upon the Balkan peninsula an advantage unrivalled, perhaps, throughout
the world. It is separated from Asia only by the narrow channel which
joins the Black Sea to the Ægean Sea: this channel is an ocean highway,
and yet forms no serious obstacle to the migration of nations from
continent to continent. If the Black Sea were larger than it is at
present; if it still formed _one_ sea with the Caspian, and extended
far into Asia, as it did in a past age, then Constantinople would
necessarily become the great centre of the ancient world. That proud
position was actually held by it a thousand years ago, and even if it
should never recover it, its geographical position alone insures to
it an importance for all time to come. If the city were to be razed
to day, it would arise again to-morrow at some other spot in the
neighbourhood. In the dawn of history powerful Ilion kept watch at the
entrance of the Dardanelles: it survives in the city on the Bosphorus;
and had there been no Byzantium, its mantle would have descended upon
some other town in the same locality.
We know the part played by ancient Greece in the history of human
culture. Macedonia and Thracia, the two other countries bordering upon
the Ægean, have played their part too. It was those provinces which,
after the invasion of the Persians, gave birth to the movement of
reaction which led the armies of Alexander to the Euphrates and Indus.
The power of the Romans survived there for a thousand years after Rome
itself had fallen, and the precious germs of civilisation, which at
a later period regenerated Western Europe, were nurtured there. It
is true, alas ! that the Turk has put a stop to every enterprise of
a civilising nature. These conquerors of Turanian race were carried
into the Balkan peninsula in the course of a general migration of
nations towards the west, which went on for three thousand years, and
was attended by perpetual broils. It is now five hundred years since
the Turks obtained a footing in the peninsula, and for more than four
hundred years they have been its masters, and during that long period
the old Roman empire of the East has been severed, as it were, from
the rest of Europe. The normal progress of these highly favoured
countries has been interrupted by incessant wars between Christians
and Mohammedans, by the decay of the nations conquered or enslaved by
the Turks, and by the heedless fatalism of the masters of the country.
But the time is approaching when that important portion of Europe will
resume the position due to it amongst the countries of the earth.
Vast tracts of the Balkan peninsula are hardly better known to us than
the wilds of Africa. Kanitz found rivers, hills, and mountains figuring
upon our maps which have no existence. Another traveller, Lejean,
found that a pretended low pass through the Balkans existed only in
the imagination. Russian geodesists engaged upon the measurement of an
arc of a meridian found that Sofia, one of the largest and best-known
cities of Turkey, had been inserted upon the best maps at a distance
of nearly a day’s journey from its true position. The entire chain of
the Balkans had to be shifted considerably to the south, in consequence
of explorations carried on within the last few years. Men of science
have hardly ventured yet to explore the plateaux of Albania or Mount
Pindus, and much remains yet to {89} be done before our knowledge of
the topography of the Balkan peninsula can be called even moderately
complete. The voyages and explorations of a host of travellers[24]
have, however, made known to us its general features and its geological
formations. Their task was by no means an easy one, for the mountain
masses and mountain chains of the peninsula do not constitute a
regular, well-defined system. There is no central range, with spurs
running out on both sides, and gradually decreasing in height as they
approach the plains. Nor is the centre of the peninsula its most
elevated portion, for the culminating summits are dispersed over the
country apparently without order. The mountain ranges run in all the
directions of the compass, and we can only say, in a general way, that
those of Western Turkey run parallel with the Adriatic and Ionian
coasts, whilst those in the east meet the coasts of the Black Sea and
the Ægean at right angles. The relief of the soil and the water-sheds
make it appear almost as if Turkey turned her back upon continental
Europe. Its highest mountains, its most extensive table-lands, and its
most inaccessible forests lie towards the west and north-west, as if
they were intended to cut it off from the shores of the Adriatic and
the plains of Hungary, whilst all its rivers, whether they run to the
north, east, or south, finally find their way into the Black Sea or the
Ægean, whose shores face those of Asia.
