THE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS. EUROPE.

BY ÉLISÉE RECLUS.

EDITED BY E. G. RAVENSTEIN, F.R.G.S., F.S.S., ETC.

VOL. I.

GREECE, TURKEY IN EUROPE, RU­MA­NIA, SER­VIA, MON­TE­NEG­RO, IT­A­LY, SPAIN, AND POR­TU­GAL.

ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS AND MAPS.

NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1883.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.[*]

UR earth is but as an atom in space, a star amongst stars. Yet, to us who inhabit it, it is still without bounds, as it was in the time of our barbarian ancestors. Nor can we foresee the period when the whole of its surface will be known to us. We have been taught by astronomers and geodesists that our planet is a sphere flattened at the poles, and physical geographers and meteorologists have applied their powers of inductive reasoning to establish theories on the direction of the winds and ocean currents within the polar regions. But hitherto no explorer has succeeded in reaching the extremities of our earth, and no one can tell whether land or sea extends beyond those icy barriers which have frustrated our most determined efforts. Thanks to the struggles of indomitable seamen, the pride of our race, the area of the mysterious regions around the north pole has been reduced to something like the hundredth part of the earth’s surface, but in the south there still remains an unknown region of such vast extent, that the moon, were she to drop upon our planet, might disappear within it without coming into contact with any part of the earth’s surface already known to us.

And the polar regions, which present so many natural obstacles to our explorers, are not the only portions of the earth not yet known to men of science. It may be humiliating to our pride as men, but we feel constrained to admit that among the countries not yet known to us there are some, accessible enough as far as natural obstacles are concerned, but closed against us by our fellow-men ! There are peoples in this world, dwelling in towns, obeying laws, and having customs comparatively polished, but who choose to live in seclusion, and are as little known to us as if they were the inhabitants of some other planet. Their frontiers are closed by war and its horrors, by the practice of slavery, by religious {2} fanaticism, and even commercial jealousy. We have heard of some of these peoples by vague report, but there are others concerning whom we absolutely know nothing. And thus it happens that in this age of steam, of the printing press, of incessant and feverish activity, we still know nothing, or very little, of the centre of Africa, of a portion of Australia, of the interior of that fine and no doubt most fertile island of New Guinea, and of vast table-lands in the centre of Asia. Nay, even the country which most men of learning love to look upon as the cradle of our Aryan ancestors is known to us but very imperfectly.

As regards most countries which have been visited by travellers, and figure more or less correctly upon our maps, a great amount of further research is required before our knowledge of their geography can be called complete. Years will pass ere the erroneous and contradictory statements of our explorers concerning them have been set right. A prodigious amount of labour must be performed before their climate, their hydrography, their plants and animals, can be thoroughly known to us. Minute and systematic researches have to be conducted to elucidate the slow changes in the aspects and physical phenomena of many countries. The greatest caution will have to be exercised in distinguishing between changes due to the spontaneous action of natural causes and those brought about by the hand of man. And all this knowledge we must acquire before we can boast that we know the earth, and all about it !

Nor is this all. By a natural bent of our mind, all our studies are carried on with reference to Man as the centre of all things. A knowledge of our planet is, therefore, imperfect as long as it is not joined to a knowledge of the various races of man which inhabit it. The earth which man treads is but imperfectly known, man himself even less so. The first origin of races is shrouded in absolute darkness, and the most learned disagree with reference to the descent, the amalgamation, the original seats, and migratory stages of most peoples and tribes. What do men owe to their surroundings? What to the original seats of their ancestors, to inborn instincts of race, to a blending with alien races, or to influences and traditions brought to bear upon them from beyond? We hardly know, and as yet only a few rays of light begin to penetrate this darkness. Unfortunately our erroneous views on many of these questions are not due solely to ignorance. Contending passions and instinctive national hatreds too frequently obscure our judgment, and we see man as he is not. The far-off savages assume the shape of dim phantoms, and our near neighbours and rivals in the arts of civilisation appear repulsive and deformed of feature. If we would see them as they really are, we must get rid of all our prejudices, and of those feelings of contempt, hatred, and passion which still set nation against nation. Our forefathers, in their wisdom, said that the most difficult thing of all was to know one’s self. Surely a comprehensive study of mankind is more difficult still.

We are thus not in a position at present to furnish a complete account of the earth and its inhabitants. The accomplishment of this task we must leave to the future, when fellow-workers from all quarters of the globe will meet to write the grand book embodying the sum of human knowledge. For the present an {3} individual author must rest content with giving a succinct account of the Earth, in which the space occupied by each country shall be proportionate to its importance, and to the knowledge we possess with respect to it.

It is natural, perhaps, that each nation should imagine that in such a description it ought to be accorded the foremost place. Every barbarous tribe, however small, imagines itself to occupy the very centre of the earth, and to be the most perfect representative of the human race. Its language never fails to bear witness to this naïve illusion, born of the very narrowness of its horizon. The river which irrigates its fields is called the “Father of Waters,” the mountain which shelters its camp the “Navel,” or “Centre of the Earth;” and the names by which primitive races designate their neighbours are terms of contempt, for they look down upon them as their inferiors. To them they are “mute,” “deaf,” “unclean,” “imbecile,” “monstrous,” or “demoniac.” The Chinese, one of the most remarkable peoples in some respects, and certainly the most important of all as far as mere numbers go, are not content with having bestowed upon their country the epithet of “Flower of the Centre,” but are so fully convinced of its superiority as to have fallen into the mistake (very excusable under the circumstances) of deeming themselves to be the “Sons of Heaven.” As to the nations thinly scattered around the borders of their “Celestial Empire,” they know them merely as “dogs,” “swine,” “demons,” and “savages.” Or, more disdainful still, they designate them by the four cardinal points of the compass, and speak of the “unclean” tribes of the west, the north, the east, and the south.

If in our description of the Earth we accord the first place to civilised Europe, it is not because of a prejudice similar to that of the Chinese. No ! this place belongs to Europe as a matter of right. Europe as yet is the only continent the whole of whose surface has been scien­tif­i­cally explored. It possesses a map ap­prox­i­mate­ly cor­rect, and its material resources are almost fully known to us. Its population is not as dense as that of India or of China, but it nevertheless contains about one-fourth of the total population of the globe; and its inhabitants, whatever their failings and vices, or their state of barbarism in some respects, still impel the rest of mankind as regards material and mental progress. Europe, for twenty-five centuries, has been the focus whence radiated Arts, Sciences, and Thought. Nor have those hardy colonists who carried their European languages and customs beyond the sea succeeded hitherto in giving to the New World an importance equal to that of “little” Europe, in spite of the virgin soil and vast area which gave them scope for unlimited expansion.

Our American rivals may be more active and enterprising than we are—they certainly are not cumbered to the same extent by the traditions and inheritances of feudal times—but they are as yet not sufficiently numerous to compete with us as regards the totality of work done. They have scarcely been able hitherto to ascertain the material resources of the country in which they have made their home. “Old Europe,” where every clod of earth has its history, where every man is the heir of a hundred successive generations, therefore still maintains the first place, and a comparative study of nations justifies us in the belief that its moral {4} ascendancy and industrial preponderance will remain with it for many years to come. At the same time, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that equality will obtain in the end, not only between America and Europe, but also between these two and the other quarters of the world. The intermingling of nations, migrations which have assumed prodigious proportions, and the increasing facilities of intercourse must in the end lead to an equilibrium of population being established throughout the world. Then will each country add its proper share to the wealth of mankind, and what we call civilisation will have “its centre everywhere, its periphery nowhere.”

The central geographical position of Europe has undoubtedly exercised a most favourable influence upon the progress of the nations inhabiting it. The superiority of the Europeans is certainly not due to the inherent virtues of the races from which they sprang, as is vainly imagined by some, for in other parts of the ancient world these same races have exhibited far less creative genius. To the happy conditions of soil, climate, configuration, and geographical position the inhabitants of Europe owe the honour of having been the first to obtain a knowledge of the earth in its entirety, and to have remained for so long a period at the head of mankind. Historical geographers are, therefore, right when they insist upon the influence which the configuration of a country exercises upon the nations who inhabit it. The extent of table-lands, the heights of mountain ranges, the direction and volume of rivers, the vicinity of the ocean, the indentation of the coast-line, the temperature of the air, the abundance or rarity of rain, and the correlations between soil, air, and water—all these are pregnant with effects, and explain much of the character and mode of life of primitive nations. They account for most of the contrasts existing between nations subject to different conditions, and point out the natural highways of the globe which nations are constrained to follow in their migrations or warlike expeditions.

At the same time, we must bear in mind that the influence exercised upon the history of mankind by the general configuration of land and sea, or any special features of the former, is subject to change, and depends essentially upon the stage of culture at which nations have arrived. Geography, strictly speaking, confines itself to a description of the earth’s surface, and exhibits the various nations in a passive attitude as it were, whilst Historical Geography and statistics show man engaged in the struggle for existence, and striving to obtain the mastery over his surroundings. A river, which to an uncultured tribe would constitute an insurmountable barrier, becomes a commercial high-road to a tribe further advanced in culture, and in process of time it may be converted into a mere canal of irrigation, the course of which is regulated by man. A mountain range frequented by shepherds and huntsmen, and forming a barrier between nations, may attract, in a more civilised epoch, the miner and the manufacturer, and in course of time will even cease to be an obstacle, as roads will traverse it in all directions. Many a creek of the sea, which afforded shelter of yore to the small vessels of our ancestors, is deserted now, whilst the open bays, which vessels dreaded formerly, have been protected by enormous breakwaters, and have become the resort of our largest ships. {5a}

Innumerable changes such as these have been effected by man in all parts of the world, and they have revolutionised the correlations existing between man and the land he lives in. The configuration and height of mountains and table-lands, the indentation of the coasts, the disposition of islands and archipelagos, and the extent of the ocean—these all lose their relative influence upon the history of nations in proportion as the latter emancipate themselves and become free agents. Though subject to the condition of his dwelling-place, man may modify it to suit his own purpose; he may overcome nature as it were, and convert the energies of the earth into domesticated forces. As an instance we may point to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia, which now separate the countries and peninsulas surrounding them, but which, when they shall have become the seats of human industry, will convert Asia into a real geographical unit, which at present it is only in appearance. Massy and ponderous Africa, monotonous Australia, and Southern America with its forests and waterfalls, will be put on something like an equality with Europe, whenever roads of commerce shall cross them in all directions, bridging their rivers, and traversing their deserts and mountain ranges. The advantages, on the other hand, which Europe derives from its backbone of mountains, its radiating rivers, the contours of its coasts, and its generally well-balanced outline are not as great now as they were when man was dependent exclusively upon the resources furnished by nature.

This gradual change in the historical importance of the configuration of the land is a fact of capital importance which must be borne in mind if we would understand the general geography of Europe. In studying SPACE we must take account of another element of equal value—TIME.

EUROPE.

I.—GEOGRAPHICAL IMPORTANCE.

N the geography of the world the first place is claimed for Europe, not because of a prejudice like that of the Chinese, but as a matter of right. Europe as yet is the only continent the whole of whose surface has been scien­tif­i­cal­ly ex­plored. It pos­ses­ses a map ap­prox­i­mate­ly correct, and its material resources are almost fully known to us. Its population is not as dense as that of India or of China, but it nevertheless contains about one-fourth of the total population of the globe; and its inhabitants, whatever their failings and vices, or their state of barbarism in some respects, still impel the rest of mankind as regards material and mental progress. Europe, for twenty-five centuries, has been the focus whence radiated Arts, Sciences, and Thought. Nor have those hardy colonists who carried their European languages and customs beyond the sea succeeded hitherto in giving to the New World an importance equal to that of “little” Europe, in spite of the virgin soil and vast area which gave them scope for unlimited expansion.

“Old Europe,” where every clod of earth has its history, where every man is the heir of a hundred successive generations, therefore still maintains the first place, and a comparative study of nations justifies us in the belief that its moral ascendancy and industrial preponderance will remain with it for many years to come. At the same time, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that equality will obtain in the end, not only between America and Europe, but also between these two and the other quarters of the world. The intermingling of nations, migrations which have assumed prodigious proportions, and the increasing facilities of intercourse, must in the end lead to an equilibrium of population throughout the world. Then will each country add its proper share to the wealth of mankind, and what we call civilisation will have “its centre everywhere, its periphery nowhere.”

The central geographical position of Europe has undoubtedly exercised a most favourable influence upon the progress of the nations inhabiting it. The superiority of the Europeans is certainly not due to the inherent virtues of the races from which they sprang, as is vainly imagined by some, for in other parts of {6} the ancient world these same races have exhibited far less creative genius. To the happy conditions of soil, climate, configuration, and geographical position, the inhabitants of Europe owe the honour of having been the first to obtain a knowledge of the earth in its entirety, and to have remained for so long a period at the head of mankind. Historical geographers are, therefore, right when they insist upon the influence which the configuration of a country exercises upon the nations who inhabit it. The extent of table-lands, the heights of mountain ranges, the direction and volume of rivers, the vicinity of the ocean, the indentation of the coast-line, the temperature of the air, the abundance or rarity of rain, and the correlations between soil, air, and water—all these are pregnant with effects, and explain much of the character and mode of life of primitive nations. They account for most of the contrasts existing between nations subject to different conditions, and point out the natural highways of the globe which nations are constrained to follow in their migrations or warlike expeditions.

II.—EXTENT AND BOUNDARIES.

The dwellers on the eastern shores of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea must have learnt, in the course of their first warlike and commercial expeditions, to distinguish between the great continents; for within the nucleus of the ancient world Africa is attached to Asia by a narrow band of arid sand, and Europe separated from Asia Minor by seas and channels difficult to navigate on account of dangerous currents. The division of the known world into three distinct parts could not fail to impress itself upon the minds of those infant nations; and when the Greeks had attained a state of maturity, and historical records took the place of myths and oral traditions, the name of Europe had probably been transmitted through a long series of generations. Herodotus naïvely admits that no mortal could ever hope to find out the true meaning of this name, bequeathed to us by our forefathers; but this has not deterred our modern men of learning from attempting to explain it. Some amongst them consider that it was applied at first to Thrace with its “large plains,” and subsequently extended to the whole of Europe; others derive it from one of the surnames of Zeus with the “large eyes,” the ancient god of the Sun, specially charged with the protection of the continent. Some etymologists believe that Europe was designated thus by the Phœnicians, as being the country of “white men.” We consider it, however, to be far more probable that its name originally meant simply “the West,” as contrasted with Asia, “the East,” or “country of the rising sun.” It is thus that Italy first, and then Spain, bore the name of Hesperia; that Western Africa received the name of El Maghreb from the Mo­ham­me­dans, and the plains beyond the Mississippi became known in our own times as the “Far West.”

But, whatever may be the original meaning of its name, Europe, in all the myths of the ancients, is described as a Daughter of Asia. The Phœnicians were the first to explore the shores of Europe, and to bring its inhabitants into contact with those of the East. When the Daughter had become the superior of her {7} Mother in civilisation, and Greek voyagers were following up the explorations begun by the mariners of Tyre, all the known countries to the north of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean were looked upon as dependencies of Europe, and that name, which was originally confined to the Thraco-Hellenic peninsula, was made to include, in course of time, Italy, Spain, the countries of the Gauls, and the hyperborean regions beyond the Alps and the Danube. Strabo, to whom were known already the most varied and fruitful portions of Europe, extends it eastward as far as the Palus Mæotis and the Tanais.[2]

Fig. 1.—THE NATURAL BOUNDARY OF EUROPE.

Scale 1 : 21,800,000.

The zone of depression extending from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Obi is shaded. The darker shading to the north of the Caspian shows the area depressed below the level of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean.

{8}

Since that epoch the limits between Europe and Asia have been shifted by geographers still further to the east. They are, however, more or less conventional, for Europe, though bounded on three sides by the ocean, is in reality but a peninsula of Asia. At the same time, the contrasts between these two parts of the world fully justify scientific men in dividing them into two continental masses. But where is the true line of separation between them? Map-makers generally adopt the political boundaries which it has pleased the Russian Government to draw between its vast European and Asiatic territories, and others adopt the summits of the Ural Mountains and of the Caucasus as the boundary between the two continents; and although, at the first glance, this delineation appears more reasonable than the former, it is in reality no less absurd. The two slopes of a mountain chain can never be assigned to different formations, and they are generally inhabited by men of the same race. The true line of separation between Europe and Asia does not consist of mountains at all, but, on the contrary, of a series of depressions, in former times covered by a channel of the sea which united the Me­di­ter­ra­nean with the Arctic Ocean. The steppes of the Manych, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and to the north of the Caucasus, are still covered in part with salt swamps. The Caspian itself, as well as Lake Aral and the other lakes which we meet with in the direction of the Gulf of Obi, are the remains of this ancient arm of the sea, and the intermediate regions still bear the traces of having been an ancient sea-bed.

[Μ]

Fig. 2.—THE RELIEF OF EUROPE.

According to Houzeau, Berghaus, Kiepert, Olsen, and others.
Scale 1 : 60,000,000.

There can be no doubt that vast changes have taken place in the configuration {9} of Europe, not only during more ancient geological periods, but also within comparatively recent times. We have already seen that a vast arm of the sea formerly separated Europe from Asia; it is equally certain that there was a time when it was joined to Anatolia by an isthmus, which has since been converted into the Bosphorus of Constantinople; Spain was joined to Africa until the waters of the Atlantic invaded the Me­di­ter­ra­nean; Sicily was probably connected with Mauritania; and the British Islands once formed a portion of the mainland. The erosion of the sea, as well as upheavals and subsidences of land, has effected, and still effect, changes in the contours of our coasts. Numerous soundings in the seas washing Western Europe have revealed the existence of a submarine plateau, which, from a geological point of view, must be looked upon as forming an integral portion of our continent. Bounded by abyssal depths of thousands of fathoms, and submerged one hundred fathoms at most below the waters of the ocean, this pedestal of France and the British Islands must be looked upon as the foundation of an ancient continent, destroyed by the incessant action of the waves. If the shallow portions of the ocean, as well as those of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean Sea, were to be added to Europe, its area would be increased to the extent of one-fourth, but it would lose, at the same time, that wealth in peninsulas which has secured to Europe its historical superiority over the other continents.

If we supposed Europe to subside to the extent of one hundred fathoms, its area would be reduced to the compass of one-half. The ocean would again cover her low plains, most of which are ancient sea-beds, and there would remain above the waters merely a skeleton of plateaux and mountain ranges, far more extensively indented by bays and fringed by peninsulas than are the coasts existing at the present time. The whole of Western and Southern Europe would be converted into a huge island, separated by a wide arm of the sea from the plains of interior Russia. From an historical as well as a geological point of view, this huge island is the true Europe. Russia is not only half Asiatic on account of its extremes of temperature, and the aspect of its monotonous plains and interminable steppes, but is likewise intimately linked with Asia as regards its inhabitants and its historical development. Russia can hardly be said to have belonged to Europe for more than a hundred years. It was in maritime and mountainous Europe, with its islands, peninsulas, and valleys, its varied features and unexpected contrasts, that modern civilisation arose, the result of innumerable local civilisations, happily united into a single current. And, as the rivers descending from the mountains cover the plains at their foot with fertile soil, so has the progress accomplished in this centre of enlightenment gradually spread over the other continents to the very extremities of the earth.

