The greatest distance between its extreme north and south points—the North Cape of Norway and Cape Matapan in Greece—is about twenty-four hundred miles; and from east to west—from Cape La Roca, or the “Rock of Lisbon,” to Cape Apsheron, the eastern extremity of the Caucasus range, on the Caspian—about three thousand miles.
EUROPEAN GULFS
AND INLETS
On the north the White Sea, so called from the ice and snow which bind it up for more than half the year, reaches in from the Arctic Ocean. From the Atlantic, the shallow North Sea, or German Ocean, and the English Channel (called La Manche, or “The Sleeve,” by the French) break in to separate the British Isles from the mainland; and from the former the Skager Rak, “the crooked and boisterous strait,” leads through the Kattegat, the “Cat’s Throat,” and the “Belts” of the Danish islands, to the Baltic, or the “East Sea” of the Germans, and its continuations, the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Riga.
Farther southward, the stormy Bay of Biscay, named from the Basque province of Vizcaya, sweeps in along the northern coast of Spain, and beyond the Peninsula the narrow Strait of Gibraltar leads into the great Mediterranean, which stretches eastward for twenty-three hundred miles.
THE MEDITERRANEAN AND
ITS ARMS
Among the many branches of this great basin are the Gallic Sea, running north toward Gaul, between Spain and the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, forming the stormy Gulf of the Lion and that of Genoa; the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Sardinia and Italy; the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic running north from it, between Italy and the Balkan peninsula, towards the ancient seaport of Adria, perhaps the oldest in Europe.
Beyond Greece, the island-studded Ægean leads north to the narrow inlet of the Dardanelles, opening into the little Sea of Marmora, named from its marble-yielding islands, and from that by the Bosporus or Oxford (the canal of Constantinople), into the second great Mediterranean basin, the Black Sea or Euxine, with its offshoot the shallow Sea of Azof. The Caspian Sea, forms part of the natural frontier between Europe and Asia.
The indented seaboard of Europe measures not less than sixty thousand miles.
PENINSULAS OF
EUROPE
Between each of these branches of the sea there run out corresponding promontories and peninsulas of the mainland. These are most numerous on the south side, where we find the Crimea, Turkey and Greece, Italy and Spain, bordered by the islands of the Archipelago, by Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and the Baleares.