This irregularity in the distribution of the mountains has its
analogue in the distribution of the various races which inhabit the
peninsula. The invaders or peaceful colonists, whether they came
across the straits from Asia Minor, or along the valley of the Danube
from Scythia, soon found themselves scattered in numerous valleys, or
stopped by amphitheatres having no outlet. They failed to find their
way in this labyrinth of mountains, and members of the most diverse
races settled down in proximity to each other, and frequently came into
conflict. The most numerous, the most warlike, or the most industrious
races gradually extended their power at the expense of their
neighbours; and the latter, defeated in the struggle for existence,
have been scattered into innumerable fragments, between which there is
no longer any cohesion. Hungary has a homogeneous population, if we
compare it with that of Turkey; for in the latter country there are
districts where eight or ten different nationalities live side by side
within a radius of a few miles.
Time, however, has brought some order into this chaos, and commercial
intercourse has done much to assimilate these various races. Speaking
broadly, Turkey in Europe may now be said to be divided into four
great ethnological zones. The Greeks occupy Crete, the islands of
the Archipelago, the shores of the Ægean Sea, and the eastern slopes
of Mounts Pindus and Olympus; the Albanians hold the country between
the Adriatic and Mount Pindus; the Slavs, including Servians, Croats,
Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and Tsernagorans (Montenegrins), occupy
the Illyrian Alps, towards the north-west; whilst the slopes of the
Balkan, the Despoto Dagh, and the plains of Eastern Turkey belong to
the Bulgarians, who, as far as language goes, are Slavs likewise. As
to the Turks, the lords of the land, {90} they are to be met with in
most places, and particularly in the large towns and fortresses; but
the only portion of the country which they occupy to the exclusion of
other races is the north-eastern corner of the peninsula, bounded by
the Balkans, the Danube, and the Black Sea.
II.—CRETE AND THE ISLANDS OF THE ARCHIPELAGO.
Crete, next to Cyprus, is the largest island inhabited by Greeks. It is
a natural dependency of Greece, but treaties made without consulting
the wishes of the people have handed it over to the Turks. It is Greek
in spite of this, not only because the majority of its inhabitants
consider it to be so, but also because of its soil, its climate, and
its geographical position. On all sides it is surrounded by deep seas,
except towards the north-west, where a submarine plateau joins it to
Cythera and the Peloponnesus.
There are few countries in the world more favoured by nature. Its
climate is mild, though sometimes too dry in summer; its soil fertile
in spite of the waters being swallowed up by the limestone rocks;
its harbours spacious and well sheltered; and its scenery exhibits
both grandeur and quiet beauty. The position of Crete, at the mouth
of the Archipelago, between Europe, Asia, and Africa, seems to have
destined that island to become the great commercial emporium of that
part of the world. Aristotle already observed this, and, if tradition
can be trusted, Crete actually held that position for more than three
thousand years. During that time it “ruled the waves;” the Cyclades
acknowledged the sway of Minos, its king; Cretan colonists established
themselves in Sicily; and Cretan vessels found their way to every part
of the Mediterranean. But the island unfortunately became divided into
innumerable small republics jealous of each other, and was therefore
unable to maintain this commercial supremacy in the face of Dorian and
other Greeks. At a subsequent period the Romans subjected the island,
and it never recovered its independence. Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians,
and Turks have held it in turn, and by each of them it has been laid
waste and impoverished.
The elongated shape of the island, and the range of mountains which
runs through it from one extremity to the other, enable us to
understand how it was that at a time when most Greeks looked upon
the walls of their cities as synonymous with the limits of their
fatherland, Crete became divided into a multitude of small republics,
and how every attempt at federation (“syncretism”) miserably failed.
The inhabitants, in fact, were more effectually separated from each
other than if they had inhabited a number of small islands forming an
archipelago. Most of the coast valleys are enclosed by high mountains,
the only easy access to them being from the sea, and communications
between the towns occupying their centres are possible only by crossing
difficult mountain paths easily defended. In all Crete there exists
but one plain deserving the name, viz. that of Messara, to the south
of the central mass of mountains. It is the granary of the island, and
the Ieropotamo, or “holy river,” which traverses it, has a little water
even in the middle of summer. {91}
The contour of Crete corresponds in a remarkable manner with the height
of its mountains. Where these are high, the island is broad; where
they sink down, it is narrow. In the centre of the island rises Mount
Ida (Psiloriti), where Jupiter was educated by the Corybantes, and
where his tomb was shown. Its lofty summit, covered with snow almost
throughout the year, its gigantic buttresses, and the verdant valleys
at its base render it one of the most imposing mountains in the world;
but it was still more magnificent in the time of the ancient Greeks,
when forests covered its slopes, and justified its being called Mount
Ida, or “the wooded.” On the summit of this mountain the whole island
lies spread out beneath our feet; the horizon towards the north, from
Mount Taygetus to the shores of Asia, is dotted with islands and
peninsulas; and in the south a wide expanse of water extends beyond the
barren and inhospitable island of Gaudo.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.—THE GORGE OF HAGIO RUMELI.]