III.—NATURAL DIVISIONS AND MOUNTAINS.

The Europe alluded to includes France, Germany, England, and the three Me­di­ter­ra­nean peninsulas, and constitutes several natural divisions. The British Islands form one of these. The Iberian peninsula is separated scarcely less {10} distinctly from the remainder of Europe, for between it and France rises a most formidable range of mountains, the most difficult to cross in all Europe; and immediately to the north of it a depression, nowhere exceeding a height of 650 feet, extends from the Me­di­ter­ra­nean to the Atlantic Ocean. The geographical unity of Europe is represented to the full extent only in the system of the Alps, and in the mountains of France, Germany, Italy, and the Balkan peninsula which are connected with it. It is there we must seek the framework of continental Europe.

The Alps, whose ancient Celtic name probably refers to the whiteness of their snowy summits, stretch in an immense curve, more than 600 miles in length, from the shores of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean to the plains of the Danube. They consist in reality of more than thirty mountain masses, representing as many geological groups, and joined to each other by elevated passes; but their rocks, whether they be granite, slate, sandstone, or limestone, form one continuous rampart rising above the plains. In former ages the Alps were higher than they are now. This is proved by an examination of their detritus and of the strata disintegrated by natural agencies. But, whatever the extent of detrition, they still rise in hundreds of summits beyond the line of perennial snow, and vast rivers of ice descend from them into every upland valley. Looked at from the plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, these glaciers and snow-fields present the appearance of sparkling diadems encircling the mountain summits.

In the eastern portion of the Alpine system—that is to say, between the Me­di­ter­ra­nean and Mont Blanc, the culminating point of Europe—the average height of the mountain groups gradually increases from 6,500 to more than 13,000 feet. To the east of Mont Blanc the Alps change in direction, and, beyond the vast citadels represented by Monte Rosa and the Bernese Oberland, they gradually decrease in height. To the east of Switzerland no summit exceeds a height of 13,000 feet, but this loss in elevation is fully made up by increase of breadth. And whilst the general direction of the principal axis of the Alps remains north-easterly, very considerable mountain chains, far exceeding the central mass in breadth, are thrown off towards the north, the east, and the south-east. A line drawn across the true Alps from Vienna has a length of no less than 250 miles.

In thus spreading out, the Alps lose their character and aspect. We no longer meet with grand mountain masses, glaciers, and snow-fields. Towards the north they gradually sink down into the valley of the Danube; towards the south they branch out into secondary chains, resting upon the arched plateau of Turkey. But, in spite of the vast contrasts offered by the true Alps and the mountains of Montenegro, the Hæmus, the Rhodope, and the Pindus, all these mountain chains nevertheless belong to the same orographical system. The whole of the Balkan peninsula must be looked upon as a natural dependency of the Alps; and the same applies to Italy, for the chain of the Apennines is nothing but a continuation of the Maritime Alps, and we hardly know where to draw the line of separation between them. The Carpathians, too, must be included among the {11} mountain chains forming part of the system of the Alps. They have been gradually separated from them through the continuous action of water, but there can be no doubt that, in former times, the semicircle of mountains known as the Little Carpathians, the Beskids, the Tatra, the Great Carpathians, and the Transylvanian Alps was joined, on the one hand, to the Austrian Alps, and on the other to spurs descending from the Balkan. The Danube has forced its way through these mountain ramparts, but the passages, or “gates,” are narrow; they are strewn with rocks, and commanded by what remains of the ancient partition ranges.

The configuration of the Alps, and of the labyrinthine mountain ranges branching off from them towards the east, could not fail to exercise a most powerful influence upon the history of Europe and of the entire world. The only high-roads known to barbarians are those traced out by nature herself, and they were consequently able to penetrate into Europe only by sea, or through the vast plains of the north. Having penetrated to the westward of the Black Sea, their progress was first stopped by the lakes and difficult swamps of the Danubian valley; and, when they had surmounted these obstacles, they found themselves face to face with a barrier of high mountains, whose intricate wooded valleys and declivities led up to the inaccessible regions of eternal snow. The Alps, the Balkan, and all the other advanced chains of the Alpine system constituted an advanced defensive barrier for Western Europe, and the conquering nomad tribes who threw themselves against it did so at the risk of destruction. Accustomed to the boundless horizon of the steppes, they did not venture to climb these steep hills—they turned to the northward, where the vast plains of Germania enabled successive swarms of immigrants to spread over the country with greater ease. And as to the invaders, whom blind rage of conquest impelled to engage in the defiles of these mountains, they found themselves caught as in a trap; and this accounts for the variety of nations, and of fragments of nations, whose presence has converted the countries of the Danube into a sort of ethnological chaos. And as the débris carried along by the current is deposited in the eddy of a river, so were these fragments of nearly every nation of the East accumulated in motley disorder in this corner of the Continent.

To the south of this great mountain barrier the migrations between Europe and Asia could take place only by sea—a high-road open to those nations alone who were sufficiently advanced in civilisation to have acquired the art of building ships. Whether pirates, merchants, or warriors, they had raised themselves long ago above a state of primitive barbarism, and even their voyages of conquest added something to the stock of human knowledge. Moreover, owing to the difficulties of navigation, they migrated only in small bodies. At whatever point they settled they came into contact with populations of a different race from their own, and this intercourse gave birth to a number of local civilisations, each bearing its own stamp, and nowhere did their influence preponderate. Every island of the Archipelago, and every valley of ancient Hellas, differed from its neighbours as regards social condition, dialect, and customs, but they all remained Greek, in spite of the Phœnician and other influences to which they had been subjected. It is thus owing to the {12} configuration of the mountain chains and coast-lines that the civilisation which developed itself gradually in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean countries to the south of the Alps was, upon the whole, more spontaneous in its nature, and offered more variety and greater contrasts, than the civilisation of the far less advanced nations of the north, who were moving from place to place on vast plains.

The wide range of the Alps and of their advanced chains thus separated two distinct worlds, in which historical development went on at a different rate. At the same time, the separation between the two slopes of the Alpine system was by no means complete. Nowhere in the Alps do we meet with cold and uninhabited plateaux, as in the Andes and in Tibet, whose enormous extent forms almost insurmountable barriers. The Alpine masses are cut up everywhere into mountains and valleys, and the climate of the latter is sufficiently mild to enable man to exist in them. The mountaineers, who easily maintained their independence, owing to the protection extended to them by nature, first served as intermediaries between the peoples inhabiting the opposite lowlands. It was they who effected the rare exchanges of produce which took place between the North and South, and who opened the first commercial high-roads between the summits of the mountains. The direction of the valleys and the deeply cut mountain passes even then indicated the grand routes by which the Alps would be crossed, at a future period, for the purposes of commerce or of war. That portion of the Alps which lies between the mountain masses of Savoy and of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean would naturally cease first to form an obstacle to military expeditions. The Alps there are of great height, it is true, but they are narrower than anywhere else; besides which, the climate on the two opposite slopes is similar, and assimilates the mode of life and the customs of the people dwelling there. Far more formidable, as a natural barrier, are the Alps to the north-east of Mont Blanc, for they constitute a climatic boundary.

The other mountain ranges play but a secondary or local part in the history of Europe, when we compare them with the Alps. Still, the influence which they have exercised upon the destiny of nations is no less evident. The table-lands and snow-fields of the Scandinavian Alps form a wall of separation between Norwegians and Swedes. The quadrangular mountain fort of Bohemia, in the centre of Europe, which shelters the Chechians, is almost entirely enclosed by Germans, and resembles an island fretted by the waves of the ocean. The hills of Wales and of Scotland have afforded a shelter to the Celtic race against the encroachments of Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans. The Bretons, in France, are indebted to their rocks and landes for the fact of their not having yet become wholly French; whilst the table-land of Limousin, the hills of Auvergne and the Cevennes constitute the principal cause of the striking contrast which still exists between the inhabitants of Northern and of Southern France. The Pyrenees, next to the Alps, constitute the most formidable obstacle to the march of nations in Europe; they would have remained an insurmountable rampart down to our own time, were it not easy to pass round them by their extremities abutting upon the sea. {13}

IV.—THE MARITIME REGIONS.

The valleys which radiate in all directions from the great central masses of the Alps are admirably adapted for imparting to almost the whole of Europe a remarkable unity, whilst they offer, at the same time, an extreme variety of aspects and of physical conditions. The Po, the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Danube traverse countries having the most diverse climates, and yet they have their sources in the same mountain region, and the fertilising alluvium which they deposit in their valleys results from the disintegration of the same rocks. Minor valleys cut up the slopes of the Alps and of their dependent chains, and carry towards the sea the waters of the mountains and the triturated fragments of their rocks. Running waters are visible, wherever we cast our eyes. There are neither deserts, nor sterile plateaux, nor inland lakes and river basins such as we meet with in Africa and Asia. The rivers of Europe are not flooded as are those of certain portions of South America, which deluge half the country with water. On the contrary, in the scheme of her rivers Europe exhibits a certain degree of moderation which has favoured the work of the settler, and facilitated the rise of a local civilisation in each river basin. Moreover, although most rivers are sufficiently large to have retarded migration, they are not sufficiently so to have arrested it for any length of time. Even when roads and bridges did not exist, barbarian immigrants easily made their way from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic.

But Europe, in addition to the advantages due to its framework of mountains and the disposition of its river basins, enjoys the still greater advantage of possessing an indented coast-line. It is mainly the contours of its coasts which impart to Europe its double character of unity and diversity, which distinguish it amongst continents. It is “one” because of its great central mass, and “diversified” because of its numerous peninsulas and dependent islands. It is an organism, if we may say so, resembling a huge body furnished with limbs. Strabo compared Europe to a dragon. The geographers of the period of the revival of letters compared it to a crowned virgin, Spain being the head, France the heart, and England and Italy the hands, holding the sceptre and the orb. Russia, at that time hardly known, is made to do duty for the ample folds of the robe.

The area of Europe is only half that of South America, and one-third of that of Africa, and yet the development of its coast-lines is superior to that of the two continents taken together. In proportion to its area the coasts of Europe have twice the extent of those of South America, Australia, and Africa; and although they are to a small extent inferior to those of North America, it must be borne in mind that the arctic coasts of the latter are ice-bound during the greater portion of the year. A glance at the subjoined diagrams will show that Europe, as compared with the two other continents washed by the Arctic Ocean, enjoys the immense advantage of possessing a coast-line almost wholly available for purposes of navigation, whilst a large portion of the coasts of Asia and America is altogether useless to man. And not only does the sea penetrate into the very heart of {14} temperate Europe, cutting it up into elongated peninsulas, but these peninsulas, too, are fringed with gulfs and miniature inland seas. The coasts of Greece, of Thessaly, and of Thrace are thus indented by bays and gulfs, penetrating far into the land; Italy and Spain likewise possess numerous bays and gulfs; and the peninsulas of Northern Europe, Jutland and Scandinavia, are cut up by the waters of the ocean into numerous secondary peninsulas.

Fig. 3.—DEVELOPMENT OF COAST-LINES RELATIVELY TO AREA.

Europe.Asia.Africa.N. America.S. America.Australia.
Total area, square miles4,005,10017,308,40011,542,4009,376,8506,803,5703,450,130
Mainland area, square miles3,758,30015,966,00011,293,9307,973,7006,731,4702,934,500
Development of coast-line, miles18,60034,11016,48030,89016,39010,570
Accessible coasts17,61028,20016,48026,51016,39014,400
Ratio of the geometrical to the actual contour1 : 2·51 : 2·51 : 1·41 : 3·11 : 1·81 : 1·7

The shaded circles represent the various continents; the outer circle represents the actual extent of coast-line. The blank space between the two concentric circles represents graphically the difference between the smallest possible or geometrical contour of a country having the area of the respective continents, and the actual contour as exhibited in the existing coast-lines. Europe, being in reality only a peninsula of Asia, hardly admits of this comparison.

The islands of Europe must be looked upon as dependencies of that continent, for most of them are separated from it only by shallow seas. Candia and the islands scattered broadcast over the Ægean Sea, the Archipelagos of the Ionian Sea, and of Dalmatia, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, Elba, and the Baleares, are in reality but prolongations, or maritime out-stations, of neighbouring peninsulas. To the islands of Sealand and Fyen, at the entrance to the Baltic, Denmark owes {15} most of her commercial and political importance. Great Britain and Ireland, which actually formed a portion of the European continent in a past age, cannot be looked upon otherwise than as dependencies of it, although the isthmus which once joined them has been destroyed by the waters of the ocean. England has actually become the grand commercial emporium of Europe, and plays now the same part in the world’s commerce that Greece once played in that of the more restricted world of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean.

It is a remarkable fact that each of the European peninsulas should have enjoyed in turn a period of commercial preponderance. Greece, the “most noble individuality of the world of the ancients,” came first, and when at the height of her power governed the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, which at that time meant nearly the whole universe. During the Middle Ages Amalfi, Genoa, and Venice became the commercial agents between Europe and the Indies. The discovery of a passage round the Cape and of America diverted the world’s commerce to Cadiz, Seville, and Lisbon, on the Iberian peninsula. Subsequently the merchants of the small Dutch Republic seized a portion of the heritage of Spain and Portugal, and the wealth of the entire world was floated into the harbours of their sea-bound islands and peninsulas. In our own days Great Britain, thanks to its favourable geographical position, in the very centre of great continental masses, and the energy of its people, has become the great mart of the world. London, the most populous city of the world, is also the great centre of attraction for the treasures of mankind; but there can be no doubt that sooner or later it will be supplanted, in consequence of the opening of new commercial high-roads, and changes in the political preponderance of nations. Perhaps some city of the United States will take the place of London in a future age, and thus the American belief in the westward march of civilisation will be verified; or we may possibly return to the East, and convert Constantinople or Cairo into the world’s emporium and centre of intercourse.

But, whatever may happen in the future, the great changes which have taken place in the relative importance of the peninsulas and islands of Europe in the short span of twenty centuries, sufficiently prove that geographical features exercise a varying influence at different epochs. That which at one time was looked upon as a great natural advantage may become, in course of time, a serious disadvantage. Thus the numerous inlets and gulfs enclosed by mountain chains, which favoured the rise of the cities of Greece, and gave to Athens the dominion of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, now constitute as many obstacles to their connection with the existing system of European communications. That which in former times constituted the strength of the country has become its weakness. In primitive times, before man ventured upon the seas, these bays and gulfs formed insurmountable obstacles to the migration of nations; at a later date, when the art of navigation had been acquired, they became commercial high-roads, and were favourable to the development of civilisation; and at the present time they are again obstacles in the way of our road-builders and railway engineers. {16}

V.—CLIMATE.

The influence exercised by the relief of the land and the configuration of the coasts varies in different ages, but that of climate is permanent. In this respect Europe is the most favoured region of the earth, for during a cycle of unknown length it has enjoyed a climate at once the most temperate, the most equable, and the most healthy of all continents.

Owing to the inland seas which penetrate far into the land, the whole of Europe is exposed to the modifying influence of the ocean. With the exception of Central Russia, no part of Europe is more than 400 miles from the sea, and, as most of the mountains slope from the centre of the continent towards its circumference, the influence of the sea breezes is felt throughout. And thus continental Europe, in spite of its great extent, enjoys the advantages of an insular climate throughout, the winds passing over the ocean moderating the heat of summer and tempering the cold of winter.

The continuous north-easterly movement of the waters of the Atlantic likewise has a favourable effect upon the climate of Europe. After having been heated by a tropical sun in the Gulf of Mexico, the gulf-stream issues through the Strait of Florida, and, spreading over the Atlantic, takes its course towards the coasts of Europe. This enormous mass of warm water, equal in volume to twenty million rivers as large as the Rhone, brings the warmth of southern latitudes to the western and northern shores of Europe. Its influence is felt not only in the maritime countries of Western Europe, but to some extent as far as the Caspian and the Ural Mountains.

The currents of the air exercise as favourable an influence upon the climate of Europe as do those of the ocean. The south-westerly winds predominating on the coasts pass over the warm gulf-stream, and, on reaching Europe, they part with the heat stored up by them between the tropics. The north-westerly, northerly, and even north-easterly winds, which blow during a portion of the year, are less cold than might be expected, for they, too, have to cross the warm waters of the gulf-stream. And lastly, there is the Sahara, which elevates the temperature of a portion of Europe.

The increase in temperature due to the combined influence of winds and ocean currents amounts to 40° 50°, and even 60°, if we compare Europe with other parts of the world lying under the same latitudes. Nowhere else, not even on the western coast of North America, do the isothermals, or lines of equal annual temperature, ascend so high towards the arctic regions. The inhabitants of Europe, though they may live 900 to 1,200 miles farther away from the equator, enjoy as mild a climate as do those of America, and the decrease of temperature on going northward is far less rapid than in any other part of the globe. This uniformity of temperature constitutes one of the most characteristic features of Europe. The whole of it lies within the temperate region bounded by the isothermal lines of 32° F. and 68° F., whilst in America and Asia that privileged zone has only half this extent. {17}

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Fig. 4.—THE ISOTHERMAL ZONE OF EUROPE.

Scale 1 : 60,000,000.

This remarkable uniformity in the climate of Europe is exhibited not only in its temperature, but likewise in the distribution of its rains. The seas washing the shores of Europe supply all parts of it with the necessary amount of moisture. There is no rainless district, nor, with the exception of a portion of the maritime region of the Caspian and a small corner of Spain, any district where droughts occasionally entail the entire loss of the harvest. Rains fall not only regularly every year, but in most countries they occur in every season, the only exception being the countries of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, where autumn and winter are the real rainy seasons. Moreover, in spite of the great diversity in the physical features of Europe, the amount of rain is scarcely anywhere excessive, whether it descends as a fine drizzle, as in Ireland, or in heavy showers, as in Provence and on the southern slope of the Alps. The annual rainfall scarcely ever exceeds thirty-nine inches, except on the flanks of certain mountain ranges which arrest the passage of currents charged with moisture. This uniformity and moderation in the rainfall exercise a regulating influence upon the course of the rivers, for even the smallest amongst them, at all events those to the north of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkan, flow throughout the year. They rise and fall generally within narrow limits, and inundations on a vast scale are as rare as is want of water for purposes of irrigation. In consequence of this regularity, Europe is able to derive a greater advantage from its waters than other continents where the amount of precipitation is more considerable. The Alps contribute much towards {18} maintaining a regular flow of the rivers; the excess of humidity which falls to their share is stored up in the shape of snow and ice, which descend slowly into the valleys, and melt during the heat of summer. This happens just at a time when the rivers gain least from rain, and lose most by evaporation, and some amongst them would dry up if the ice of the mountains did not come to the aid of the waters descending from the sky. It is thus that a sort of balance is established in the economy of European rivers.

