Europa Point

“ The most amazing thing about the light ridges is their form. Instead of being straight, they form scallops or cusps, with smooth curves that repeat regularly on a scale of 100 to a few hundred kilometers. In some of the low-Sun-angle pictures, the surface of Europa seems to be covered with a beautiful network of these regular curving lines. The impression is so bizarre that one tends not to believe the reality of what is seen. Nothing remotely like it has ever been seen on any other planet. ”

“ The first sun myth mentioned in the course of this work is the story of Europa, in which Europa is “the broad spreading light,” born in Phœnicia (the “purple land of morn”) , the child of Telephassa (“she who shines from afar”) , carried away from her eastern birthplace by the sky (Jupiter) , closely pursued by the sun (her brother Cadmus) , who, after passing through many lands, slays a dragon (the usual demon of drought or darkness) , and sets (dies) at last without having ever overtaken the light of dawn (Europa) .
Apollo. ”

“ But the connexion of the central peninsula, that of Italy, with the eastern one or Greece, is far closer than its connexion with the western one, or Spain. Italy and Spain are much further apart than Italy and Greece, and between the Alps and the Pyrenees the mountain chain is nearly lost. We might almost say that a piece of central Europe breaks through at this point and comes down to the Mediterranean. ”

“ Likewise Europe pours into it the Don and the Danube, the Po, the Rhone, the Arno, and the Tiber, so that evidently these rivers, with an infinite number of others of less fame, make its great breadth and depth and current; and the sea is not wider than 18 miles at the most westerly point of land where it divides Europe from Africa. ”

“ The temperature of Europa will suit you. Its atmosphere, while less dense than that to which you are accustomed, will adequately support your life. If we are not detected in the course of the next few hours we can probably land upon Europa in safety, since its neighborhood is guarded but loosely. In fact, we have a city there, as yet unsuspected by the hexans, in which our scientists will continue to labor after Callisto's civilization shall have disappeared. We think that it will be safe to use your power for the short time necessary to effect a landing. ”

“ Europe, the most central of all continents, in relation to the great land-mass of the earth, and also the one most equally removed from the middle point of the great water-mass, touches the whole remaining world at the greatest number of points, and this, in conjunction with her remarkably broken coast-line, so favorable to the purposes of navigation, have given her her place of command, and have assigned to England her evident role of mistress of the seas. ”

“ Constructed thus, Europe is not only easily accessible from Asia, a fact of no little moment in its ancient history, but it is also singularly accessible interiorly, or from one of its parts to another. Still more, its sea-line is so broken, it has so many intrusive gulfs and bays, that, its surface considered, its maritime coast is greater than that of any other continent. In this respect it contrasts strikingly with Africa. Europe has one mile of coast-line for every 156 square miles of surface, Africa has only one for every 623. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In another one, a geography of England and Wales, the first chapter starts with this—“Our country really forms a part of the Continent of Eurasia, though not now joined to it. Eurasia is the name given to the Continents of Europe and Asia. Eurasia is only separated from the Continent of Africa by a canal.” Well, at the geological period when our country was joined to the Continent, Africa also was joined to it near Gibraltar and near Sicily: so, if our country really forms a part of the Continent, Africa must really form a part of it as well. ”

“ With almost three times as great a length as breadth, Europe extends for a distance of over 300 miles from the southern part of the Ural chain and from the Caucasus to the extremities of the bold coast of Spain and Portugal, Capes Finistère and St. Vincent. In this way the continent assumes very nearly the form of a right-angled triangle, the right angle lying at the Caspian, the base extending westward to Cape Finistère, the perpendicular running northward along the Ural Mountains to the Vaigats Straits, and the hypothenuse connecting the two extremities. ”

“ The ground of West Europe is treated as a steady pole, a unique patch chosen on the surface of the sphere for no better reason, it seems, than because we live on it—and great histories of millennial duration and mighty far-away Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty. It is a quaintly conceived system of sun and planets! We select a single bit of ground as the natural centre of the historical system, and make it the central sun. From it all the events of history receive their real light, from it their importance is judged in perspective. ”

“ At the first thought of such a thing Europa drew back. But then she considered in her wise little head that there could be no possible harm in taking just one gallop on the back of this docile and friendly animal, who would certainly set her down the very instant she desired it. And how it would surprise her brothers to see her riding across the green meadow! ”

“ Europa’s surface is probably a thin ice crust overlying water or softer ice (slush) about 100 kilometers (60 miles) thick that covers a silicate interior. The tectonic processes on Europa’s surface create patterns that are drastically different from the fault systems seen on Ganymede’s surface, where pieces of the crust have moved relative to each other. On Europa, the crust evidently fractures, but the pieces remain roughly in their original position. This Voyager 2 picture is composed of three images. ”