The Leuca-Ori, or “White Mountains,” in the western extremity of the
island, are thus called on account of the snow which covers their
summits, or because {92} of their white limestone cliffs. They are
exceedingly steep, and perfectly bare, hardly any verdure being met
with even in the valleys at their foot. They are known, also, as the
Mountains of the Sphakiotes, the descendants of the ancient Dorians,
who have retired into their fastnesses, where they are protected by
nature against every attack. Some of their villages are accessible
only by following the stony bed of mountain torrents leaping down from
the heights in small cascades. During the rains the water rushes down
these ravines in mighty torrents. The “gates are closed” then, as it
is said. One of these gates, or _pharynghi_, is that of Hagio Rumeli,
on the southern slope of the Leuca-Ori. When rain threatens it is
dangerous to enter these gorges, for the waters rush down and carry
everything before them. During the war of independence the Turks vainly
endeavoured to force this “gate” of the strong mountain citadel. The
level pieces of ground on these heights are sufficiently extensive to
support a considerable population, if it were not for the cold. The
villages of Askyfo occupy one of these plains, which is surrounded on
all sides by an amphitheatre of mountains. In former times this cavity
was occupied by a lake. This is proved by ancient beaches and by other
evidence. But the waters of the lake found an outlet through some
katavothras (_khonos_, “sinks”) and discharged themselves into the sea.
The remaining mountains of the island are less elevated and far less
sterile than the White Mountains. The most remarkable amongst them
are the Lasithi, and, still farther west, those of Dicte, or Sitia, a
sort of pendant to the Mountains of the Sphakiotes. Raised sea-beaches
have been traced along their northern slopes, covered with shells of
living species, and they prove that that portion of the island has been
upheaved more than sixty feet during a recent geological epoch. The
northern coast, between the White Mountains and Mount Dicte, offers a
greater variety of contour than does the south coast. Its capes, or
_acroteria_, project far into the sea, and thence are gulfs, bays, and
secure anchorages. For these reasons most commercial cities have been
built upon that side of the island, which faces the Archipelago and
presents a picture of life, whilst the south coast, facing Africa, is
comparatively deserted. All the modern cities on the northern coasts
have been built upon the sites of ancient ones. Megalokastron, better
known by its Italian name of Candia, is the Heracleum of the ancients,
the famous haven of Cnossus. Retimo, on the western front of Mount
Ida, is easily identified with the ancient Rithymna; whilst Khanea
(Canea), whose white houses are almost confounded with the arid slopes
of the White Mountains, represents the Cydonia of the Greeks, famous
for its forests of quince-trees. Canea is the actual capital, and
although not the most populous, it is nevertheless the most important
and the busiest city of the island. It has a second haven to the
east, Azizirge, on Suda Bay, one of the best sheltered on the island,
and promises to become one of the principal maritime stations on the
Mediterranean.[25] {93}
Crete has certainly lost much in population and wealth, and the
epithet of the “isle of a hundred cities,” which it received from
the ancient Greeks, no longer applies to it. Miserable villages
occupy the sites of the ancient cities, their houses built from the
materials of a single ruined wall, whilst immense quarries had to be
opened in order to supply the building materials required in former
times. The famous “labyrinth” is one of the most considerable of these
ancient quarries. Crete, in spite of its great fertility, exports
merely a few agricultural products, and nothing now reminds us of the
fruitful island upon which Ceres gave birth to Plutus. The peasants
are the reputed owners of the land, but they take little heed of its
cultivation. Their olives yield only an inferior oil, and though
the wine they make is good in spite of them, it is no longer the
Malvoisie so highly prized by the Venetians. The cultivation of cotton,
tobacco, and of fruit of all sorts is neglected. The only progress in
agriculture which can be recorded during the present century consists
in the introduction of orange-trees, whose delicious fruit is highly
appreciated throughout the East. M. Georges Perrot has drawn attention
to the singular fact that, with the exception of the olive-trees
and the vine, the cultivated trees of the island are confined to
particular localities. Thus chestnuts are met with only at the western
extremity of the island; vigorous oaks and cypresses are confined to
the elevated valleys of the Sphakiotes; the valonia oaks are met with
only in the province of Retimo; Mount Dicte alone supports stone-pines
and carob-trees; and a promontory in South-eastern Crete, jutting out
towards Africa, is surmounted by a grove of date-trees—the finest
throughout the Archipelago.