The climate of Europe is thus characterized by uniformity as a whole, and by a compensatory action in its contrasts. Regularity and freedom from excess, such as are not known in other continents, mark its ocean currents, its winds, its temperature and rains, and the course of its rivers. These great advantages have benefited its inhabitants in the past, and will not cease to do so in the future. Though small in extent, Europe possesses by far the largest area of acclimation. Man may migrate from Russia to Spain, or from Ireland to Greece, without exposing himself to any great risk of life. The inhabitants of the Caucasus and the Ural Mountains were thus able to cross the plains and mountains of Europe, and to establish themselves on the shores of the Atlantic. Soil and climate are equally propitious to man, and enable him to preserve his physical and intellectual powers wherever he goes. A migratory people might found new homesteads in any part of Europe. Their companions of travel—the dog, the horse, and the ox—would not desert them on the road, and the seed-corn which they carry with them would yield a harvest wherever confided to the earth.

VI.—INHABITANTS.

A study of the soil and a patient observation of climatic phenomena enable us to appreciate the general influence exercised by the nature of the country upon the development of its inhabitants; but it is more difficult to assign to each race or nation its due share in the progress of European civilisation. No doubt, in their struggles for existence, different groups of naked and ignorant savages must have been acted upon differently, according to their numbers and physical strength, their inborn intelligence, their tastes and mental tendencies. But who were those primitive men who first turned to account the natural resources of the country in which they dwelt? We know not; for, if we go back for a few thousand years, every fact is shrouded in darkness. We know nothing even as regards the origin of the leading nations of Europe. Are we the “sons of the soil,” and the “shoots of oak-trees,” as told in the poetical language of ancient tradition, or are we to look upon the inhabitants of Asia as the ancestors to whom we are indebted for our languages, and for the rudiments of our arts and sciences? Or did those immigrants from a neighbouring continent settle down amongst an indigenous population? Not many years ago the Asiatic origin of European nations was accepted as an established fact, and the original seats of our forefathers were pointed out upon the map of Asia. But now most men of science are agreed to {19} seek our ancestors upon the very soil which we, their descendants, still occupy. Caverns, the shores of oceans and lakes, and the alluvial beds of our rivers have yielded the remains of human industry, and even human skeletons, which clearly prove that long before these supposed immigrations from Asia there existed in Europe tribes who had already made some progress in human industry. Even in the childhood of history there existed tribes who were looked upon as aborigines, and some of their descendants—as, for instance, the Basks—have nothing in common with the invaders from the neighbouring continent. Nor is it universally admitted that the Aryans—that is, the ancestors of the Pelasgians, the Greeks, the Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs—are of Asiatic origin. Similarity of language may justify our belief in the common origin of the Aryans of Europe, the Persians, and the Hindoos, but it does not prove that their ancestral home should be looked for somewhere near the sources of the Oxus. Many men of learning[3] look upon the Aryans as aborigines of Europe, but certainty on this point does not exist. No doubt, in prehistoric times, intermigrations between the two continents were frequent; but we hardly know what directions they took, and can speak with certainty only of those migrations of peoples which are related by history. We thus know that Europe sent forth to other continents Galatians, Macedonians, and Greeks, and more recently innumerable emigrants of all nationalities, and received in turn Huns, Avares, Turks, Mongols, Circassians, Jews, Armenians, Moors, Berbers, and members of many other nations.

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ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF EUROPE

Leaving out of consideration the smaller families of nations, as well as the members of races who have not attained a national existence, Europe may be described as consisting of three great ethnological divisions, the principal boundary between which is formed by the Alps, the Carpathians, and the Balkan.

The first of these great families of European nations, the members of which speak Greco-Latin languages, occupies the southern slopes of the Balkan and of the Alps, the Iberian peninsula, France, and a portion of Belgium, as well as a few detached territories within the limits of the ancient Roman empire, altogether surrounded by alien nations. Such are the plains of the Lower Danube and a portion of Transylvania, which are inhabited by the Rumanians, and a few secluded Alpine valleys inhabited by “Romans.” On the other hand, fragments of two ancient nations have maintained their ground in the midst of Latinised populations, viz. the Celtic inhabitants of Brittany, and the Basks of the Pyrenees. Generally speaking, however, all the inhabitants of South-western Europe, whether of Celtic, Iberian, or Ligurian race, speak languages derived from the Latin, and whatever differences existed originally between these various populations, this community of language has more or less obliterated them.

The Teutonic nations form the second great group. They occupy nearly the whole of Central Europe to the north of the Alps, and extend through Holland and Flanders to within a short distance of the Straits of Dover. Denmark and the great Scandinavian peninsula, as well as Iceland, belong to the same group, and {20} the bulk of the inhabitants of the British Islands are likewise generally included in it. The latter, however, should rather be described as a mixed race, for the aboriginal Celtic population of these islands, which now exists pure only in a few remote districts, has amalgamated with Anglo-Saxon and Danish invaders, and the language of the latter has become mixed with mediæval French, the resulting idiom being almost as much Latin as Saxon. The development of national characteristics has been favoured by the isolation in which the inhabitants of the British Islands found themselves, and they differ essentially from continental neighbours—the Scandinavians, Germans, and Celto-Latins—in language and customs.

The Slavs, or Slavonians, form the third group of European nations. They are less numerous than the Greco-Latins, but the territories they occupy are far more extensive, for they spread over nearly the whole of Russia, over Poland, a large portion of the Balkan peninsula, and about one-half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. All the great plains to the east of the Carpathians are inhabited by Slavs, either pure or mixed with Tartars and Mongols. To the west and south of the mountains the race is split up into numerous small nations, and in the valley of the Danube these come into contact with Rumanians, as well as with Turks and Magyars, the two latter being of Asiatic origin, and these separate the Slavonians of the north from the Slavonians of the south. In the north, Finns, Livonians, and Lithuanians interpose between the Slavonians and the Germanic nations.[4]

Race and language, however, are not always identical. Members of one race frequently speak the language of another, and race and linguistic boundaries, therefore, differ frequently. As for the political boundaries, they scarcely ever follow those natural features which would have been selected had their settlement been intrusted to the spontaneous action of the different nations. They hardly ever coincide with the boundaries of races or of languages, except in the case of a few high mountain ranges or of arms of the sea. On many occasions the countries of Europe were arbitrarily split up in consequence of wars or diplomatic arrangements. A few peoples only, protected by the nature of their country as well as {21} by their valour, have maintained their independence since the age of great migrations, but many more have been swept away by successive invasions. Many others, again, have alternately seen their frontiers expand and contract more than once even during a generation.

The so-called “balance of European powers,” founded as it is upon the rights of war and ambitious rivalries between nations, is necessarily unstable. Nations eminently fit to lead a common political existence are torn asunder on the one side, whilst the most heterogeneous elements are thrown together on the other. In these political arrangements the nations themselves are never consulted, but their wishes and inclinations must nevertheless prevail in the end, and the artificial edifice raised by warriors and statesmen will come to the ground. A true “balance of power” will only be established when every nation of the continent shall have become the arbiter of its own destinies, when every pretended right of conquest shall have been surrendered, and neighbouring nations shall be at liberty to combine for the management of the affairs they have in common. Our arbitrary political divisions, therefore, possess but a transitory value. They cannot altogether be ignored; but in the following descriptions we shall, as far as possible, adhere to the great natural divisions as defined by mountains and valleys, and by the distribution of nations having the same origin and speaking the same language. But even these natural boundaries lose their importance in countries like Switzerland, inhabited by nations speaking different languages, but held together by the strongest of all ties—the common enjoyment of freedom.

From an historical point of view a description of Europe should commence with the maritime countries of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. It was Greece which gave birth to our European civilisation, and which at one time occupied the centre of the known world. Her poets first sang the praises of venturesome navigators, and her historians and philosophers collected and classified the information received with respect to foreign countries. In a subsequent age, Italy, in the very centre of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, took the place of Greece, and for fifteen centuries maintained herself therein: Genoa, Venice, and Florence succeeded Rome as the leaders of the civilised world. During that period the surrounding nations gravitated towards the Me­di­ter­ra­nean and Italy; and it was only when the Italians themselves enlarged the terrestrial sphere by the discovery of a new world beyond the ocean that this preponderance passed away from them, to remain for a short time with the Iberian peninsula. Greece had been the mediator between Europe and the ancient civilisations of Asia and Africa; Spain and Portugal became the representatives of Europe in America and the extreme Orient; historical development in its progress had followed the axis of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean from east to west.

It will be found natural, under these circumstances, when we describe the three Me­di­ter­ra­nean peninsulas in the same volume, particularly as they are peopled almost exclusively by Greco-Latin nations. France, though likewise Latinised, nevertheless occupies a distinct position. It is a Me­di­ter­ra­nean country only as respects Provence and Languedoc, the rest of its territory sloping towards the Atlantic. Its geographical position and history have made France the great {22} European thoroughfare upon which the nations of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean and of the Atlantic meet to exchange their products and to fight their battles. Ideas are imported into France from all parts of Europe, and she is called upon to act the part of an interpreter between the nations of the North and of the South. Next to France we shall describe the Germanic countries of Europe, the British Islands, and Scandinavia; and lastly, the immense empire of Russia.

THE MEDITERRANEAN.

I.—HYDROLOGY.

REECE and its insular satellites prove sufficiently that the unstable floods of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean have exercised a greater influence upon the march of history than did the solid land upon which man trod. Western civilisation would never have seen the light had not the waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean washed the shores of Egypt, Phœnicia, Asia Minor, Hellas, Italy, Spain, and Carthage. The western nations would have remained in their primitive barbarism if it had not been for the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, which joined Europe, Asia, and Africa; facilitated the intercourse between Aryans, Semites, and Berbers; and rendered more equable the climate of the surrounding countries, thus facilitating access to them. For ages it appeared almost as if mankind could prosper only in the neighbourhood of this central sea, for beyond its basin only decayed nations were to be met with, or tribes not yet awakened to mental activity. “Like frogs around a swamp, so have we settled down on the shores of this sea,” said Plato; and the sea he refers to is the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. It is therefore deserving of description quite as much as the inhabited countries which surround it. Unfortunately many mysteries still remain hidden beneath its waves.[5]

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Fig. 5.—THE DEPTH OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

From a Chart by M. Delesse.

From an examination of the coasts, as well as from the traditions of the people inhabiting them, we learn that the Me­di­ter­ra­nean has varied frequently in its contours and extent. The straits which connect its waters with those of the ocean have frequently changed their position. At a time when peninsulas like Greece, and even islands like Malta, formed part of continental masses—and that they did so in a comparatively recent geological epoch is proved by their fossil fauna—the waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean covered large portions of Africa, of Southern Russia, and even of Asia. The researches of Spratt, Fuchs, and others have satisfactorily proved that towards the close of the miocene age a vast {24} fresh-water lake stretched from the banks of the Aral, across Russia, the plains of the Danube and the Archipelago, as far as Syracuse in Sicily. Then came the briny waters of the ocean. There was a time when the Black Sea and the Caspian connected the Archipelago with the Gulf of the Obi. At another epoch the gulfs of the Syrtes penetrated far inland, and a large portion of what is now the Libyan and Saharan desert was then covered with water. The Strait of Gibraltar, which was torn asunder by Hercules according to the traditions of the ancients, is in reality but of recent origin, and has taken the place of a more ancient strait which joined the Me­di­ter­ra­nean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean: this strait has been restored by human hands, and is known now as the Suez Canal. The coast-lines of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean are undergoing perpetual change, owing to the upheaval or subsidence of the countries surrounding it. The Nile, the Po, the Rhone, and other rivers incessantly enlarge the alluvial plains at their mouths, and still further encroach upon the sea. Actually the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, with its subordinate seas from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azof, covers an area about thirty times that of the British Islands. This area is small if we compare it with the immense development of the coasts and the wealth in peninsulas, which impart an aspect of life and independence to at least one-third of the ancient world. The Me­di­ter­ra­nean, though it takes precedence of all the oceans, in consequence of the part it has played in history, nevertheless only covers an area one-seventieth that of the Pacific.[6] It is broken up, moreover, into several separate seas, some of them so small in extent that the navigator hardly ever loses sight of the land. In the {25} east we have the Black Sea, with its two dependencies, the Seas of Azof and of Marmara. The Ægean Sea, or Archipelago, with its numerous islands, extends between the deeply indented coasts of Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete. The Adriatic stretches towards the north-west, between the Balkan peninsula and Italy; and the Me­di­ter­ra­nean proper is divided into two separate basins, which might appropriately be called the Phœnician and Carthaginian Seas, or the Greek and Roman Me­di­ter­ra­neans. Each of these basins is again subdivided, the one by Crete, the other by the two islands of Sardinia and Corsica. These various subdivisions of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean differ in area, and still more in depth. The Sea of Azof almost deserves the name of “Swamp,” which was bestowed upon it by the ancients, for if a ship sinks in it the masts remain visible above the water. The Black Sea has a maximum depth of over 1,000 fathoms, but the narrow strait which joins it to the Sea of Marmara is shallower than many a European river. The cavity filled by the Sea of Marmara is far inferior to that of many an inland lake; and the Dardanelles, like the Bosphorus, are hardly wider than a river. In the Archipelago and the eastern basin of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean proper the depth corresponds with the protuberance of the land. Abyssal depths and “pits” of 260 and even of 540 fathoms are to be found in close proximity to the scarped mountain islands of the Cyclades, whilst on the low coasts of Egypt the water deepens only gradually, until in the centre of the Levantine Sea it attains a depth of 1,750 fathoms. The maximum depth—2,170 fathoms—is attained between Crete and Malta. If the whole of the waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean were to be collected into an aqueous sphere, the latter would have a diameter of 90 miles; if it fell down upon the earth, it would not even wholly cover a country like Switzerland.

The Ionian Sea is separated from the Adriatic by a submarine ridge rising in the Strait of Otranto, and bounded on the west by a shoal or submarine isthmus, already referred to by Strabo, which joins Sicily to Tunis. This isthmus forms the true geological boundary between the western and eastern basins of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, which are connected here by a narrow breach only, the depth of which hardly exceeds 100 fathoms. The western of these basins is the smaller and shallower of the two, but nevertheless it attains a depth of 1,100 fathoms in the Tyrrhenian, and of 1,360 fathoms and even 1,640 in the Balearic Sea, and is separated from the waters of the Atlantic by a submarine ridge lying outside the Strait of Gibraltar, and joining Europe to Africa.[7]

This subdivision of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean into separate basins, divided from each other by shoals or submarine ridges, by islands and promontories, sufficiently explains the contrasts between the phenomena of the open ocean and those observed here. In the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, it is well known, the tides are almost everywhere irregular and uncertain. To the east of the Narrows of Gibraltar, in the sea extending between Andalusia and Morocco, the tides are hardly felt at all, and {26} they are, moreover, interfered with to such an extent by currents that it is exceedingly difficult to determine their amplitude, or the establishment of the various ports. Nevertheless the rise and fall of the tidal wave are sufficiently marked to have attracted the attention of Greek and Italian navigators. On the coasts of Catalonia, France, Liguria, Naples, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt the oscillation is hardly perceptible, but on those of Eastern Sicily and of the Adriatic the tide sometimes rises three feet, and, if accompanied by storms, may even attain a height of ten feet in certain localities. The Straits of Messina and of Euripo (Eubœa) have their regular tides, and in the Gulf of Gabes the waters rise and fall with the same regularity as in the open ocean. In the Black Sea, however, no tidal movements whatever have been discovered hitherto. It is nevertheless probable that more careful observations will lead to the discovery of a feeble tide, for it is believed that this phenomenon exists even on Lake Michigan, which has only one-fifth the area of the Black Sea.

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Fig. 6.—THE STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR.

According to Robiquet, Randegger, and others. Scale 1 : 750,000.

The Me­di­ter­ra­nean differs not only from the open ocean with respect to the feebleness and irregularity of its tides, but it is likewise without a great stream-current keeping in constant circulation the whole body of its waters. The currents which have been observed in various divisions of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean can be ascribed only to local causes. An Italian geographer of the last century, Montanari, has {27} advanced an hypothesis of a great circuit current which entered the Me­di­ter­ra­nean through the Strait of Gibraltar, and, after having washed the shores of Africa as far as Egypt, returned to the west along those of Asia and Europe; but careful observers have vainly endeavoured to discover its existence. They have met only with local currents, produced by an indraught of the waters of the Atlantic, by winds, by the floods of rivers, or by an excess of evaporation. One of these currents sets along the coasts of Morocco and Algeria from west to east; another flows along the Italian coast of the Adriatic from north to south; and a third from the mouth of the Rhone in the direction of Cette and Port Vendres. In fact, the configuration of the sea-bottom, and particularly the shoal between Sicily and Tunis, precludes the existence of any but surface currents in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean.

Amongst the local currents the existence of which has been most clearly established are those which convey the waters of the Sea of Azof into the Black Sea, and those of the latter into the Archipelago. The Don more than makes up for the loss by evaporation in the Sea of Azof, and its surplus waters find an exit through the Strait of Kerch into the Black Sea. Similarly the waters of the Dniester, the Dnieper, the Rion, and of the rivers of Asia Minor, and, above all, of the Danube, which by itself conveys a larger volume of water into the Black Sea than all the others combined, are discharged through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles into the Archipelago. On the other hand, the Archipelago returns to the Black Sea, by means of a submarine counter-current and of lateral surface currents, a certain quantity of salt water for the fresh water which it receives in excess. This exchange accounts for the salineness of the waters of the Black Sea. The volume of fresh water discharged into it by the Danube and other rivers is so large that in the course of a thousand years its waters would become perfectly fresh, if there did not exist these compensatory highly saline counter-currents.

Analogous phenomena take place at the other extremity of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. Evaporation there is excessive, owing to the neighbourhood of the burning sands of the deserts, the winds from which blow freely over the sea, absorbing the vapours and dispersing the clouds. The loss by evaporation amounts to at least seven feet in the course of a year, and as the annual rainfall is estimated to amount to twenty inches only, and the volume of water discharged annually by all the tributary rivers of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, if uniformly spread over its surface, would hardly exceed ten inches in depth, there exists thus an excess of evaporation amounting annually to more than four feet; and this excess has to be made good by an inflow of the waters of the Atlantic, which takes place through the Strait of Gibraltar, whose volume far exceeds that of the Amazon in a state of flood. This inflow of the waters of the Atlantic is felt, as a current, as far as the coasts of Sicily, and, like all other currents, it is bounded by lateral currents flowing in a direction contrary to that of the main current. During ebb the insetting Atlantic current takes up the whole of the strait, but when the tide rises the Me­di­ter­ra­nean resists more successfully the pressure of the ocean, and this struggle gives birth to {28} two counter-currents, one of which skirts the coast of Europe, the other that of Africa between Ceuta and Cape Spartel; the latter is the larger and more powerful of the two. In addition to these, there exists a submarine current, which conveys the highly saline and heavier waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean out into the Atlantic.

