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.
[Illustration]
{23}
[Illustration]
THE MEDITERRANEAN.
I.—HYDROLOGY.
Greece 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]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.—THE STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR.
According to Robiquet, Randegger, and others. Scale 1 : 750,000.
Erhard.]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.—THE PRINCIPAL FISHERIES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Scale 1 : 38,300,000.
Erhard.]
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.