“ What Europe is in a large way, Greece is in a small—a region of coasts, islands and peninsulas. Belonging more to one continent in its natural conformation, and to the other by its historical connexion, Greece forms the point of transition and the intermediate link between Asia and Europe.
The other six or seven principal countries in Europe, taken according to a strict geographical classification, and without paying attention to the political variations of territory, whether in antiquity, [84] the middle ages, or modern times, form the members of the third class. ”

“ Thus a glance at the map of Europe shows that certain frontiers apparently have been drawn by nature, while others are clearly the work of man. The Spanish peninsula, Italy, the British Isles, and the Scandinavian lands are set apart from the mass of the Continent by broad boundaries of sea or mountain which have come to form permanent political frontiers. On the other hand no such obvious natural obstacles separate France from Germany, Germany from Russia, Belgium from Holland, Austria from its neighbors, Serbia from Bulgaria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects the three divisions of the Old World. The shores of this inland sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations belonging in an ethnographical and philological point of view to different races, but constituting in their historical aspect one whole. ”

“ Taking the great range of mountains which divides southern from central Europe as the northern boundary of the eastern or Greek peninsula, it may be said to take in the lands which are cut off from the central mass by the Dalmatian Alps and the range of Haimos or Balkan. It is washed to the east, west, or south, by various parts of the Mediterranean and its great gulf the Euxine. ”

“ Crete touched the far shores of the Mediterranean because she was an island and her people were forced upon the sea. Similarly, Phœnicia, driven to sea by mountains and desert at her back, spread her sails beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And England, hemmed in by the Atlantic, has carried her goods and her language to every nook and cranny of the earth. Thus the ocean has served less to separate than to bring together. As a common highway it has not only excited quarrels, but established common interests between nations. ”

“ THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE From its political and historical importance Europe has always been regarded as one of the great divisions of the earth’s surface though it is not a separate and independent mass. It is, rather, a great peninsula of what is sometimes called Eurasia—i.e. the continent of Europe and Asia combined—that extends westward its many arms between the Arctic Ocean on the north, the Atlantic on the west, and the Mediterranean Sea on the south. ”

“ The coming of broad-headed men, probably from Asia Minor, then less divided from Europe, is characteristic of this period of change, and the mountain axis of Europe has ever {13} since been a region of broad-headed men, separating provinces of long-headed men to the north around the Baltic and (for a time) in Russia, and to the south around the western Mediterranean, then becoming increasingly cut off from tropical Africa by the supervention of desert conditions, in place of grassland, in what we now call the Sahara. ”

“ Europe is bounded on the north by the frozen ocean, south by the Mediterranean sea, east by Asia, and west by the Atlantic ocean. Seas being smaller collections of water than oceans, I have selected them for our first consideration, and, thinking the Mediterranean the most important of Europe, I have placed it at the head of my list. This sea separates Europe from Africa, and is the largest inland sea in the world. ”

“ It is the fate of continents, no less than of the human communities that inhabit them, to have their first origin shrouded in obscurity. When the curtain of darkness begins to rise from our primeval Europe, it reveals to us a scene marvelously unlike that of the existing continent. The land then lay chiefly to the north and northwest, probably extending as far as the edge of the great submarine plateau by which the European ridge is prolonged under the Atlantic for 230 miles to the west of Ireland. ”

“ To proceed: geographers divide the whole earth into four regions. They draw an imaginary line from the Mediterranean, the Strait of Constantinople, the Strait of Jenicale, and the south of the river Don as far as the Northern Ocean, and the region that remains on the west of this line they call Europe; that on the east, Asia; and the districts of Ethiopia and Egypt, which divide the Mediterranean and Red Seas, they call Africa. The new world they call America. The Ottoman power, then, has a share in each of the three regions. ”

“ The real or western Europe, which the Roman Empire gradually added to the narrow Europe of the Greeks, and which is strikingly contrasted to Asia in point of size, relief, contour, climate and races, only served to maintain the distinction between the two continents in men's minds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The causes of this are to be found in the various currents of the ocean, the tides and winds, and in the proximity to the ocean of snow-clad mountains and arid plains. The variation of latitude in these lines sometimes reaches as much as seven degrees.
Europe contains about 3,900,000 square miles of surface, and is separated from Asia by the Caucasus, Caspian Sea, River Ural, and Uralian Mountains. It is about 3000 miles long and 2400 broad, about two-thirds being plain and table-land and one-third mountain land. ”

“ The Baltic Sea is the Mediterranean of Northern Europe. The peninsula of Denmark, with its multitudinous bays and islands, corresponds to Greece, the Morea, and its archipelago. We have shown in our chapter on Greece that modern geography teaches that the extent of coast line, when compared with the superficial area of a country, is one of the essential conditions of civilization. Who can fail to see the hand of Providence in the adaptation of races to the countries they are to inhabit? ”