The quantity of salt held in solution in various parts of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean differs widely, as the submarine ridges and shoals which divide it into separate basins do not permit its waters to mingle as freely as in the open ocean. Owing to the excess of evaporation, the quantity of salt is greater on the whole than in the Atlantic, and this is the case more particularly on the coast of Africa. But in the Black Sea it is far less, and near the mouths of some of the large rivers which enter that sea the water is almost fresh.[8]

The temperature of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean is affected by the same causes which produce its varying salineness, viz. the existence of shoals and banks, which separate it into distinct sub-basins. In the open ocean the currents convey to all latitudes large bodies of water, some of them heated by a tropical sun, others cooled by contact with the ice of the polar regions. But these layers of unequal density are regularly superimposed one upon the other, owing to the differences in their temperature: the warm water remains on the surface, whilst the cold water descends to the bottom. In the Me­di­ter­ra­nean an analogous superimposition exists only to a depth of 110 fathoms, which is the depth of the Atlantic current, flowing into it through the Strait of Gibraltar. If a thermometer be lowered to a greater depth it will indicate no further decrease of temperature, and the immense body of water, remaining almost still at the bottom of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, has an equable temperature of about 56° F. Observations made at depths varying between 110 and 1,640 fathoms have always exhibited the same result. Professor Carpenter believes, however, that the abyssal waters of some of the volcanic regions have a somewhat higher temperature, which may be due to the presence of lava in a state of fusion.

II.—ANIMAL LIFE. FISHERIES AND SALT PANS.

Another remarkable feature of the abyssal waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean consists in their poverty of animal life. No doubt there is some life; the dredgings of the Porcupine and the telegraph cables, which, on being brought to the surface, were found to be covered with shells and polypes, prove this. But, compared with those of the ocean, the depths of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean are veritable deserts. Edward Forbes, who explored the waters of the Archipelago, arrived at the conclusion that their abyssal depths were entirely devoid of life, but he was wrong when he assumed an exceptional case like this to represent a universal law. Carpenter thinks that this absence of life in the depths of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean is due to the great quantity of organic remains which is carried into it by the rivers. These remains absorb the oxygen of the water, and part with their carbonic acid, which is detrimental to {29} animal life. In numerous instances the water of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean contains only one-fourth the normal quantity of the former gas, but fifty per cent. in excess of the latter. To the presence of these organic remains the Me­di­ter­ra­nean is probably indebted for its beautiful azure colour, so different from the black waters of most oceans. This blue, then, which is justly celebrated by poets, would thus be caused by the impurity of the water. M. Delesse has shown that the bottom of nearly the whole of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean is covered with ooze.

The regions of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean immediately below the surface abound in animal life, particularly on the coasts of Sicily and Southern Italy; but nearly all species, whether fish, testacea, or others, are of Atlantic origin. The Me­di­ter­ra­nean, in spite of its vast extent, as far as its fauna is concerned, is nothing but a gulf of the Lusitanian Ocean. Its longitudinal extension and the similarity of climate in its various portions have favoured the migration of animals through the Strait of Gibraltar as far as the coasts of Syria. At the same time, animal life is most varied near this point of entry, and the species met with in the western basin are generally of greater size than those which exist in the eastern. A very small proportion of non-Atlantic species recalls the fact that the Me­di­ter­ra­nean formerly communicated with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. But amongst a total of more than eight hundred molluscs there are only about thirty which have reached the seas of Greece and Sicily through the ancient straits separating Africa from Asia, instead of through the Strait of Gibraltar.[9] The diminution in the number of species in an easterly direction becomes most striking when we reach the narrow channel of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. The Black Sea, in fact, differs essentially from the Me­di­ter­ra­nean proper as regards temperature. It is refrigerated by north-easterly winds sweeping over its surface, to the extent even of portions of it becoming now and then covered with a thin coating of ice, adhering to the coast. The Sea of Azof has frequently disappeared beneath a thick crust of ice, and even the whole of the Black Sea has been frozen over in winters of exceptional severity. The cold surface waters, together with those conveyed into the Black Sea by large rivers, descend to the bottom, and prove most detrimental to animal life. Echinodermata and zoophytes are not met with at all in the Black Sea; certain classes of molluscs, already rare in the Levantine Sea and the Archipelago, are likewise absent; and the total number of species of molluscs is only one-tenth of what it is in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. Fish are numerous as far as individuals go, but their species are few. In fact, the fauna of the Black Sea appears to resemble that of the Caspian, from which it is cut off, rather than that of the Greek seas, with which the Sea of Marmara connects it.

In addition to the species which have found a second home in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, there are some that must still be looked upon as visitors. Such are the sharks, which extend their incursions to the seas of Sicily, to the Adriatic, and even to the coasts of Egypt and Syria. Such, also, are the larger cetacea—whales, rorquals, and sperm whales—whose visits, however, are confined now to the Tyrrhenian {30} basin, and become less frequent from century to century. The tunny-fish of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean are also visitors from the coasts of Lusitania. First-rate swimmers, they enter through the Strait of Gibraltar in spring, ascend the whole of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, make the tour of the Black Sea, and return in autumn to the Atlantic, after having accomplished a journey of some 5,600 miles. In the opinion of the fishermen the tunnies go upon their travels in three immense divisions or shoals, and it is the central shoal which visits the coasts of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and consists of the largest and strongest fish. Each of the three divisions appears to be composed of individuals about the same age. For mutual protection they swim in troops, for they are preyed upon by enemies innumerable. Dolphins and other fish of prey follow their track, but their great destroyer is man. In the summer the tunny fishery, or tonnaro, is carried on in numerous bays of Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, and of Provence. Enormous structures consisting of nets enclose these bays, and they are ingeniously arranged so as to close gradually around the captured fish, which, passing from net to net, find themselves at last in the “chamber of death,” where they are massacred. Millions of pounds of flesh are annually obtained from these floating “slaughter-houses,” yet the tunny appears year after year in multitudes, and on the same coasts. There may have been a slight decrease in the number, but their closely packed masses still invade the “Golden Horn” of Byzance and other bays, as they did when first they attracted the attention of Greek naturalists.

[Μ]

Fig. 7.—THE PRINCIPAL FISHERIES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Scale 1 : 38,300,000.

Next to the tunny fisheries those of the sardines and anchovies are most important. Sea-urchins and other products of the sea are eaten by the inhabitants of the coasts, particularly in Italy, but there is no part of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean where animal life is so abundant and so prodigious in quantity as on the celebrated banks of Newfoundland, or on the coasts of Portugal or of the Canaries.

A large number of fishing-boats are engaged, not in the capture of fish, but in {31} the collection of articles of dress or of the toilet. The purple-shell fisheries on the coasts of Phœnicia, the Peloponnesus, and Greece are no longer carried on, but hundreds of boats are employed annually during the fine season in fishing for coral or sponges.

Coral is found most abundantly in the western portion of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and the Italian fishermen do not confine themselves to their own shores—to Sicily, Naples, and Sardinia—but also visit the Strait of Bonifacio, the sea off St. Tropez, the vicinity of Cape Creus in Spain, and the waters of Barbary. Ordinary sponges are collected in the Gulf of Gabes, and at the other extremity of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, on the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor, and in the straits winding between the Cyclades and Sporades. Sponges are usually found at a depth of from 12 to 150 feet, and can be gathered by divers; whilst coral occurs at far greater depths, and has to be wrenched off with an iron instrument, which brings up its fragments, mixed with ooze, seaweeds, and the remains of marine animalculæ. This industry is still in a state of barbarism: those devoted to it are not as yet sufficiently acquainted with the sea and its inhabitants to enable them to carry on the sponge and coral fisheries in a rational manner. Yet this they must aim at: they must learn how to deprive Proteus, the ever-changing deity, of his dominion over the inhabitants of the deep.

Next to the fisheries, the preparation of sea salt constitutes one of the leading industries of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean coast-lands. But this industry, too, is frequently carried on in a primitive way, and only in the course of the present century have scientific methods been introduced in connection with it. The Me­di­ter­ra­nean is admirably suited for the production of salt, for its waters have a high temperature, they hold a very large quantity of salt in solution, the rise and fall of the tides are inconsiderable, and flat seashores alternate with steep coasts and promontories. The most productive salt marshes of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean are probably those on the Lagoon, or Étang de Thau, near Cette, and on the littoral of Hyères; but considerable ones may also be met with on the coasts of Spain, in Italy, in Sardinia, Sicily, Istria, and even on the “limans” of Bessarabia, bordering upon the Black Sea. The annual production of salt is estimated at more than a million tons, and exceeds, therefore, the entire tonnage of the commercial marine of France.[10] But this quantity, large as it is, is infinitesimal if we compare it with the saline contents of the sea, and science will enable us one day to raise a far more abundant treasure from its sterile depths.[11]

III.—COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION.

Whatever advantages may be yielded by fisheries and salt-works, they shrink into insignificance if we compare them with the great gain—material, intellectual, {32} and moral—which mankind has derived from the navigation of this inland sea. It has repeatedly been pointed out by historians that the disposition of the coasts, islands, and peninsulas of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean of the Phœnicians and Greeks admirably favoured the first essays in maritime commerce. Many causes have contributed to make this sea the cradle of European commerce: the faint summits of distant lands visible even before the port has been quitted; numerous nooks along the coasts where a safe refuge may be found in case of storms; regular land and sea breezes; an equability of climate which makes the sailor feel at home wherever business takes him; and, moreover, a great variety of productions resulting from the diverse configuration of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean coast-lands. And this commerce, does it not lead to a peaceful intercourse between peoples on neutral ground, and to mutual enlightenment, brought about by an interchange of ideas? Every coast-line which facilitates the intercourse between nations is, therefore, of immense value as a means of developing civilisation.

Civilisation for many centuries marched from the south-east towards the north-west, and Phœnicia, Greece, Italy, and France have successively become great centres of human intelligence. This historical phenomenon is due to the configuration of the sea, which has been the vehicle of migratory nations. In fact, the axis of civilisation, if this expression be allowed, has become confounded with that axis of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean which extends from the coast of Syria to the Gulf of Lions, on the coast of France. But the Me­di­ter­ra­nean has ceased to be the only centre of gravitation of Europe, which sends its merchantmen now to the two Americas and the farthest East; and civilisation no longer marches in that general line from east to west, but rather radiates in all directions. Civilising streams depart from England and Germany towards Northern America, and from the Latinised countries of Europe towards Southern America. Their direction is still westerly, but they have been deflected towards the south, to meet the conditions imposed by climate and the geographical configuration of land and sea.

It is interesting to trace the changes which have occurred in the historical importance of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. As long as that sea remained the great highway between nations, the commercial republics were content to extend this highway towards the east, by establishing caravan routes to the Gulf of Persia, to India, and to China. In the Middle Ages Genoese factories dotted the coasts of the Black Sea, and extended thence through Trans-Caucasia as far as the Caspian. European travellers, and particularly Italians, at that time crossed Western Asia in all directions; and many a route hardly known in our days was then frequented almost daily. But for several centuries direct commercial intercourse with Central Asia has dwindled down to small proportions.

The Me­di­ter­ra­nean had ceased to be a great ocean highway. Our navigators, no longer dreading a boundless sea, took their ships into every part of the ocean. The difficult and perilous land routes were abandoned, the once busy markets of Central Asia became solitudes, and the Me­di­ter­ra­nean itself a veritable blind alley, as far as the world’s commerce was concerned. This condition of affairs lasted for many years, but since the middle of this century our relations with the East have {33} been renewed, and the lost ground is rapidly being recovered. Within the last year a great commercial revolution has been effected through the opening of one of the ancient gates of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and the Suez Canal has become the great highway of steamers between Western Europe, the Indies, and Australia. Possibly, at no distant future, a similar canal will enable our merchantmen to proceed from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and perhaps even to the Amu and the Syr, in the very heart of the ancient continent.

It is thus that the great centres of in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or vital points of our planet, as we should like to call them, become shifted in the course of time. Port Said, an improvised town on a desert shore, has thus become a centre of attraction for travellers and merchandise, whilst the neighbouring cities of Tyre and Sidon have dwindled down into miserable villages, with nothing to indicate the proud position they held in the past. Carthage, too, has perished, and Venice decayed. Many a thriving place on the shores of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean has been reduced to insignificance through the silting up of its harbour, the employment of larger vessels, the loss of independence, or through political changes of all kinds. But in nearly every instance some neighbouring town has taken the place of these decayed harbours, and most of the great routes of commerce have maintained their original directions, and their terminal points, as well as intermediate stations, have remained in the same localities.

There are, moreover, certain places which ships are almost obliged to frequent, and where towns of importance arise as a matter of course. Such are the Straits of Gibraltar and of Messina; such, also, are places like Genoa, Trieste, and Saloniki, which occupy the bottom of gulfs or bays penetrating far into the land. Ports offering the greatest facilities for embarking merchandise intended for foreign countries, such as Marseilles and Alexandria, are likewise natural centres of attraction to merchants. One town there is in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean which enjoys at one and the same time every one of the geographical advantages which we have pointed out, for it is situated on a strait connecting two seas and separating two continents. This town is Constantinople, and despite the deplorable mal­ad­mi­ni­stra­tion under which it suffers, its position alone has enabled it to maintain its place amongst the great cities of the world.

The ports of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean no longer enjoy a monopoly of commerce as they did for thousands of years, but the number of ships to be met with in that inland sea is, nevertheless, proportionately far greater than what we meet with on the open oceans. The commercial marine of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean numbers thirty-seven thousand vessels, of a capacity of two million seven hundred and ninety-six thousand tons, without counting fishing-boats. This is more than one-fourth of the entire commercial marine of the world, as respects the number of ships, and one-sixth of it as regards tonnage. This inferiority of tonnage is due to the small vessels of ancient types which still maintain their ground in Greece and Italy, and which possess certain advantages for the coasting trade.

To this marine of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean should be added the vessels belonging to foreign ports, which visit it for purposes of trade, and amongst which those of {34} England take the most prominent rank. The Government of Great Britain has even taken care to secure itself a place amongst the Me­di­ter­ra­nean powers. It has occupied Gibraltar, at the eastern entrance to this basin, and taken possession of Malta, which commands its centre; and although the western entrance, formed by the Suez Canal, is not in its possession, its garrisons on Perim and the rock of Aden are able at any moment to close up the only approach to it which leads from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea.

[Μ]

Fig. 8.—STEAMER ROUTES AND TELEGRAPHS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Scale 1 : 45,000,000.

The share which England takes in the commerce of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean is considerable, but it is surpassed by far by that of France and Italy. A sovereign who aspired to the dominion of the world once spoke of the inland sea extending from the Strait of Gibraltar to Egypt as a “French lake;” but with equal justice might it be called a Greek, a Dalmatian, or Spanish lake, and with still greater an Italian lake. The pirates of Barbary were, in reality, the last “masters” of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean: their swift vessels presented themselves unexpectedly before the coast towns, and carried off their inhabitants. But since their predatory fleets have been destroyed, the Me­di­ter­ra­nean has become the common property of the world, and the meshes of an international network of maritime highways become closer from year to year. The merchantmen no longer pursue their voyages in company as they did in former times, discharging their cargo from port to port, for a single vessel may venture now into any portion of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean in safety. Still there remain the dangers of reefs and of storms. The art of navigation has made vast progress; most of the capes, at least on the coasts of Europe, are lit up by lighthouses; the approaches to the ports are rendered easy by lightships, buoys, and beacons; but shipwrecks are nevertheless of frequent occurrence. Even large vessels founder sometimes, without leaving a stray plank behind to indicate the place of their disappearance.

Steamers travelling along prescribed routes are now gradually taking the place of sailing vessels, and where they cross at frequent intervals they may be {35} likened to ferry-boats crossing a river. The regularity and speed of these steam ferries; the facilities which they afford for the conveyance of merchandise; the increasing number of railways which convey the produce of the interior to the seaports; and lastly, the submarine telegraphs, which have established instantaneous means of communication between the principal ports, all contribute towards the growth of Me­di­ter­ra­nean commerce. This commerce, including imports and exports, and the transit through the Suez Canal, actually amounts to about £353,000,000, a year.[12] This may not be much for a maritime population of a hundred millions, but a perceptible increase is taking place from year to year. We should also bear in mind that, face to face with the busy peninsulas of Europe, there lies torrid Africa, an inert mass, avoided by the sailors of our own age as much as it was by those of ancient Greece. Its coasts are hardly ever visited, with the exception of those portions which extend from Oran to Tunis, and from Alexandria to Port Said. It is matter of surprise, too, that certain localities which formerly attracted crowds of vessels, such as Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and beautiful Crete, at the very entrance to the Archipelago, should still remain outside the ordinary track of our steamers.

GREECE.

I.—GENERAL ASPECTS.

REECE, within its confined political boundaries, to the south of the Gulfs of Arta and Volo, is a country of about nineteen thousand square miles, or at most equal to the ten-millionth part of the earth’s surface. Within the vast empire of Russia there are many districts more extensive than the whole of Greece, but there is nothing which distinguishes these from other districts which surround them, and their names call forth no idea in our mind. The little country of the Hellenes, however, so insignificant upon our maps—how many memories does it not awaken ! In no other part of the world had man attained a degree of civilisation equally harmonious in all respects, or more favourable to individual development. Even now, though carried along within an historical cycle far more vast than that of the Greeks, we should do well to look back frequently in order to contemplate those small nations, who are still our masters in the arts, and first initiated us into science. The city which was the “school of Greece” still remains the school of the entire world; and after twenty centuries of decay, like some of those extinct stars whose luminous rays yet reach the earth, still continues to enlighten us.

The considerable part played by the people of Greece during many ages must undoubtedly be ascribed to the geographical position of their country. Other tribes having the same origin, but inhabiting countries less happily situated—such, for instance, as the Pelasgians of Illyria, who are believed to be the ancestors of the Albanians—have never risen above a state of barbarism, whilst the Hellenes placed themselves at the head of civilised nations, and opened fresh paths to their enterprise. If Greece had remained for ever what it was during the tertiary geological epoch—a vast plain attached to the deserts of Libya, and run over by lions and the rhinoceros—would it have become the native country of a Phidias, an Æschylos, or a Demosthenes? Certainly not. It would have shared the fate of Africa, and, far from taking the initiative in civilisation, would have waited for an impulse to be given to it from beyond. {37}

Greece, a sub-peninsula of the peninsula of the Balkans, was even more completely protected by transverse mountain barriers in the north than was Thracia or Macedonia. Greek culture was thus able to develop itself without fear of being stifled at its birth by successive invasions of barbarians. Mounts Olympus, Pelion, and Ossa, towards the north and east of Thessaly, constituted the first line of formidable obstacles towards Macedonia. A second barrier, the steep range of the Othrys, runs along what is the present political boundary of Greece. To the south of the Gulf of Lamia a fresh obstacle awaits us, for the range of the Œta closes the passage, and there is but the narrow pass of the Thermopylæ between it and the sea. Having crossed the mountains of the Locri and descended into the basin of Thebæ, there still remain to be crossed the Parnes or the spurs of the Cithæron before we reach the plains of Attica. The “isthmus” beyond these is again defended by transverse barriers, outlying ramparts, as it were, of the mountain citadel of the Peloponnesus, that acropolis of all Greece. Hellas has frequently been compared to a series of chambers, the doors of which were strongly bolted; it was difficult to get in, but more difficult to get out again, owing to their stout defenders. Michelet likens Greece to a trap having three compartments. You entered, and found yourself taken first in Macedonia, then in Thessaly, then between the Thermopylæ and the isthmus. But the difficulties increase beyond the isthmus, and Lacedæmonia remained impregnable for a long time.

