morality prevailing amongst them. There are neither rich nor poor, but they are great travellers, and natives of Ithaca are met with in every populous city of the East.

[Μ]

Fig. 27.—ARGOSTOLI.

According to Wiebel. Scale 1 : 78,000.