[Illustration: Fig. 29.—CRETE, OR CANDIA.
Scale 1 : 2 470,000.
The district inhabited by Mohammedans is shaded vertically.]
The inhabitants of Crete and the neighbouring islets are still Greek,
in spite of successive invasions, and they still speak a Greek dialect,
recognised as a corrupted Dorian. The Slavs, who invaded the island
during the Middle Ages, have left no trace except the names of a few
villages. The Arabs and Venetians, too, have been assimilated by the
aboriginal Cretans; but there still exist a considerable {94} number
of Albanians, the descendants of soldiers, who have retained their
language and their customs. As to the Mohammedans or pretended Turks,
who constitute about one-fifth of the total population, they are, for
the most part, the descendants of Cretans who embraced Islamism in
order to escape persecution. They are the only Hellenes throughout the
East who have embraced, in a body, the religion of their conquerors;
but since religious persecution has subsided several of those
Mohammedan Greeks have returned to the religion of their ancestors. The
Greeks of Crete are thus not only vastly in the majority, but they hold
the first place also in industry, commerce, and wealth; it is they who
buy up the land, and the Mohammedan gradually retires before them. All
Cretans, with the exception of the Albanians, speak Greek, and only in
the capital and in a portion of Messara, where the Mohammedans live in
compact masses, has the Turkish language made any progress.
We need not be surprised, therefore, if the Greeks lay claim to a
country in which their preponderance is so marked. But, in spite of
their valour, they were no match against the Turkish and Egyptian
armies which were brought against them.
The Cretans are said to resemble their ancestors in the eagerness
with which they do business, and in their disregard of truth. They
may possibly be “Greeks amongst Greeks—liars amongst liars;” but
they certainly cannot be reproached with being bad patriots. On the
contrary, they have suffered much for the sake of their fatherland, and
during the war of independence their blood was shed in torrents on many
a battle-field. The vast cavern of Melidhoni, on the western slope of
Mount Ida, was the scene of one of the terrible events of this war. In
1822 more than three hundred Hellenes, most of them women, children,
and old men, had sought refuge in this cavern. The Turks lit a fire
at its mouth, and the smoke, penetrating to its farthest extremity,
suffocated the unfortunate beings who had hoped to find shelter there.
* * * * *
The profound “Sea of Minos,” to the north of Crete, separates that
island from the Archipelago. All the islands of the latter have been
assigned to the kingdom of Greece—Astypalæa, vulgarly called Astropalæa
or Stampalia, alone excepted, which still belongs to the Turks. The
ancients called this island the “Table of the Gods,” although it is
only a barren rock. It clearly belongs to the eastern chain of the
Cyclades, as far as geological formation and the configuration of
the sea-bottom go; but the diplomats allowed its fifteen hundred
inhabitants to remain under the dominion of Turkey.
Amongst the other islands inhabited by Greeks, but belonging to
Turkey, Thasos is that which lies nearest to the coast of Europe.
The strait which separates it from Macedonia is hardly four miles
across, and in its centre there is an island (Thasopulo), as well as
several sand-banks, which interfere much with navigation. Though a
natural dependency of Macedonia, this island is governed by a mudir
of the Viceroy of Egypt, to whom the Porte made a present of it. When
Mohammed II. put an end to the Byzantine empire, Thasos and the {95}
neighbouring islands formed a principality, the property of the
Italian family of the Gateluzzi.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.—THE ÆGEAN SEA.