At an epoch when the navigation even of a land-locked sea like the Ægean was attended with danger, Greece found herself sufficiently protected against the invasions of oriental nations; but, at the same time, no other country held out such inducements to the pacific expeditions of merchants. Gulfs and harbours facilitated access to her Ægean coasts, and the numerous outlying islands were available as stations or as places of refuge. Greece, therefore, was favourably placed for entering into commercial intercourse with the more highly civilised peoples who dwelt on the opposite coasts of Asia Minor. The colonists and voyagers of Eastern Ionia not only supplied their Achæan and Pelasgian kinsmen with foreign commodities and merchandise, but they also imparted to them the myths, the poetry, the sciences, and the arts of their native country. Indeed, the geographical configuration of Greece points towards the east, whence she has received her first enlightenment. Her peninsulas and outlying islands extend in that direction; the harbours on her eastern coasts are most commodious, and afford the best shelter; and the mountain-surrounded plains there offer the best sites for populous cities. Greece, at the same time, does not share the disadvantage of Turkey, which is almost cut off from the western world by a mountain region difficult to cross. The Ionian Sea, to the west of the Peloponnesus, it is true, is, comparatively speaking, a desert; but farther north the Gulf of Corinth almost cuts in two the Greek peninsula, and the sight of the distant mountains of Italy, which are visible from the Ionian Islands, must have incited to an exploration of the western seas. The Acarnanians, who knew how to build vaults long before the Romans, were thus brought early into contact with the Italians, to whom they imparted their {38} knowledge, and at a subsequent period the Greeks became the civilisers of the whole western world of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean.

The most distinctive feature of Hellas, as far as concerns the relief of the ground, consists in the large number of small basins, separated one from the other by rocks or mountain ramparts. The features of the ground thus favoured the division of the Greek people into a multitude of independent republics. Every town had its river, its amphitheatre of hills or mountains, its acropolis, its fields, pastures, and forests, and nearly all of them had, likewise, access to the sea. All the elements required by a free community were thus to be found within each of these small districts, and the neighbourhood of other towns, equally favoured, kept alive perpetual emulation, too frequently degenerating into strife and battle. The islands of the Ægean Sea, likewise, had constituted themselves into miniature republics. Local institutions thus developed themselves freely, and even the smallest island of the Archipelago has its great representatives in history.

But whilst there thus exists the greatest diversity, owing to the configuration of the ground and the multitude of islands, the sea acts as a binding element, washes every coast, and penetrates far inland. These gulfs and numerous harbours have made the maritime inhabitants of Greece a nation of sailors—amphibiæ, as Strabo called them. From the most remote times the passion for travel has always been strong amongst them. When the inhabitants of a town grew too numerous to support themselves upon the produce of their land, they swarmed out like bees, explored the coasts of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and, when they had found a site which recalled their native home, they built themselves a new city. It was thus Greek cities arose in hundreds of places, from the Mæotis Palus to beyond the columns of Hercules—from Tanais and Panticapæum to Gades and Tingis, the modern Tangier. Thanks to those numerous colonies, some of them more powerful and renowned than the mother towns which gave birth to them, the veritable Greece, the Greece of science and art and republican independence, in the end overflowed its ancient cradle, and sporadically occupied the whole circumference of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. The Greeks held the same position relatively to the world of the ancients which is occupied at the present time by the Anglo-Saxons with reference to the entire earth. There exists, indeed, a remarkable analogy between Greece, with its archipelago, and the British Islands, at the other extremity of the continent. Similar geographical advantages have brought about similar results, as far as commerce is concerned, and between the Ægean and the British seas time and space have effected a sort of harmony.

The admiration with which travellers behold Greece is due, above all, to the memories attaching to every one of its ruins, to the smallest amongst its rivulets, and the most insignificant rock in its seas. Scenery in Provence or Spain, though it may surpass in grace or boldness of outline anything to be seen in Greece, is appreciated only by a few. The mass go past it without emotion, for names like Marathon, Leuctra, or Platææ are not connected with it, and the rustle of bygone ages is not heard. But even if glorious memories were not associated with the {39} coasts of Greece, their beauty would nevertheless entitle them to our admiration. In the gulfs of Athens or of Argos the artist is charmed not only with the azure blue of the waters, the transparency of the sky, the ever-changing perspective along the shores, and the boldness of the promontories, but also with the pure and graceful profile of the mountains, which consist of layers of limestone or of marble. We almost fancy we look upon architectural piles; and the temples with which many a summit is adorned appear to epitomize them.

It is verdure and the sparkling water of rivulets which we miss most on the shores of Greece. Nearly all the mountains near the coast have been despoiled of their large trees. There remain only bushes, mastic, strawberry, and juniper trees, and evergreen oaks; even the carpet of odoriferous herbs which clothes the declivities, and upon which the goat browses, has in many instances been reduced to a few miserable patches. Torrents of rain have carried away the mould, and the naked rock appears on the surface. From a distance we only see greyish declivities, dotted here and there with a few wretched shrubs. Even in the days of Strabo most mountains along the coasts had been robbed of their forests, and one of our modern authors says that “Greece is a skeleton only of what it used to be !” By a sort of irony, geographical names derived from trees abound throughout Hellas and Turkey: Caryæ is the “town of walnut-trees,” Valanidia that of the Valonia oaks, Kyparissi that of cypresses, Platanos or Plataniki that of plane-trees. Everywhere we meet with localities whose appellation is justified by nothing. Forests at the present day are confined almost entirely to the interior and to the Ionian coast. The Œta Mountains, some of the mountains of Ætolia, the hills of Acarnania, and Arcadia, Elis, Triphylia, and the slopes of the Taygetus, in the Peloponnesus, still retain their forests. And it is only in these forest districts, visited solely by herdsmen, that savage animals, such as the wolf, the fox, and the jackal, are now met with. The chamois, it is said, still haunts the recesses of the Pindus and Œta Mountains; but the wild boar of the Erymanthus, which must have been a distinct species if we are to judge by antique sculptures, exists no more in Greece, and the lion, still mentioned by Aristotle, has not been seen for two thousand years. Amongst the smaller animals there is a turtle, common in some parts of the Peloponnesus, which the natives look upon with the same aversion as do many western nations upon the toad and the salamander.

Greece is a small country, but the variety of its climate is nevertheless great. Striking differences in the climate of different localities are produced by the contrasts between mountains and plains, woodlands and sterile valleys, coasts having a northern or southern aspect. But even leaving out of sight these local differences, it may safely be asserted that the varieties of climate which we meet with in traversing Greece from north to south are scarcely exceeded in any other region. The mountains of Ætolia, in the north, whose slopes are covered with beech-trees, remind us of the temperate zone of Europe, whilst the peninsulas and islands towards the east and south, with their thickets of fig and olive trees, their plantations of oranges and lemons, their aloe hedges and rare palm-trees, belong to the sub-tropical zone. But even neighbouring districts occasionally {40} differ strikingly as regards climate. In the ancient lake basin of Bœotia the winters are cold, the summers scorching, whilst the temperature of the eastern shore of Eubœa is equable, owing to the moderating influence of sea breezes. Within a narrow compass Greece presents us with the climates of a large portion of the earth, and there can be no doubt that this diversity of climate, and the contrasts of every kind springing from it, must have favourably influenced the intellectual development of the Hellenes. A spirit of inquiry was called forth amongst them which reacted upon their commercial tastes and industrial proclivities.

The diversity of the climate of the land, however, is compensated for, in Greece, by a uniformity in the climate of the maritime districts. As in a mountain valley, the winds of the Ægean Sea blow alternately in contrary directions. During nearly the whole of summer the atmospheric currents of Eastern Europe are attracted towards the African deserts. The winds from the north of the Archipelago and Macedonia then speed the navigator on his voyage to the south, and on many occasions the conquering tribes of the northern shores of that sea have availed themselves of them in their improvised attacks upon the inhabitants of the more southern districts of Asia Minor and of Greece. These regular northerly currents, known as etesian or annual winds, cease on the termination of the hot season, when the sun stands above the southern tropic. They are, moreover, interrupted every night, when the cool sea air is attracted by the heated surface of the land. When the sun has set the wind gradually subsides; there is a calm, lasting a few moments; and then the air begins to move in an inverse direction—“the land begins to blow,” as the sailors say. Nor is this regular wind without its counter-current, known as the embates, or propitious south-easterly breeze of which the poets sing. General winds and breezes, moreover, are deflected from their original directions in consequence of the configuration of the coast and the direction of mountain chains. The Gulf of Corinth, for instance, is shut in by high mountains on the north and the south, and the winds alternately enter it from the east or west—a phenomenon likened by Strabo to the breathing of an animal.

The rains, like the winds, deviate in many places from the average, and whilst the water pours down into some mountain valleys as into a funnel, elsewhere the clouds drift past without parting with a drop of their humid burden. Contrasts in the amount of precipitation are thus added to those resulting from differences of configuration and variety of climate. As a rule, rain is more abundant on the western shores of Greece than on the eastern, and this fact accounts for the smiling aspect of the hills of Elis, as compared with the barren declivities of Argolis and Attica. Thunder-storms, driven before the winds of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, likewise recur with greater regularity in the western portion of the peninsula. In Elis and Acarnania the roll of thunder may be heard in spring daily, for whole weeks, in the afternoon. No sites more apposite could have been found for temples dedicated to Jupiter, the god of lightning.

The ancient inhabitants of the Cyclades, and probably, also, those of the coasts {41} of Hellas and Asia Minor, had already attained a considerable amount of culture long before the commencement of our historical records. This has been proved by excavations made in the volcanic ashes of Santorin and Therasia. At the time their houses were buried beneath the ashes, the Santoriniotes had begun to pass from the age of stone into that of copper. They knew how to build arches of stone and mortar, they manufactured lime, used weights made of blocks of lava, wove cloth, made pottery, dyed their stuffs, and ornamented their houses with frescoes; they cultivated barley, peas, and lentils, and had begun to trade with distant countries.

We do not know whether these men were of the same race as the Hellenes; but thus much is certain—that at the earliest dawn of history the islands and coasts of the Ægean Sea were peopled by various families of Greeks, whilst the interior of the country and the western shores of the peninsula were inhabited by Pelasgians. These Pelasgians, moreover, were of the same stock as the Greeks, and they spoke a language derived from the same source as the dialects of the Hellenes. Both were Aryans, and, unless natives of the soil, they must have immigrated into Greece from Asia Minor by crossing the Hellespont, or by way of the islands of the Archipelago. The Pelasgians, according to tradition, sprang from Mount Lycæus, in the centre of the Peloponnesus; they boasted of being “autochthons,” “men of the black soil,” “children of oaks,” or “men born before the moon.” All around them lived tribes of kindred origin, such as the Æolians and the Leleges, and these were afterwards joined by Ionians and Achæans. The Ionians, who, in a subsequent age, exercised so great an influence over the destinies of the world, only occupied the peninsula of Attica and the neighbouring Eubœa. The Achæans for a long time enjoyed a preponderance, and in the end the Greek clans collectively became known by that name. Later on, when the Dorians had crossed the Gulf of Corinth where it is narrowest, and established themselves as conquerors in the Peloponnesus, the Amphictyons, or national councils, sitting alternately at Thermopylæ and Delphi, conferred the name of Hellenes, which was that of a small tribe in Thessaly and Phthiotis, upon all the inhabitants of the peninsula and the islands. The name of Greek, which signifies, perhaps, “mountaineer,” “ancient,” or “son of the soil,” gradually spread amongst the nation, and in the end became general. The Ionians of Asia Minor, and the Carians of the Sporades, emulated the Phœnicians by trading from port to port amongst these half-savage tribes, and, like bees which convey the fecundating pollen from flower to flower, they carried the civilisation of Egypt and the East from tribe to tribe.

Fig. 9.—MAINOTE AND SPARTAN.

Phœnician merchants and Roman conquerors scarcely modified the elements composing the population of Hellas, but during the age of migrations barbarians in large numbers penetrated into Greece. For more than two centuries did the Avares maintain themselves in the Peloponnesus. Then came the Slavs, aided, on more than one occasion, by the plague in depopulating the country. Greece became a Slavonia, and a Slavonian language, probably Servian, was universally spoken, as is proved by the majority of geographical names. The superstitions and legends {42} of the modern Greeks, as has been remarked by many authors, are not simply a heritage derived from the ancient Hellenes, but have become enriched by phantoms and vampires of Slav invention. The dress of the Greeks, too, is a legacy of their northern conquerors. But, in spite of this, the polished language of the Hellenes {43} has regained by degrees its ancient preponderance, and the race has so thoroughly amalgamated these foreign immigrants, that it is impossible now to trace any Servian elements in the population. But hardly had Hellas escaped the danger of becoming Slav when it was threatened with becoming Albanian. This occurred during the dominion of Venice. As recently as the commencement of the present century Albanian was the dominant language of Elis, Argos, Bœotia, and Attica, and even at the present day a hundred thousand supposed Hellenes still speak it. The actual population of Greece is, therefore, a very mixed one, but it is difficult to say in what proportions these Hellenic, Slav, and Albanian elements have combined. The Mainotes, or Maniotes, of the peninsula terminating in Cape Matapan, are generally supposed to be the Greeks of the purest blood. They themselves claim to be the descendants of the ancient Spartans, and amongst their strongholds they still point out one which belonged to “Signor Lycurgus.” Their Councils of Elders have preserved from immemorial times, and down to the war of independence, the title of Senate of Lacedæmonia. Every Mainote professes to love unto death “Liberty, the highest of all goods, inherited from our Spartan ancestors.” Nevertheless, a good many localities in Maina bear names derived from the Servian, and these prove, at all events, that the Slavs resided in the country for a considerable time. The Mainotes practise the vendetta, as if they were Montenegrins. But is not this a common custom amongst all uncivilised nations?

However this may be, in spite of invasions and intermixture with other races, the Greeks of to-day agree in most points with the Greeks of the past. Above all things, they have preserved their language, and it is truly matter for surprise that the vulgar Greek, though derived from a rural dialect, should differ so slightly only from the literary language. The differences, analogous to what may be observed with respect to the languages derived from the Latin, are restricted almost to two points, viz. the contraction of non-accentuated syllables and the use of auxiliary verbs. It was, therefore, easy for the modern Greeks to purify their language from barbarisms and foreign terms, and to restore it gradually to what it was in the time of Thucydides. Nor has the race changed much in its physical features, for in most districts of modern Greece the ancient types may yet be recognised. The Bœotian is still distinguished by that heavy gait which made him an object of ridicule amongst the other Greeks; the Athenian youth possesses the suppleness, grace of movement and bearing which we admire so much in the horsemen sculptured on the friezes of the Parthenon; the Spartan women have preserved that haughty and vigorous beauty which constituted the charm of the virgins of Doris. As regards morals, the descent of the modern Hellenes is equally evident. Like their ancestors, they are fond of change, and inquisitive; as the descendants of free citizens, they have preserved a feeling of equality; and, still infatuated with dialectics, they hold forth at all times as if they were in the ancient market-place, or Agora. They frequently stoop to flattery: like the ancient Greeks, too, they are apt to rate intellectual merit above purity of morals. {44} Like sage Ulysses of the Homeric poem, they well know how to lie and cheat with grace; and the truthful Acarnanian and the Mainote, who are “slow to promise, but sure to keep,” are looked upon as rural oddities. Another trait in the character of the modern and ancient Greeks, and one which distinguishes them from all other Europeans, is this—that they do not allow themselves to be carried away by passion, except in the cause of patriotism. The Greek is a stranger to melancholy: he loves life, and is determined to enjoy it. In battle he may throw it away, but suicide is a species of death unknown amongst the modern Greeks, and the more unhappy they are, the more they cling to existence. They are very seldom afflicted with insanity.

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Fig. 10.—FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN THE POPULATION OF GREECE.

In spite of the diverse elements which compose it, the Greek nationality is one of the most homogeneous in Europe. The Albanians, of Pelasgian descent like the Greeks, do not cede to the latter in patriotism; and it was they—the Suliotes, Hydriotes, Spezziotes—who fought most valiantly for national independence. The eight hundred families of Rumanian or Kutzo-Wallachian Zinzares who pasture their herds in the hills of Acarnania and Ætolia, and are known as Kara-Gunis, or “black cloaks,” speak the two languages, and sometimes marry Greek girls, though they never give their own daughters in marriage to the Greeks. Haughty and free, they are not sufficiently numerous to be of any great importance. To foreigners the Greeks are rather intolerant, and they take no pains to render their stay amongst them agreeable. The Turks—who were numerous formerly in certain parts of the Peloponnesus, in Bœotia, and in the {45} island of Eubœa, and whose presence recalled an unhappy period of servitude—have fled to a man, and only the fez, the narghile, and the slippers remind us of their former presence. The Jews, though met with in every town of the East, whether Slav or Mussulman, dare hardly enter the presence of the Greeks, who are, moreover, their most redoubtable rivals in matters of finance: they are to be found only in the Ionian Islands, where they managed to get a footing during the British Protectorate. In this same Archipelago we likewise meet with the descendants of the ancient Venetian colonists, and with emigrants from all parts of Italy. French and Italian families still form a distinct element of the population of Naxos, Santorin, and Syra. As to the Maltese porters and gardeners at Athens and Corfu, they continue for the most part in subordinate positions, and never associate with the Greeks.

The homogeneous character of the population of Greece does not admit of that country being divided into ethnological provinces, like Turkey or Austro-Hungary, but it consists geographically of four distinct portions. These are (1), continental Hellas, known since the Turkish invasion as Rumelia, in remembrance of the “Roman” empire of Byzantium; (2), the ancient Peloponnesus, now called the Morea, perhaps a transposition of the word “Romea,” or from a Slav word signifying “sea coast,” and applied formerly to Elis; (3), the islands of the Ægean Sea; (4), the Ionian Islands. In describing the various portions of Greece we shall make use, in preference, of the ancient names of mountains, rivers, and towns; for the Hellenes of our own day, proud of the glories of the past, are endeavouring gradually to get rid of names of Slav or Italian origin, which still figure upon the maps of their country.[13]

II.—CONTINENTAL GREECE.

The Pindus, which forms the central chain of Southern Turkey, passes over into Greece, and imparts to it an analogous orographical character. On both sides of this conventional boundary we meet with the same rocks, the same vegetation, the same landscape features, and the same races of people. By dividing the Epirus and handing over Thessaly to the Turks, European diplomacy has paid no attention to natural features. The eastern portion of the boundary is made to follow the line of water parting over the range of the lofty Othrys, commanding the plain of the Sperchius. Westward of the Pindus the boundary {46} crosses transversely the valley of the Achelous, and the hills which separate it from the Gulf of Arta.

