Both Fiedler and Strong (Statistics of Greece, p. 169) dwell with great reason upon the inestimable value of Artesian wells for the country.
[331] Ross, Reise auf den Griechischen Inseln, vol. i. letter 2, p. 12.
[332] The Greek language seems to stand singular in the expression χειμαῤῥοῦς,—the Wadys of Arabia manifest the like alternation, of extreme temporary fulness and violence, with absolute dryness (Kriegk, Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde, p. 201, Leipzig, 1840).
[333] Thucydid. ii. 102.
[334] Strabo, ix. p. 407.
[335] Colonel Leake observes (Travels in Morea, vol. iii. pp. 45, 153-155), “The plain of Tripolitza (anciently that of Tegea and Mantineia) is by far the greatest of that cluster of valleys in the centre of Peloponnesus, each of which is so closely shut in by the intersecting mountains, that no outlet is afforded to the waters except through the mountains themselves,” etc. Respecting the Arcadian Orchomenus, and its inclosed lake with Katabothra, see the same work, p. 103; and the mountain plains near Corinth, p. 263.
This temporary disappearance of the rivers was familiar to the ancient observers—οἱ καταπινόμενοι τῶν ποταμῶν. (Aristot. Meteorolog. i. 13. Diodor. xv. 49. Strabo, vi. p. 271; viii. p. 389, etc.)
Their familiarity with this phenomenon was in part the source of some geographical suppositions, which now appear to us extravagant, respecting the long subterranean and submarine course of certain rivers, and their reappearance at very distant points. Sophokles said that the Inachus of Akarnania joined the Inachus of Argolis: Ibykus the poet affirmed that the Asôpus, near Sikyon, had its source in Phrygia; the river Inôpus of the little island of Delos was alleged by others to be an effluent from the mighty Nile; and the rhetor Zôilus, in a panegyrical oration to the inhabitants of Tenedos, went the length of assuring them that the Alpheius in Elis had its source in their island (Strabo, vi. p. 271). Not only Pindar and other poets (Antigon. Caryst. c. 155), but also the historian Timæus (Timæi Frag. 127, ed. Göller), and Pausanias, also, with the greatest confidence (v. 7, 2), believed that the fountain Arethusa, at Syracuse, was nothing else but the reappearance of the river Alpheius from Peloponnesus: this was attested by the actual fact that a goblet or cup (φιάλη), thrown into the Alpheius, had come up at the Syracusan fountain, which Timæus professed to have verified,—but even the arguments by which Strabo justifies his disbelief of this tale, show how powerfully the phenomena of the Grecian rivers acted upon his mind. “If (says he, l. c.) the Alpheius, instead of flowing into the sea, fell into some chasm in the earth, there would be some plausibility in supposing that it continued its subterranean course as far as Sicily without mixing with the sea: but since its junction with the sea is matter of observation, and since there is no aperture visible near the shore to absorb the water of the river (στόμα τὸ καταπῖνον τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ ποταμοῦ), so it is plain that the water cannot maintain its separation and its sweetness, whereas the spring Arethusa is perfectly good to drink.” I have translated here the sense rather than the words of Strabo; but the phenomena of “rivers falling into chasms and being drunk up,” for a time, is exactly what happens in Greece. It did not appear to Strabo impossible that the Alpheius might traverse this great distance underground; nor do we wonder at this, when we learn that a more able geographer than he (Eratosthenês) supposed that the marshes of Rhinokolura, between the Mediterranean and the Red sea, were formed by the Euphrates and Tigris, which flowed underground for the length of 6000 stadia or furlongs (Strabo, xvi. p. 741: Seidel; Fragm. Eratosth. p. 194): compare the story about the Euphrates passing underground, and reappearing in Ethiopia as the river Nile (Pausan. ii. 5, 3). This disappearance and reappearance of rivers connected itself, in the minds of ancient physical philosophers, with the supposition of vast reservoirs of water in the interior of the earth, which were protruded upwards to the surface by some gaseous force (see Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 8). Pomponius Mela mentions an idea of some writers, that the source of the Nile was to be found, not in our (οἰκουμένη) habitable section of the globe, but in the Antichthon, or southern continent, and that it flowed under the ocean to rise up in Ethiopia (Mela, i. 9, 55).
These views of the ancients, evidently based upon the analogy of Grecian rivers, are well set forth by M. Letronne, in a paper on the situation of the Terrestrial Paradise, as represented by the Fathers of the Church; cited in A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, etc., vol. iii. pp. 118-130.
[336] “Upon the arrival of the king and regency in 1833 (observes Mr. Strong), no carriage-roads existed in Greece; nor were they, indeed, much wanted previously, as down to that period not a carriage, waggon, or cart, or any other description of vehicles, was to be found in the whole country. The traffic in general was carried on by means of boats, to which the long indented line of the Grecian coast and its numerous islands afforded every facility. Between the seaports and the interior of the kingdom, the communication was effected by means of beasts of burden, such as mules, horses, and camels.” (Statistics of Greece, p. 33.)