According to Robiquet. Scale, 1 : 5,170,000.
The map is shaded to express the depth of the sea. The palest tint
indicates a depth of less than 55 fathoms; the next tint a depth of 55
to 275 fathoms; the next a depth of 275 to 550 fathoms; and the darkest
tint a depth of over 550 fathoms.]
Thasos is one of those countries of the ancient world the present
condition of which contrasts most unfavourably with former times.
Thasos, an ancient Phœnician colony, was once the rival, and
subsequently the wealthy and powerful ally, of Athens: its hundred
thousand inhabitants worked the gold and iron mines of {96} the island;
they quarried its beautiful white marble; cultivated vineyards yielding
a famous wine; and extended their commercial expeditions to every part
of the Ægean Sea. But now there are neither mines nor quarries, the
vines yield only an inferior product, the agricultural produce hardly
suffices for the six thousand inhabitants of the island, and the
ancient haven of Thasos is frequented only by the tiniest of vessels.
The island has recovered very slowly from the blow inflicted upon it
by Mohammed II., who carried nearly the whole of its inhabitants to
Constantinople. Thasos after this became a haunt of pirates, and its
inhabitants sought shelter within the mountains of the interior. They
are Hellenes, but their dialect is very much mixed with Turkish words.
Unlike other Hellenes, they are not anxious to improve their minds.
They are degenerate Greeks, and they know it. “We are sheep and beasts
of burden,” they’ repeatedly told the French traveller, Perrot.
Thasos, however, is the only island of the Archipelago where wooded
mountains and verdant landscapes survive. Rains are abundant, and
its vegetation luxuriant. Running streams of water murmur in every
valley; large trees throw their shade over the hill-sides; the villages
near the foot of the mountain are hidden by cypresses, walnut, and
olive-trees; the valleys which radiate in all directions from the
centre of the island abound in planes, laurels, yoke-elms, and vigorous
oaks; and dark pine forests cover the higher slopes of the hills,
the glittering barren summits of Mount St. Elias and of other high
mountains alone rising above them.
Samothrace, though smaller than Thasos, is much more elevated. Its
mountains are composed of granite, schists, limestones, and trachyte,
and form a sort of pendant to Mount Athos, on the other side of the
Ægean Sea. If we approach Samothrace from the north or the south, it
presents the appearance of a huge coffin floating upon the waters;
from the east or west its profile resembles a pyramid rising from the
waves. From its summit Neptune watched the fight of the Greeks before
Troy. In the dark oak forests of the Black Mountains were carried on
the mysteries of Cybele and her Corybantes, as well as the Cabiric
worship, which was intimately connected with them, and Samothrace was
to the ancient Greeks what Mount Athos is to the moderns—a sacred land.
Numerous ruins and inscriptions remain to bear witness to the zeal of
devout travellers from all parts of the world. But with the downfall of
the heathen temples the pilgrims disappeared. There is only one village
on the island now. Its inhabitants lead a secluded life, and the only
strange faces they see are those of the sponge-fishers who frequent the
island during summer. The entire absence of harbours, and the dangerous
current which separates Samothrace from Imbro, keep off the mariner,
and though the valleys are extremely fertile, they have not hitherto
attracted a single immigrant from the neighbouring continent.
Imbro and Lemnos are separated from Samothrace by a deep sea, and
appear to continue the range of the Thracian Chersonesus. Imbro, which
is nearest to the continent, is the more elevated of the two islands,
but its St. Elias does not attain half the height of the mountains
of Samothrace. There are no forests {97} upon the slopes of this
mountain, the valleys are covered with stones, and hardly an eighth
of the surface of the island is capable of cultivation. Still, the
position of Imbro, close to the mouth of the Dardanelles and upon an
international ocean highway, will always secure to it a certain degree
of importance. The majority of the inhabitants live in a small valley
in the north-eastern portion of the island, and though the rivulet
which flows through this valley regularly dries up in summer, it is
nevertheless called emphatically the Megalos Potamos, or “big river.”