Fig. 11.—MOUNT PARNASSUS AND DELPHI.

The isolated summit of Mount Tymphrestus, or Velukhi, which rises where the grand chain of the Othrys branches off from the Pindus, is not the culminating point of continental Greece, but it is a centre from which the principal mountain spurs and rivers radiate. Within its spurs lies hidden the charming valley of Karpenisi, and an elevated ridge joins them, towards the south-east, to the most important mountain mass of modern Greece, viz. the group surmounted by the snow-clad pyramids of the Vardusia and Khiona, whose slopes are covered with dark firs, and to the superb Katavothra, the Œta of the ancients, on which Hercules built his funeral pile. The mountains of Vardusia and Khiona are face to face with the fine mountain masses of Northern Morea, likewise wooded and covered with snow during the greater part of the year.

The mountains of Ætolia, to the west of the Velukhi and the Vardusia, are far less elevated, but they are rugged, and form a veritable chaos of rocks, savage defiles, and thickets, into which only Wallachian herdsmen venture. In Southern Ætolia, on the shores of the lakes and along the rivers, the country is more accessible, but mountains rise there likewise, and by tortuous ridges they are brought into connection with the system of the Pindus. Those on the coast of Acarnania, opposite to the Ionian Islands, are steep, covered with trees and shrubs; they are the mountains of the “Black Continent” mentioned by Ulysses. {47} To the east of the Achelous there is another coast chain, well known to mariners: this is the Zygos, the southern slopes of which, arid and austere, are seen from off Missolonghi. Still further to the east another range comes down to the seashore, and, together with the promontories on the opposite coast of the Morea, forms the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Close to this entrance, on the Ætolian side, there rises bold Mount Varassova, a huge block of rock. Local tradition tells us that the Titans endeavoured to throw this rock into the sea, so that it might form a bridge between the two coasts; but the rock proved too heavy, and it was dropped where we now see it.

Towards the Ægean Sea the mountain mass of the Katavothra is continued by a coast range running in a direction parallel to the mountains of the island of Eubœa. This range should be described rather as a series of mountain-groups separated from each other by deep hollows, extensive depressions, and even by river valleys. These mountains, though low and intersected by numerous roads, are nevertheless difficult of access, for their slopes are steep, their promontories abrupt, and their precipices sudden, and in the times of the ancient Greeks a small number of men repeatedly defended them against large armies. At one extremity of this range is the passage of Thermopylæ; at the other, on the eastern foot of the Pentelicus, the famous plain of Marathon.

The mountain groups on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, and to the south of Bœotia, may be looked upon as a range running parallel with that following the channel of Eubœa, but far more beautiful and picturesque. Every one of its summits recalls the sweet memories of poetry, or conjures up the image of some ancient deity. To the west we find ourselves in the presence of “double-headed” Parnassus, to which fled Deucalion and Pyrrha, the ancestors of the Greeks, and where the Athenians celebrated their torchlight dances in honour of Bacchus. From the summits of the Parnassus, which rival in height those of the Khiona, raising its pyramidal head towards the north-west, nearly the whole of Greece, with its gulfs, islands, and mountains, lies spread out below us, from the Thessalian Olympus to the Taygetus, at the extremity of the Peloponnesus; and close by, at our feet, lies the admirable basin of Delphi, the place of Peace and Concord, where Greeks forgot their animosities. The mountain group towards the east next to Parnassus is quite equal to it. The valleys of the Helicon, the seat of Apollo and the Muses, are still the most verdant and the most smiling in all Greece. The eastern slope of the Helicon is more especially distinguished for its charming beauty, its woods, its verdant pastures, gardens, and murmuring springs, which contrast most favourably with the bare and arid plains of Bœotia. If Mount Parnassus may boast of the Castalian spring, Mount Helicon possesses that of Hippocrene, which burst forth from the ground when struck by the hoof of Pegasus. The elongated summit of the Cithæron, the birthplace of Bacchus, joins the mountains of Southern Bœotia to those of Attica, whose marble has become famous through the neighbourhood of the city which they shelter. Mount Parnes rises to the north of Athens; to the east of it, like the pediment of a temple, rises the Pentelicus, in which are {48} the quarries of Pikermi, rendered famous through their fossil bones; on the south appears Mount Hymettus, celebrated for its flowers and its bees. Farther away, the Laurium, with its rich argentiferous slags, stretches towards the south-east, and terminates in Cape Sunium, consecrated in other days to Minerva and Neptune, and still surmounted by fifteen columns of an ancient temple.

Another isolated mountain group to the south of Attica, and occupying the entire width of the Isthmus of Megara, served the Athenians as a rampart of defence against their neighbours of the Peloponnesus. This is the mountain group of Gerania, the modern Pera Khora.[14] Having passed beyond it, we find ourselves upon the Isthmus of Corinth, properly so called, confined between the Gulfs of Athens and of Corinth. It is a narrow neck of land, scarcely five miles across, whose arid limestone rocks hardly rise two hundred feet above the sea. This neutral bit of territory, lying between two distinct geographical regions, naturally became a place for meetings, festivals, and markets. The remains of a wall built by the Peloponnesians across the isthmus may still be traced, as may also the canal commenced by order of Nero.

The limestone mountains of Greece, as well as those of the Epirus and of Thessaly, abound in lakes, but all the rivers are swallowed up in “sinks,” or katavothras, leaving the land dry and arid. Southern Acarnania, a portion of which is known as Xeromeros, or the “arid country,” on account of the absence of running water, abounds in lake basins of this kind. To the south of the Gulf of Arta, which may not inaptly be described as a sort of lake communicating with the sea through a narrow opening, there are several sheets of water, the remains of an inland sea, silted up by the alluvial deposits of the Achelous. The largest of these lakes is known to the natives as Pelagos, or “big sea,” because of its extent and the agitated state of its waters, which break against its coasts. This is the Trichonius of the ancient Ætolians. Reputed unfathomable, it is, in truth, very deep, and its waters are perfectly pure; but they are discharged sluggishly into another basin far less extensive, and surrounded by pestilential marshes, and through a turgid stream they even find their way into the Achelous. The hills surrounding Lake Trichonis are covered with villages and fields, whilst the locality around the lower lake has been depopulated by fever. The country, nevertheless, is exceedingly beautiful to look upon. Hardly have we passed through a narrow gorge, or klisura, of Mount Zygos before we enter upon a bridge over a mile in length, which a Turkish governor caused to be thrown across the swamps separating the two lakes. This viaduct has sunk down more than half its {49} height into the mud, but it is still sufficiently elevated to enable the eye freely to sweep over the surface of the waters, and to trace the coasts which bound them. Oaks, planes, and wild olive-trees intermingle beneath us, their branches hung with festoons of wild vine, and these, with the blue waters of the lake and the mountains rising beyond it, form a picture of great beauty.

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Fig. 12.—LOWER ACARNANIA.

Scale 1 : 800,000.

Another lake basin lies to the south of the Zygos, between the alluvial lands of the Achelous and the Fidari. It is occupied by a swamp filled with fresh, brackish, or salt water; and since the days of ancient Greece, this swamp, owing to the apathy of the inhabitants, has continued to increase in extent at the expense of the cultivated land. Missolonghi the heroic is indebted for its name to its position near these marshes, for the meaning of it is “centre of marshes.” A barrier, or ramma, here and there broken through by the floods, separates the basin of Missolonghi from the Ionian Sea. During the war of independence every opening in this barrier was protected by redoubts or stockades, but at present the only obstruction consists of the reed barriers of the fishermen, which are opened in spring to admit the fish from the sea, and closed in summer to prevent their escape. Missolonghi, though surrounded by brackish water, is a healthy place, thanks to the breezes from the sea; whilst a heavy atmosphere charged with miasmata hangs perpetually over the bustling little town of Ætoliko (Anatolikon), which lies farther to the north-west in the midst of the swamps, and is joined to the dry land by two bridges. Between Ætoliko and the river Achelous may be observed a large number of rocky eminences, rising like pyramids above the plain. These are no doubt ancient islands, such as still exist between the mainland and the island of St. Mauro. The mud brought down by the Achelous has gradually converted the intervals between these {50} rocks into dry land. In former times the commercial city of Œniadæ occupied one of these islets. The geological changes already noticed by Herodotus are thus still going on under our eyes, and the muds of the Achelous, to which it owes its modern name of Aspro, or “white,” incessantly extend the land at the expense of the sea.

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Fig. 13.—THERMOPYLÆ.

From the French Staff Map (1852). Scale 1 : 330,000.

The Achelous, which the ancients likened to a savage bull, owing to its rapid current and great volume, is by far the most important river of Greece. One of the great feats ascribed to Hercules consisted in breaking off one of the horns of this bull; that is to say, he embanked the river, and thus protected the lands which it used to inundate. The neighbours of the Achelous, the rapid Fidari (Evenus, on the banks of which Hercules killed the centaur Nessus, for offering violence to Dejanira) and the Mornos, which rises in the snows of the Œta, cannot compare with it. Still less is it equalled by the Oropus, the Cephissus, and the Ilissus, “wet only when it rains,” which flow eastward into the Ægean Sea. The principal river of Eastern Greece, the Sperchius, is inferior to the Achelous, but, like it, has extensively changed the aspect of the plain near its mouth. When Leonidas and his three hundred heroes guarded the defiles of Thermopylæ against the Persians, the Gulf of Lamia extended much farther into the land than it does now. But the alluvial deposits of the river have extended its delta, and several rivulets which formerly flowed {51} directly into the sea have now to be numbered amongst its tributaries; the sea has retired from the foot of the Callidromus for a distance of several miles; and the narrow pass of Thermopylæ has been converted into a plain sufficiently wide to enable an entire army to manœuvre upon it. The hot springs which gush from the rocks, by forming deposits of calcareous tufa, may likewise have contributed towards this change of coast-line; nor are more violent convulsions of nature precluded in a volcanic region like this, subject to frequent earthquakes. Sailors still point out a small island in this neighbourhood, formed of scoriæ, from which the incensed Hercules hurled his companion, Lichas, into the ocean. Hot springs abound on the opposite coast of Eubœa, and the incrustations formed by them are so considerable as to assume the appearance of glaciers when seen from a distance. A bathing establishment exists now near the hot sulphur springs of Thermopylæ, and strangers are thus enabled to explore this region, so rich in memories of a great past. The pedestal, however, upon which reposed the figure of a marble lion, placed there in honour of Leonidas, has been destroyed by ruthless hands, and utilised in the construction of a mill !

The basin of the Cephissus, enclosed by the chains of the Œta and Parnassus, is one of the most remarkable from an hydrological point of view. The river first flows through a bottom-land formerly a lake, and then, forcing for itself a passage through a narrow defile commanded by the spurs of Mount Parnassus, it winds round the rock upon which stood the ancient city of Orchomenus, and enters upon a vast plain, where swamps and lakes are embedded amidst cultivated fields and reed-banks. These swamps are fed, likewise, by numerous torrents descending from the Helicon and other mountains in its vicinity. One of these is the torrent of Livadia, into which the bounteous springs of Memory and Oblivion—Mnemosyne and Lethe—discharge themselves. In summer a large portion of the plain is dry, and it yields a bountiful harvest of maize, the stalks of which are sweet like sugar-cane. But after the heavy rains of autumn and winter the waters rise twenty, and even twenty-five feet, and the plain is converted into a vast lake, ninety-six square miles in extent. The myth of the deluge of Ogyges almost leads us to believe that the rising floods occasionally invaded every valley which debouches into this basin. To the ancients the shallower part of this lake was known as Cephissus, and its deep eastern portion as Copais, from Copæ, a town occupying a promontory on its northern shore, and now called Topolias.

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Fig. 14.—LAKE COPAIS

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 500,000.

The importance of regulating the floods just referred to, and of preventing the sudden overflow of the waters to the destruction of the cultivated fields, may readily be imagined. The ancient Greeks made an effort to accomplish this task. To the east of the large Lake of Copais there is another lake basin, about one hundred and thirty feet lower, and encompassed by precipitous rocks, incapable of cultivation. This basin, the Hylice of the Bœotians, appears to be made by nature for receiving the superabundant waters of the Copais. The remains of a canal may still be traced in the plain, which was evidently intended to convey into {52} it the floods of the Copais, but it appears never to have been completed. No doubt care was taken to keep open the various katavothras, or subterranean channels, through which the waters of the Copaic lake discharge themselves into the sea. One of these, on the north-western shore of the lake, and close to the rock of Orchomenus, swallowed up the river Melas, and conveyed its waters to the Gulf of Atalanta. Farther to the east other subterranean channels flow towards Lakes Hylice and Paralimni, but the most important of these channels are towards the north-east, in the Gulf of Kokkino. In that extreme angle of the lake, the veritable Copais, the waters of the Cephissus rush against the foot of Mount Skroponeri, and are swallowed up by the ground so as to form a subterranean delta. To the south there is a cavernous opening in the rock, but this is merely a sort of tunnel passing underneath a promontory, and, except during the rainy season, it may be traversed dry-shod. Beyond this, another opening swallows up one of the most important branches of the Cephissus, which makes its reappearance in the shape of bounteous springs pouring their waters into the sea. Two other branches of the river disappear in the rocks about a mile farther north. They join soon afterwards, and flow northwards beneath the bottom of a sinuous valley. The old Greek engineers dug pits in this valley, which enabled them to descend to the subterranean waters, and to clear away obstructions interfering with their flow. Sixteen of these pits have been discovered between the opening of the katavothra and the place where the waters reappear. Some of these are still thirty to one hundred feet in depth; but most of them have become choked up with stones and earth. These ancient engineering works, which Crates vainly endeavoured to restore in the time of Alexander, may possibly date {53} from the mythical age of King Minyas of Orchomenus,[15] and the successful draining of these marshes may account for the well-filled treasury of that king spoken of by Homer. Thus the ingenuity of the Homeric age had succeeded in accomplishing a work of the engineering art which baffles our modern men of science !

PEASANTS FROM THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS.

The whole of Western Greece, filled as it is by the mountains of Acarnania, Ætolia, and Phocis, is condemned by nature to play a very subordinate part to the eastern provinces. In the time of the ancient Greeks these provinces were looked upon almost as a portion of the world of the barbarians, and even in our own days the Ætolians are the least cultivated of all the Greeks. There is no commerce except at a few privileged places close to the sea, such as Missolonghi, Ætoliko, Salona, and Galaxidi. The latter, which is situated on a bay, into which flows the Pleistus, a river at one time consecrated to Neptune, although quite dry during the greater part of the year, was, up to the war of independence, the busiest seaport on the Gulf of Corinth. As for Naupactus, or Epakto, (called Lepanto by the Italians), it was important merely from a strategical point of view, on account of its position at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, which is sometimes named after it. Many naval engagements were fought to force the entrance into the gulf, defended by the castles of Rumelia and Morea—the ancient Rhium and Antirrhium. A curious phenomenon has been observed in connection with the channel which forms the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Nowhere more than 36 fathoms in depth, it is subject to perpetual changes in its width, owing to the formation of alluvial deposits by maritime currents. What one current deposits is carried away by the other. At the epoch of the Peloponnesian war this channel was 7 stadia, or about 1,200 yards, wide; at the time of Strabo its width was only 5 stadia; whilst in our own days it is no less than 2,200 yards from promontory to promontory. The entrance of the Gulf of Arta, between the Turkish Epirus and Greek Acarnania, does not present the same phenomena, and its present width is about equal to that assigned to it by every ancient author; that is to say, about 1,000 yards.

The valleys and lake basins of Eastern Greece, and more especially its position between the Gulf of Corinth, the Ægean Sea, and the channel of Eubœa, which almost convert it into a peninsula, sufficiently account for the prosperity of that country. With its cities of Thebes, Athens, and Megara, it is essentially a land of historical reminiscences. The contrast between the two most important districts of this region—Bœotia and Attica—is very striking. The first of these is an inland basin, the waters of which are collected into lakes, where mists accumulate, and a rich vegetation springs forth from a fat alluvial soil. Attica, on the other hand, is arid. A thin layer of mould covers the terraces of its rocky slopes; its valleys open out into the sea; the summits of its mountains rise into an azure sky; and the blue waters of the Ægean wash their base. Had the Greeks been fearful of the sea; had they confined themselves, as in the earliest {54} ages, to the cultivation of the soil, Bœotia, no doubt, would have retained the preponderance which it enjoyed in the time of the Minyæ of wealthy Orchomenus. But the progress of navigation and the allurements of commerce, which proved irresistible to the Greeks, were bound by degrees to transfer the lead to the men of Attica. The city of Athens, which arose in the midst of the largest plain of this peninsula, therefore occupied a position which assured to it a grand future.

Fig. 15.—THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.

The choice of Athens as the modern capital of Greece has been much criticized. Times have changed, no doubt, and the natural centres of commerce have become shifted, in consequence of the migrations of nations. Corinth, on the isthmus joining continental Greece to the Peloponnesus, and commanding two seas, undoubtedly deserved the preference. Its facilities for communicating with Constantinople and the Greek maritime districts still under the rule of the Osmanli, on the one hand, and with the western world, from which now proceed all civilising impulses, on the other, are certainly greater than those of Athens. If Greece, instead of a small centralised kingdom, had become a federal republic, which would have been more in accordance with her genius and traditions, there is no doubt that other towns of Greece, more favourably situated than Athens for establishing rapid communications with the rest of Europe, would soon have surpassed that town in population and commercial wealth. Athens, however, has grown upon its plain, and, by the construction of a railway, it has become even {55} a maritime city, as in ancient days, when its triple walls joined it to the ports of the Piræus and Phalerum.

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Fig. 16.—ATHENS AND ITS LONG WALLS.

According to Kiepert and Schmidt. Scale 1 : 114,000.

But how great the difference between the monuments of the ancient city and of the modern ! The Parthenon, though gutted by the shells of the Venetian Morosini, and robbed since of its finest sculptures, still retains its pure and simple beauty, which agrees so well with the sobriety of the surrounding landscape—still remains the finest architectural work of the world. By the side of this majestic ruin, on the same plateau of the Acropolis, where the mariner in the Gulf of Ægina saw the gilt spear-head of Athene Promachos glitter in the sun, there rise other monuments, the Erechtheum and the Propylæa, hardly inferior to it, and dating likewise from the great period of art. Outside the city, on a promontory, rises the temple of Theseus, the best-preserved monument of Greek antiquity. Elsewhere, on the banks of the Ilissus, a group of columns marks the site of the magnificent temple of Olympian Jupiter, which it took the Athenians seven hundred years to build, and which their degenerate descendants made use of as a quarry. Remarkable remains have been discovered in many other parts of the ancient city, and the least of them are of interest, for they recall the memory of illustrious men. On such a rock sat the Areopagus which condemned Socrates; from this stone tribune Demosthenes addressed the multitude; and here walked Plato with his disciples !

A similar historical interest attaches to nearly every part of Attica, whether we visit the city of Eleusis, where the mysteries of Ceres were celebrated, or the {56} city of Megara, with its double Acropolis, or whether we explore the field of Marathon and the shores of the island of Salamis. Even beyond Attica the memories of the past attract the traveller to Platæa, to Leuctra, Chæronea, Thebes of Œdipus, and Orchomenus of Minyas, though, in comparison with what these districts were in other times, they are now deserts. In addition to Athens and Thebes, there are now only two cities in eastern continental Greece which are of any importance. These are Lamia, in the midst of the low plains of the Sperchius, and Livadia, in Bœotia, at one time celebrated for the cavern of Trophonius, which archæologists have not yet succeeded in identifying. The island of Ægina, which belongs to Attica, offers the same spectacle of decay and depopulation as the mainland. Anciently it supported more than two hundred thousand inhabitants; at present it hardly numbers six thousand. But the island still retains the picturesque ruin of its temple of Minerva, and the prospect which it affords of the amphitheatre of hills in Argolis and Attica is as magnificent as ever.

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Fig. 17.—ANCIENT ATHENS.

According to Kiepert and Schmidt. Scale 1 : 30,000.

III.—THE MOREA, OR PELOPONNESUS.

Geographically the Peloponnesus well deserves the name of island, which was bestowed upon it by the ancients. The low Isthmus of Corinth completely severs it from the mountainous peninsula of Greece. It is a world in itself, small enough as far as the mere space is concerned which it occupies upon the map, but great on account of the part it has played in the history of humanity. {57}

On entering the Peloponnesus from the Isthmus of Corinth, we see rising in front of us the mountain rampart of Oneium, which defended the entrance of the peninsula, and upon one of whose promontories was built the nearly impregnable citadel of Corinth. These mountains form part of the general mountain system of the whole island, and, sheltered by them, its inhabitants could live in security. The principal mountain mass, whence all other chains radiate towards the entrances of the peninsula, is situated in the interior of the country, about forty miles to the west of Corinth. There Mount Cyllene of the ancient Greeks, or Zyria, rises into the air, its flanks covered with dark pines; and farther away still, the Khelmos, or Aroanian Mountain, attains even a more considerable height, its snows descending into a valley on its northern slope, where they give rise to the river Styx, the cold waters of which prove fatal to perjurers, and disappear in a narrow chasm, one of the entrances to Hades. A range of wooded peaks, to the west of the Khelmos, connects that mountain with the Olonos (Mount Erymanthus), celebrated as the haunt of the savage boar destroyed by Hercules. All those mountains, from Corinth as far as Patras, form a rampart running parallel with the southern shore of the gulf, in the direction of which they throw off spurs enclosing steep valleys. In one of these—that of Buraikos—we meet with the grand caverns of Mega-Spileon, which are used as a monastery, and where the most curious structures may be seen built up on every vantage-ground offered by the rocks, suggesting a resemblance to the cells of a vast nest of hornets.

The table-land of the Peloponnesus is thus bounded towards the north by an elevated coast range. Another chain of the same kind bounds it on the east. It likewise starts from Mount Cyllene, and extends southward, its various portions being known as Gaurias, Malevo (Mount Artemisium), and Parthenion. It is then broken through by a vast depression, but again rises farther south as the range of Hagios Petros, or Parnon, to the east of Sparta. Getting lower by degrees, it terminates in the promontory of Malea, opposite to the island of Cerigo. It was this cape, tradition tells us, which formed the last refuge of the Centaurs; that is to say, of the barbarian ancestors of the modern Tsakonians. No promontory was more dreaded by Greek navigators than this Cape Malea, owing to sudden gusts of wind, and an ancient proverb says, “When thou hast doubled the cape forget the name of thy native land.”

The mountains of Western Morea do not present the regularity of the eastern chain. They are cut through by rivers, and to the south of the Aroanian Mountains and the Erymanthus they ramify into a multitude of minor chains, which now and then combine into mountain groups, and impart the most varied aspect to that portion of the plateau. Everywhere in the valleys we come unexpectedly upon landscapes to which an indescribable charm is imparted by a group of trees, a spring, a flock of sheep, or a shepherd sitting upon a heap of ruins. We are in beautiful Arcadia, sung by the poets. Though in great part deprived of its woods, it is still a beautiful country; but more charming still are the eastern slopes of the plateau, which descend towards the Ionian Sea. There luxuriant forests and {58} sparkling rivulets add an element of beauty to blue waves, distant islands, and a transparent sky, which is wanting in nearly every other part of maritime Greece.

Fig. 18.—MOUNT TAYGETUS.

The table-land of Arcadia is commanded on the west by pine-clad Mænalus, and bounded on the south by several mountain groups which give birth to separate mountain chains. One of these mountain masses—the Kotylion, or Palæocastro—thus gives rise to the mountains of Messenia, amongst which rises the famous Ithome, and to those of Ægaleus, which spread over the peninsula to the west of the Gulf of Coron, and reappear in the sea as the rocky islets of Sapienza, Cabrera, and Venetikon. Another mountain mass, the Lycæus, or Diaforti—the Arcadian Olympus, which the Pelasgians claim for their cradle—and which rises almost in the centre of the Peloponnesus, is continued westward of Laconia by an extended mountain chain, the most elevated and most characteristic of all the Morea. The highest crest of these mountains is the famous Taygetus, known also as Pentedactylum (five fingers), because of the five peaks which surmount it; or as St. Elias, in honour, no doubt, of Helios, the Dorian sun-god. A portion of the lower slopes of this mountain is clothed with forests of chestnuts and walnuts. {59} interspersed with cypresses and oaks; but its crest is bare, and snow remains upon it during three-fourths of the year. The snows of Taygetus direct the distant mariner to the shores of Greece. On approaching the coast, he sees rising above the blue waters the spurs and outlying ridges of the Kakavuni, or “bad mountain.” Soon afterwards he comes in sight of the promontory of Tainaron, with its two capes of Matapan and Grasso—immense blocks of white marble more than six hundred feet in height, upon which the quails settle in millions after their fatiguing journey across the sea. Into the caverns at its foot the waters rush with a dull noise which the ancients mistook for the barking of Cerberus. Cape Matapan, like Malea, is dreaded amongst mariners as a great “destroyer of men.”

The three southern extremities of the Peloponnesus are thus occupied by high mountains and rocky declivities. The peninsula of Argolis, in the east, is likewise traversed by mountain ranges, which start from Mount Cyllene, similarly to the Gaurias and the mountains of Arcadia. The whole of the Peloponnesus is thus a country of table-lands and mountain ranges. If we except the plains of Elis, which have been formed by the alluvial deposits carried down by the rivers of Arcadia, and the lake basins of the interior, which have been filled up in the course of ages, we meet with nothing but mountains.[16] The principal mountain masses—the Cyllene, the Taygetus, and Parnon—are composed of crystalline schists and metamorphic marbles, as in continental Greece. Strata of the Jurassic age and beds of cretaceous limestone are here and there met with at the foot of these more ancient rocks. Near the coast, in Argolis, and on the flanks of the Taygetus, eruptions of serpentines and porphyries have taken place, whilst on the north-eastern coast of Argolis, and especially on the small peninsula of Methone, there exist recent volcanoes—amongst others, the Kaimenipetra, which M. Fouqué identifies with the fire-vomiting mouths of Strabo, and which had its last eruption twenty-one centuries ago. These volcanoes are, no doubt, the vents of a submarine area of disturbance which extends through Milos, Santorin, and Nisyros, to the south of the Ægean Sea.

The sulphur springs which abound on the western coast of the Peloponnesus are, perhaps, likewise evidences of a reaction of the interior of the earth.

It is the opinion of several geologists that the coasts of Western Greece are being insensibly upheaved. In many places, and particularly at Corinth, we meet with ancient caverns and sea beaches at an elevation of several feet above the sea-level. It is this upheaval, and not merely the alluvial deposits brought down by rivers, which explains the encroachment of the land upon the sea at the mouth of the Achelous and on the coast of Elis, where four rocky islets have been joined to the land. Elsewhere a subsidence of the land has been noticed, as in the Gulf of {60} Marathonisi and on the eastern coast of Greece, where the ancient peninsula of Elaphonisi has been converted into an island. But even there the fluvial deposits have encroached upon the sea. The city of Calamata is twice as distant from the seashore now as in the days of Strabo, and the traces of the ancient haven of Helos, on the coast of Laconia, are now far inland.

The limestone rocks of the interior of the Peloponnesus abound as much in chasms, which swallow up the rivers, as do Bœotia and the western portion of the whole of the Balkan peninsula. Some of these katavothras are mere sieves, hidden beneath herbage and pebbles, but others are wide chasms and caverns, through which the course of the underground waters may be readily traced. In winter wild birds post themselves at the entrances of these caverns, in expectation of the prey which the river is certain to carry towards them; in summer, after the waters have retired, foxes and jackals again take possession of their accustomed dens. The water swallowed up by these chasms on the plateau reappears on the other side of the mountains in the shape of springs, or kephalaria (kephalovrysis). The water of these springs has been purified by its passage through the earth, and its temperature is that of the soil. It bursts forth sometimes from a crevice in the rocks, sometimes in an alluvial plain, and sometimes even from the bottom of the sea. The subterranean geography of Greece is not yet sufficiently known to enable us to trace each of these kephalaria to the katavothras which feed them.

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Fig. 19.—LAKES PHENEA AND STYMPHALUS.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 500,000.

The ancients were most careful in keeping open these natural funnels, for, by facilitating the passage of the water, they prevented the formation of swamps. These precautions, however, were neglected during the centuries of barbarism which overcame Greece, and the waters were permitted to accumulate in many places at the expense of the salubrity of the country. The plain of Pheneus, or Phonia, a vast chasm between the Aroanian Mountains and the Cyllene, has thus repeatedly been converted into a lake. In the middle of last century the whole of this basin {61} was filled with water to a depth of more than 300 feet. In 1828, when this sheet of water had already become considerably reduced, it was still 6 miles long and 150 feet in depth. At length, a few years afterwards, the subterranean sluices opened, the waters disappeared, and there remained only two small marshes near the places of exit. But in 1850 the lake was again 200 feet in depth. Hercules, we are told, constructed a canal to drain this valley and to cleanse its subterranean outlets, but the inhabitants content themselves now with placing a grating above the “sink-holes,” to prevent the admission of trunks of trees and of other large objects carried along by the floods.

To the east of the valley of Pheneus, and on the southern foot of Mount Cyllene, there is another lake basin, celebrated in antiquity because of the man-eating birds which infested it, until they were exterminated by Hercules. This is the Stymphalus, alternately lake and cultivated land. During winter the waters cover about one-third of the basin; but it happens occasionally, after heavy rains, that the lake resumes its ancient dimensions. There is only one katavothra through which the waters can escape, and this, instead of being near the shore, as usual, is at the bottom of the lake. It swallows up not only the water of the lake, but likewise the vegetable remains carried into it, and the mud formed at its bottom; and this detritus is conveyed through it to some subterranean cavity, where it putrefies slowly, as may be judged from the fetid exhalations proceeding from the katavothra. The water, however, is purified, and when it reappears on the surface, close to the seashore, it is as clear as crystal.

There are many other lake basins of the same kind between the mountains of Arcadia and the chain of the Gaurias. They all have their swamps or temporary lakes, but the katavothras, in every instance, are sufficiently numerous to prevent an inundation of the entire valley. The most important of these lake basins is formed by the famous plain of Mantinea, upon which many a battle was fought. From an hydrological point of view this is one of the most curious places in the world; for the waters which collect there are discharged into two opposite seas—the Gulf of Nauplia on the east, and in the direction of the Alpheus and the Ionian Sea towards the west. There may exist even some subterranean rivulet which discharges itself, towards the south, into the Eurotas and the Gulf of Laconia.

The disappearance of the waters underground has condemned to sterility several parts of the Peloponnesus, which a little water would convert into the most fertile regions of the globe. The surface waters quickly suck up and form subterranean rivers, hidden from sight, which only see the light again, in most instances, near the seashore, when it is impossible to utilise them. The plain of Argos, though surrounded by a majestic amphitheatre of well-watered hills, is more sterile and arid even than are Megara and Attica. Its soil is always dry, and soaks up water like a sieve, which may have given rise to the fable of the Danaids. But to the south of that plain, where there is but a narrow cultivable strip of land between the mountains and the seashore, a great river bursts forth from the rocks. This is the Erasinus.

Other springs burst forth at the southern extremity of the plain, close to the defile {62} of Lerna, which, like that of the Erasinus, are supposed to be fed from Lake Stymphalus. Close to them is a chasm filled with water, said to be unfathomable. It abounds in tortoises, and venomous serpents inhabit the adjoining marsh. These are the kephalaria, or “heads,” of the ancient hydra of Lerna, which Hercules found it so difficult to seize hold of. Still farther south there is another spring which rises from the bottom of the sea, more than three hundred yards from the shore. This spring—the Doinæ of the ancients, and Anavula of modern Greek mariners—is, in reality, but the mouth of one of the rivers swallowed up by the katavothras of Mantinea. When the sea is still it throws up a jet rising to a height of fifty feet.

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Fig. 20.—THE PLATEAU OF MANTINEA.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 400,000.

Analogous phenomena may be witnessed in the two southern valleys of the peninsula, those of Sparta and Messenia. The Iri, or Eurotas, is, in reality, but a large rivulet, which discharges itself into the Gulf of Marathonisi, at the end of a gorge, {63} through which the waters of the Lake of Sparta forced themselves a passage during some ancient deluge; but it is only on rare occasions that its volume of water is sufficient to remove the bar which obstructs its mouth. The Vasili-Potamo (“royal river”), on the other hand, which bursts forth at the foot of a rock a short distance from the Eurotas, though its whole course does not exceed five miles, discharges a considerable volume of water throughout the year, and its mouth is at all times open. As to the river of Messenia, the ancient Pamisus, now called Pirnatza, it is the only river of Greece, besides the Alpheus, which forms a harbour at its mouth, and it can be ascended by small vessels for a distance of eight miles; but this advantage it owes exclusively to the powerful springs of Hagios Floros, which are fed by the mountains on the east. These springs, which form a large swamp where they rise to the surface, are the real river, if volume of water is to be decisive, and the country watered and fertilised by them was called the “Happy” by the ancients, on account of its fertility.

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Fig. 21.—BIFURCATION OF THE GASTUNI.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 400,000.

The western regions of the Peloponnesus receive more rain, and they are likewise in the possession of the most considerable river, the Alpheus, now called Ruphia, from one of its tributaries. The latter, the ancient Ladon, conveys a larger volume of water towards the sea than the Alpheus. It was as celebrated amongst the Greeks as was the Peneus of Thessaly, on account of the transparency of its waters, and the smiling scenery along its banks. It is partly fed by the snows of Mount Erymanthus, and, like most rivers of the Morea, derives a portion of its waters from subterranean tributaries rising on the central plateau. The Ladon thus receives the waters of Lake Phenea, whilst the Alpheus proper {64} is fed in its upper course from katavothras on the shores of the ancient lakes of Orchomenus and Mantinea. Having traversed the basin of Megalopolis, anciently a lake, it passes through a series of picturesque gorges, and reaches its lower valley. A charming tradition, illustrative of the ties of amity which existed between Elis and Syracuse, makes this river plunge beneath the sea and reappear in Sicily, close to the fountain of his beloved Arethusa. The ancient Greeks, who witnessed the disappearance of so many rivers, would hardly have looked upon this submarine course of the Alpheus as a thing to wonder at.

The Alpheus and all other rivers of Elis carry down towards the sea immense masses of detritus, which they spread over the plains extending from the foot of the mountains to the seashore. The ruins of Olympia disappeared in this manner beneath alluvial deposits. They have all frequently changed their beds, and not one amongst them has done so more frequently than the Peneus, or river of Gastuni. Anciently it discharged its waters to the north of the rocky promontory of Chelonatas, whilst in the present day it turns abruptly to the south, and enters the sea at a distance of fifteen miles from its ancient mouth. Works of irrigation may partly account for this change, but there can be no doubt that nature unaided has by degrees much modified the aspect of this portion of Greece. Islands originally far in the sea have been joined to the land; numerous open bays have gradually been cut off from the sea by natural embankments, and transformed into swamps or lagoons. One of the latter extends for several leagues to the south of the Alpheus, and is divided from the sea by a fine forest of pines. These majestic forests, in which the Triphylians paid honour to their dead, the surrounding hills dotted over with clumps of trees, and Mount Lycæus, from whose flanks are precipitated the cascades dedicated to Neda, the nurse of Jupiter, render this the most attractive district of all the Morea to a lover of nature.

The Peloponnesus presents us with one of the most striking instances of the influence exercised by the nature of the country upon the historical development of its inhabitants. Held to Greece by a mere thread, and defended at its entrance by a double bulwark of mountains, this “isle of Pelops” naturally became the seat of independent tribes at a time when armies still recoiled from natural obstacles. The isthmus was open as a commercial high-road, but it was closed against invaders.

The relief of the peninsula satisfactorily explains the distribution of the tribes inhabiting it, and the part they played in history. The whole of the interior basin, which has no visible outlets towards the sea, naturally became the home of a tribe who, like the Arcadians, held no intercourse with their neighbours, and hardly any amongst themselves. Corinth, Sicyon, and Achaia occupied the seashore on the northern slopes of the mountains, but were separated by high transversal chains. The inhabitants of these isolated valleys long remained strangers to each other, and when at length they combined to resist the invader, it was too late. Elis, in the west, with its wide valleys and its insalubrious plains extending along a coast having no havens, naturally played but a secondary part {65} in the history of the peninsula. Its inhabitants, exposed to invasions, owing to their country being without natural defences, would soon have been enslaved, had they not placed themselves under the protection of all the rest of Greece by converting their plain of Olympia into a place of meeting, where the Hellenes of Europe and of Asia, from the continent and from the islands, met for a few days’ festival to forget their rivalries and animosities. The basin of Argos and the mountain peninsula of Argolis, on the eastern side of the Peloponnesus, on the other hand, are districts having natural boundaries, and are easily defended. Hence the Argolians were able to maintain their autonomy for centuries, and even in the Homeric age they exercised a sort of hegemony over the remainder of Greece. The Spartans were their successors. The country in which they established themselves possessed the double advantage of being secure against every attack, and of furnishing all they stood in need of. Having firmly established themselves in the beautiful valley of the Eurotas, they found no difficulty in extending their power to the seashore, and to the unfortunate Helos. At a later date they crossed the heights of the Taygetus, and descended into the plains of Messenia. That portion of Greece likewise formed a natural basin, protected by elevated mountain ramparts; and the Messenians, who were kinsmen of the Spartans and their equals in bravery, were thus able to resist for a century. At length they fell, and all the Southern Peloponnesus acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, which was now in a position to assert its authority over the whole of Greece. Then it was that the mountain-girt plateau on the road from Lacedæmonia to Corinth, upon which stood the cities of Tegea and Mantinea, and which was made by nature for a field of Mars, became the scene of strife.

The Peloponnesus, with its sinuous shores, forms a remarkable contrast to Attica. Its characteristics are essentially those of a continent, and anciently the Peloponnesians were mountaineers rather than mariners. Except in Corinth, where the two seas nearly join, and a few towns of Argolis, which is another Attica, there were no inducements for the inhabitants to engage in maritime commerce; and in their mountain valleys and upland plains they were entirely dependent upon the rearing of cattle and husbandry. Arcadia, in the centre of the peninsula, was inhabited only by herdsmen and labourers; and its name, which originally meant “country of bears,” has become the general designation for an eminently pastoral country. The Laconians also, separated from the sea by rocky mountains which hem in the valley of the Eurotas at its point of issue, preserved for a long time the customs of warriors and of cultivators of the soil, and took to the sea only with reluctance. “When the Spartans placed Eurotas and Taygetus at the head of their heroes,” says Edgar Quinet, “they distinctly connected the features of the valley with the destinies of the people by whom it was occupied.”

In the very earliest ages the Phœnicians already occupied important factories on the coasts of the Peloponnesus. They had established themselves at Nauplia, in the Gulf of Argos; and at Cranaæ, the modern Marathonisi or Gythion, in Laconia, they purchased the shells which they required to dye their purple {66} cloths. The Greeks themselves were in possession of a few busy ports, amongst which was “sandy Pylos,” the capital of Nestor, whose position is now held by Navarino, on the other side of the gulf. At a subsequent date, when Greece had become the centre of Me­di­ter­ra­nean commerce, Corinth, so favourably situated between the two seas, rose into importance, not because of its political influence, its cultivation of the arts, or love of liberty, but through the number and wealth of its inhabitants. It is said that it had a population of three hundred thousand souls within its walls. Even after it had been razed by the Romans it again recovered its ancient pre-eminence. But the exposed position of the town has caused it to be ravaged so many times that all commerce has fled from it. In 1858, when an earthquake destroyed Corinth, that once famous city had dwindled down into a poor village. The city has been rebuilt about five miles from its ancient site, on the shore of the gulf named after it, but we doubt whether it will ever resume its ancient importance unless a canal be dug to connect the two seas. The high-roads from Marseilles and Trieste to Smyrna and Constantinople would then lead across the Isthmus of Corinth, and this canal might attract an amount of shipping equal to that which frequents other ocean channels or canals similarly situated. But for the present the isthmus is almost deserted, and only the passengers who are conveyed by Greek steamers to the small ports on its opposite shores cross it. The ancients, who had failed in the construction of a canal, and who made no further effort after the time of Nero, because they imagined one of the two seas to be at a higher level than the other, had provided, at all events, a kind of tramway, by means of which their small vessels could be conveyed from the Gulf of Corinth to the Ægean Sea.[17]

After the Crusades, when the powerful Republic of Venice had gained a footing upon the coasts of Morea, flourishing commercial colonies arose along them, in Arcadia, on the island of Prodano (Prote), at Navarino, Modon, Coron, Calamata, Malvoisie, and Nauplia in Argolis. At the call of these Venetian merchants the Peloponnesus again became a seat of trade, and resumed, to some extent, that part in maritime enterprise which it had enjoyed in the time of the Phœnicians. But the advent of the Turk, the impoverishment of the soil, and the civil wars which resulted therefrom, again forced the inhabitants to break off all intercourse with the outer world, and to shut themselves up in their island as in a prison. Tripolis, or Tripolitza, in the very centre of the peninsula, and called thus, it is said, because it is the representative of three ancient cities—Mantinea, Tegea, and Pallantium—then became the most populous place. Since the Greeks have regained their independence life again fluctuates towards the seashore as by a sort of natural sequence. Patras, close to the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, and near the most fertile and best-cultivated plains on the eastern shore, is by far the most important city at present, and, in anticipation of its future extension, the streets of a new town have been laid out, in the firm belief that it will some day rival Smyrna and Trieste in extent. {67}

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Fig. 22.—THE VALLEY OF THE EUROTAS.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 370,000.

The other towns of the peninsula, even those which exhibited the greatest activity during the dominion of the Venetians, are but of very secondary importance, if we compare them with this emporium of the Peloponnesus. Ægium, or Vostitza, on the Gulf of Corinth, is a poor port, less celebrated on account of its commerce than in consequence of a magnificent plane-tree, more than fifty feet in girth, the hollow trunk of which was formerly used as a prison. Pyrgos, close to the Alpheus, has no port at all. The fine roadstead of Navarino, defended against winds and waves by the rocky islet of Sphacteria, is but little frequented, and the merchantmen riding at anchor there never outnumber the Turkish men-of-war at the bottom, where they have lain since the battle fought in 1828. Modon and Coron have likewise fallen off. Calamata, at the mouth of the fertile valleys of Messenia, has an open roadstead only, and vessels cannot always ride in safety upon it. The celebrated Malvoisie, now called Monemvasia, is hardly more than a heap of ruins, and the vineyards in its neighbourhood, which furnished the exquisite wine named after the town, have long ceased to exist. Nauplia, which was the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece during the first few years of its existence, possesses the advantage of a {68} well-sheltered port; but its walls, its bastions, and its forts give it the character of a military town rather than of a commercial one.

The towns in the interior of the country, whatever glories may attach to them, are hardly more now than large villages. The most celebrated of all, Sparta, thanks to the fertility of its environs, promises to become one of the most prosperous cities of the interior of the Peloponnesus. Sparta—that is, the “scattered city,”—was named thus because its houses were scattered over the plain, defended only by the valour of their inhabitants, and not by walls. In the Middle Ages Sparta was supplanted by the neighbouring Mistra, whose decayed Gothic buildings and castles occupy a steep hill on the western side of the Eurotas; but it has now recovered its supremacy amongst the towns of Laconia. Argos, which is more ancient even than the city of Lacedæmon, has likewise risen anew from its ruins; for the plain in which it lies, though occasionally dried up, is of great natural fertility.

Strangers, however, who explore the countries of the Peloponnesus, do not go in search of these newly risen cities, where a few stones only remind them of the glories of the past, but are attracted by the ancient monuments of art. In that respect Argolis is one of the richest provinces of Greece. Near to Argos the seats of an amphitheatre are cut into the steep flanks of the hill of Larissa. Between Argos and Nauplia a small rock rises in the middle of the plain, which is surmounted by the ancient Acropolis of Tiryns, the Cyclopean walls of which are more than fifty feet in thickness. A few miles to the north of Argos are the ruins of Mycenæ, the city of Agamemnon, where the celebrated “Gate of Lions,” coarsely sculptured when Greek art first dawned, and the vast vaults known as the Treasury of the Atrides, mainly attract the attention of visitors. These vaults are amongst the oldest and best-preserved antiquities of Greece. They exhibit most solid workmanship, and one of the stones, which does duty as a lintel over the entrance-gate, weighs no less than one hundred and sixty-nine tons. At Epidaurus, in Argolis, on the shores of the Gulf of Ægina, and close to the most famous temple of Æsculapius, we still meet with a theatre which has suffered less from time than any other throughout Greece. Shrubs, interspersed with small trees, surround it; but we can still trace its fifty-four rows of white marble seats, capable of affording accommodation to twelve thousand spectators. Amongst other famous ruins of Argolis are the beautiful remains of a temple of Jupiter at Nemea, and the seven Doric columns of Corinth, said to be the oldest in all Greece. But the most beautiful edifice of the peninsula must be sought for near Arcadian Phigalia, in the charming valley of the Neda. This is the temple of Bassæ, erected by Ictinus in honour of Apollo Epicurius, and its beauty is enhanced by the oaks and rocks which surround it.

Citadels, however, are the buildings we most frequently meet with; and many a fortified place, with its walls and acropolis, yet exists as in the days of ancient Greece. The walls of Phigalia and Messenia still have their ancient towers, gates, and redoubts. Other fortifications were utilised by the Crusaders, Venetians, or Turks, and by them furnished with crenellated walls and keeps, which add another picturesque feature to the landscape. One of these ancient {69} fortresses, transformed during the Middle Ages, rises at the very gates of the Peloponnesus—namely, the citadel of Corinth, the strongest and most commanding of all.

Several of the islands of the Ægean Sea must be looked upon as natural dependencies of the Peloponnesus, to which submarine ledges or shoals attach them.

The islands along the coast of Argolis, which are inhabited by Albanian seamen, who were amongst the foremost to fight the Turk during the struggle for Hellenic independence, have lost much of their former commercial importance. Poros, a small Albanian town on a volcanic island of the same name, which the revolted people chose for their capital, is, however, still a bustling place, for it has an excellent harbour, and the Greek Government has made it the principal naval station of the kingdom. Hydra, on the other hand, and the small island of Spezzia, next to it, have lost their former importance. They are both rocky islands, without arable soil, trees, or water, and yet they formerly supported a population of fifty thousand souls. About 1730 a colony of Albanians, weary of the exactions of some Turkish pasha on the mainland, fled to the island of Hydra. They were left in peace there, for they agreed to pay a trifling tribute. Their commerce—leavened, to be sure, with a little piracy—assumed large dimensions, and immediately before the war of independence the Albanians of Hydra owned nearly 400 vessels of 100 to 200 tons each, and they were able to send over 200 vessels, armed with 200 guns, against the Turks. By engaging so enthusiastically in this struggle for liberty, the Hydriotes, without suspecting it, wrought their own ruin. No sooner was the cause of Greece triumphant than the commerce of Hydra was transferred to Syra and the Piræus, which are more favourably situated.

Cythera of Laconia, a far larger island than either of those mentioned, and better known by the Italian name of Cerigo, formed a member of the Septinsular Republic, although not situated in the Ionian Sea, and clearly a dependency of the Peloponnesus. Cythera is no longer the island of Venus, and its voluptuous groves have disappeared. Seen from the north, it resembles a pile of sterile rocks. It nevertheless yields abundant harvests, possesses fine plantations of olive-trees, and populous villages. Cerigo, in former times, enjoyed considerable importance, owing to its position between the Ionian Sea and the Archipelago; but Cape Malea has lost its terrors now, and the harbour of refuge on the island is no longer sought after. Heaps of shells, left there by Phœnician manufacturers of purple, have been found on the island; and it was the Phœnicians who introduced the worship of Venus Astarte.

IV.—THE ISLANDS OF THE ÆGEAN SEA.

Islands and islets are scattered in seeming disorder over the Ægean Sea, the name of which may probably mean “sea of goats,” because these islands appeared at a distance like goats. By a singular misapplication the modern term {70} Archipelago, instead of sea, is now used to designate these groups of islands. The Sporades, in the north, form a long range of islands stretching in the direction of Mount Athos. The island of Scyros, farther south, the birthplace of Achilles and place of exile of King Theseus, occupies an isolated position; the large island of Eubœa extends along the coast of the continent; and in the distance rise the white mountains of the Cyclades, likened by the ancient Greeks to a circle of Oceanides dancing around a deity.

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Fig. 23.—EURIPUS AND CHALCIS.

Scale 1 : 220,000.

All these islands are so many fragments of the mainland. This is proved by their geological structure, or by shoals which attach them to the nearest coast. The Northern Sporades are a branch of Mount Pelion. Eubœa is traversed by limestone mountains of considerable height, running parallel to the chains of Attica, Argolis, Mount Olympus, and Mount Athos. Scyros is a rocky mountain mass, whose axis runs in the same direction as that of the central chain of Eubœa. The summits of the Cyclades continue the ranges of Eubœa and Attica towards the south-east, and the same micaceous and argillaceous schists, limestones, and crystalline marbles are found in them. They are, indeed, “mountains of Greece {71} scattered over the sea.” If Athens may boast of the quarries of Mount Pentelicus, the Cyclades produce the glittering marbles of Naxos, and the still more beautiful ones of Paros, from which were chiselled the statues of heroes and of gods. Curious caverns are met with in the limestone of the islands, especially that of Antiparos, the existence of which was not known to the ancients, and the Cave of Sillaka, on the island of Cythnos, or Thermia, celebrated for its hot springs. Granite is found on some of the islands, and particularly in the small island of Delos, dedicated to the worship of Apollo and Diana. In the south, finally, the Cyclades are traversed by a chain of volcanic islands, extending from the peninsula of Methana, in Argolis, to Cos and the shores of Asia Minor.

Eubœa may be looked upon almost as a portion of the continent, for the strait which separates it from the mainland resembles a submerged longitudinal valley, and is nowhere of great depth or width. At its narrowest part it is no more than two hundred and fourteen feet across, and from the most remote times, Chalcis, the capital of the island, has been joined to the mainland by a bridge. The irregular tidal currents flowing through this strait were looked upon as marvellous by the Greeks, and Aristotle is said to have flung himself into it because he was unable to explain this phenomenon. The Italian name of the island, Negroponte, is formed by a series of corruptions from Euripus, by which name the ancients knew the strait between the island and the mainland. Eubœa has at all times shared in the vicissitudes of the neighbouring provinces of Attica and Bœotia. When the cities of Greece were at the height of their glory, those of Eubœa—Chalcis, Eretria, and Cerinthus—enjoyed likewise a high degree of prosperity, and dispatched colonies to all parts of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. Later on, when invaders ravaged Attica, Eubœa shared the same fate, and at present it participates in every political and social movement of the neighbouring continent.

In Northern Eubœa there are forests of oaks, pines, elms, and plane-trees; the villages are embedded in orchards; and the surrounding country resembles what we have seen in Elis and Arcadia. But in the Cyclades we look in vain for charming landscapes. Foliage and running water abound only in a very few spots. Arid rocks, more arid even than those on the coast of Greece, predominate, and only in a few favoured spots do we meet with a few olive-trees, valonia oaks, pines, and fig-trees. Everywhere else the hills are naked. And yet these islands arouse feelings of devotion in us, for their names are great in history. The highest summits of most of them have been named after the prophet Elias, the biblical successor of Apollo, the god of the sun; and justly so, for the sun reigns supreme upon these austere rocks, and his scorching rays destroy every vestige of vegetation.

Antimilos, one of the uninhabited islands of this group, still affords an asylum to the wild goat (Capra Caucasica), which has disappeared from the remainder of Europe, and is met with only in Crete, and perhaps Rhodes. Wild pigs likewise haunt the rocks of Antimilos. Rabbits were introduced from the West, and abound in the caverns of some of the Cyclades, and especially on Myconus and Delos. The ancient authors never mention these animals. It is a curious fact that {72} hares and rabbits never inhabit the same island, with the sole exception of Andros, where the hares occupy the extreme north, whilst the rabbits have their burrows in the southern portion of the island. As a curiosity, we may also mention that a large species of lizard, called crocodile by the inhabitants, is found on the islands, but not on the neighbouring continent, and we may conclude from this that the Cyclades were separated from the Balkan peninsula at a very remote period.

A chain of volcanic islands bounds the Cyclades towards the south, where they are separated from Crete by an ocean trough of great depth. Milos is the most important of these islands. It has an irregularly shaped crater, which has been invaded by the sea, and forms there one of the safest and most capacious harbours of refuge in the Me­di­ter­ra­nean. Milos has had no eruption within historic times, but the existence of solfataras and of hot springs proves that its volcanic forces are not yet quite extinct.

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Fig. 24.—NEA KAMMENI.

According to Danfalik.

The actual centre of volcanic activity has to be looked for in a small group of islands known as Santorin, and lying midway between Europe and Asia. These islands consist of marbles and schists, similar to those of the other Cyclades, and they surround a vast crater no less than twelve hundred and eighty feet in depth. The crescent-shaped island of Thera, on the east, presents bold cliffs towards the crater, while its gentle outer slopes are covered with vineyards producing exquisite wine. Therasia, on the west, rises like an immense wall; and the islet of {73} Aspronisi, between the two, indicates the existence of a submarine partition wall which separates the crater from the open sea. The submarine volcano occupies the centre of this basin. It remains quiescent for long periods, and then suddenly arousing itself, it ejects immense masses of scoriæ. Nearly twenty-one centuries ago the first island rose to the surface in the centre of this basin. This island is known now as Palæa Kammeni, or the “old volcano.” Three years of eruptions in the sixteenth century gave birth to the smallest of the three islands, Mikra Kammeni. A third cone of lava, Nea Kammeni, rose in the eighteenth century; and quite recently, between 1866 and 1870, this new island has more than doubled its size, overwhelming the small village of Volkario and its port, and extending to within a very short distance of Mikra Kammeni. No less than half a million of partial eruptions occurred during those five years, and the ashes were sometimes thrown to a height of four thousand feet. Even from Crete clouds of ashes could be seen suspended in the air, black during the day, and lit up by night.

Thousands of spectators hastened to Santorin from all quarters of the world to witness these eruptions, and amongst them were several men of science—Fouqué, Gorceix, Reiss, Stübel, and Schmidt—whose observations have proved of great service. The crater of Santorin appears to have been produced by a violent explosion which shattered the centre of the ancient island, and covered its slopes with enormous masses of tufa.[18]

Southern Eubœa and the vicinity of Port Gavrion, on the island of Andros, are inhabited by Albanians, but the population in the remainder of the Archipelago is Greek. The families of Italian or French descent on Scyros, Syra, Naxos, and Santorin are not sufficiently numerous to constitute an element of importance. They claim to be of French descent, and are known in the Archipelago as Franks, and during the war of independence they claimed the protection of the French Government. In former times nearly the whole of the land was held by these Franks, who had taken possession of it during the Middle Ages, and these large estates are made to account for the sparse population of Naxos, which supported a hundred thousand inhabitants formerly, but is now hardly able to support one-seventh that number.

The Cyclades are farther removed from the coast of Greece than Eubœa, and they have not always shared in the historical dramas enacted upon the neighbouring continent. Their position in the centre of the Archipelago naturally caused them to be visited by all the nations navigating the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and their inhabitants were thus subjected to the most diverse influences. In ancient times the mariners of Asia Minor and of Phœnicia called at the Cyclades on their voyages to Greece; during the Middle Ages the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Knights of Rhodes, and the Osmanli were masters {74} there in turn; and in our own days the nations of Western Europe, with the Greeks themselves, hold the preponderance in the Archipelago.

These historical vicissitudes have caused the centre of gravity of the Cyclades to be shifted from island to island. In the time of the ancient Greeks, Delos, the island of Apollo, was looked upon as the “holy land,” where merchants congregated from all quarters, carried on business in the shadow of sanctuaries, and held slave markets at the side of the temples. The sale of human flesh became in the end the main feature of the commerce of Delos, and in the time of the Roman emperors as many as ten thousand slaves were bartered away there in a single day. But the markets, the temples, and monuments of Delos have vanished, and its stony soil supports now only a few sheep. During the Middle Ages Naxos enjoyed the predominance; and at present, Tinos, with its venerated church of the Panagia and its thousands of pilgrims, is the “holy land” of the Archipelago; whilst Hermopolis, on Syra, though without trees or water, holds the position of commercial metropolis of the Cyclades. The latter was a town of no importance before the war of independence; but it remained neutral during that struggle, and thus attracted numerous refugees from other islands, and, thanks to its central position, it has since become the principal mart, dockyard, and naval station of the Ægean Sea. Whether travellers proceed to Saloniki, Smyrna, Constantinople, or the Black Sea, they must stop at Hermopolis. The town formerly occupied the heights only, for fear of pirates, but it has descended now to the foot of the hill, and its quays and warehouses extend along the seashore.