Mediterranean coast

“ No seaboard of the Mediterranean, save only the coast of Greece, is so deeply indented as the Dalmatian littoral, with Its unending succession of rock-bound bays, as frequent as the perforations on a postage-stamp, and its thick fringe of islands. ”

“ In the midst of this vast ‘Eurasian’ (European-Asiatic) region of folded rock formation, some 930 miles in length, bounded on the north by the solid primæval rocks of the continent of Europe, and on the south by the great plateau of the desert, lies the Chief Basin of the Mediterranean, embracing the Adriatic and the Greek Archipelago, where the highly indented coast and the numerous islands and peninsulas display a most striking variety of picturesque scenery. ”

“ The coast of Egypt rises so little above the level of the Mediterranean that the land cannot be seen by those approaching it from across the sea, until but a few miles separate them from the surf which breaks upon the sand and rocks of that barren shore. The mountains of other East-Mediterranean countries—Greece, Italy, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, and Syria—rising out of the blue waters, served as landmarks for the mariners of ancient days, and were discernible upon the horizon for many long hours before wind or oars carried the vessels in under their lee. ”

“ Estuary and delta states are far more a result of the Mediterranean culture. The latter led to the settlement of favourable districts on various coasts, all of which were finally swallowed up into the Roman Empire during the period of its northern and eastern expansion.
THE ORIGIN OF SEAFARING PEOPLES
It is not sufficient to have a favourable sea-coast in order to breed a race of sea-going people. The land behind the coast-line must be fertile and productive, else no inducement exists for seafaring. ”

“ The north coast is generally steep and cliff-bound, and abundantly provided with good harbours, of which that of Palermo is the finest. In the west and south, and in the south part of the east side, the hills are much lower and recede farther from the sea. The coast is for the most part flat, more regular in outline and less favourable to shipping, while in the east, where the sea-bottom sinks rapidly down towards the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, steep rocky coasts prevail except opposite the plain of Catania. ”

“ A low, monotonous coast, that is scarcely visible at a distance of five leagues, is certainly not to be named in the same breath with those glorious shores of the Mediterranean, for instance, where nature would seem to have exhausted herself in uniting the magnificent with the bewitching. On this continent, or on our own portion of it at least, we must be content with the useful, and lay no great claims to the beautiful ”

“ The coast line, accordingly, is most irregular—a constant succession of sharp promontories and curving bays. The mountains, crossing the peninsula in confused masses, break it up into numberless valleys and glens which seldom widen into plains. The rivers are not navigable. The few lakes, hemmed in by the hills, have no outlets except in underground channels. In this land of the Greeks no place is more than fifty miles from a mountain range, or more than forty miles from some long arm of the Mediterranean. ”

“ The great oceans open up broad areas for historical movements, and through their instrumentality peoples are enabled to spread from coast to coast in all directions; the inland seas, on the contrary, cause the political life of the nations bordering upon them to be concentrated within a limited area. The Mediterranean will ever remain a focus towards which the interests of almost all European Powers concentrate. ”

“ The Nile greatly relieves this monotony, but its sources lie within tropical regions far beyond the limits of the desert. Alexandria possesses almost the only natural harbour on this flat coast of early formation. The old-world characteristics of the land, its inhabitants, and their language at once strike the traveller on landing at Tripoli. Yet even this part of the Mediterranean, especially the Levant Basin, beyond the passage between Crete and Barca, contains recent formations. ”

“ Phœnician Commerce.—When we catch our first glimpse of the Mediterranean, about 1500 B.C., it is dotted with the sails of Phœnician navigators. It was natural that the people of the Phœnician coast should have been led to a seafaring life. The lofty mountains that back the little strip of shore seemed to shut them out from a career of conquest and to prohibit an extension of their land domains. At the same time, the Mediterranean in front invited them to maritime enterprise ”

“ The climate is tempered also by the warmth of the sea itself. The bar at the west entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar (p. xxix) keeps out the cold water of the deep Atlantic, but allows the influx of the warmer surface-water to compensate for what the Mediterranean loses by evaporation. This loss would otherwise amount to a depth of 10–15 ft. per annum. The influx of water from the Atlantic causes a current to flow along the North African coast from west to east, but its thermal effects are soon lost. In summer the surface of the Mediterranean is heated by the sun up to 75–82° Fahr. ”

“ Good harbors and navigable waterways are notably absent along the west coast of South America and notably present in the Eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, the South American West Coast line is sparsely settled to this day, while the Eastern Mediterranean has been crowded with peoples, teemed with trade and commerce, carried largely by sea, between cities that occupied the best access to waterways. ”

“ The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,—still there is something racily and specially picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster. ”

“ Looking down, the Mediterranean is at your feet. There go the ships, with boats from either shore which dip their long lateen-sails as sea-gulls dip their wings, and sometimes fly over the waves as a bird flies through the air, even while large ships labor against the wind. As the current from the Atlantic flows steadily into the Mediterranean, if perchance the wind should blow from the same quarter, it is not an easy matter to get out of the Straits. Ships that have made the whole course of the Mediterranean are baffled here in the throat of the sea. ”

“ The Mediterranean is a great gulf running from west to east, penetrating the old world almost to its very centre, and separating its most civilized from its most savage communities. Its southern shores are inhabited, for the most part by an anti-commercial and thriftless people. ”

“ First: Introduction; From England to the Mediterranean by the Portuguese Coast; Madeira and the Canary Islands (pp. i-xxxvi and 1–48) .—Second: Andalusia; Morocco (pp. 49–110) .—Third: Sea Routes in the W. Mediterranean (pp. 111–166) .—Fourth: Algeria (pp. 167–318) .—Fifth: Tunisia (pp. 319–394) .—Sixth: Sea Routes in the E. Mediterranean; the Black Sea (p. 395 to the end of the volume) .
2. Comp. for the W. Mediterranean Baedeker’s ‘Southern France’, ‘Northern Italy’, ‘Central Italy and Rome’, ‘Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia’, ‘Italy from the Alps to Naples’, and ‘Spain and Portugal’ ”

“ Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean. The great coup was yet unachieved: so, getting five words of instruction from a waiter, I hurried through some narrow streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen boat-building yards, very like similar establishments in Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon the open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent, or seagrass, rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of the great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before me; and with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf creaming to my feet. ”

“ For there is not even here what represents the life of the Mediterranean, the jutting rocks, the sucking in of sea, by the cliffs, the sudden squalls of the stony coasts where sea and land really play and fight together, waves leaping tower-high, and battering at hillsides and swirling in and out of creeks. ”

“ It can furnish dangerous enough storms upon occasion, and, far worse than storms, the terrible white-squall which lies ambushed under sunny skies, and leaps unawares upon the doomed vessel. But the Mediterranean is not the deep sea, nor has it produced the best and boldest navigators. ”

“ The Mediterranean is here separated from the Atlantic by a submarine bar or threshold, at a depth averaging only 650 feet, extending from Cape Trafalgar to Cape Spartel, a distance of 271⁄2 miles, and forming the boundary between the inner Alboran basin or depression and the outer or Andalusian. Thus, on north and south alike the Iberian central bed-rock is bordered with lofty mountains, whose seaboard almost everywhere repels human traffic, and seems barred against Europe by the Pyrenees and against Africa by the mountains of Andalusia. ”

“ The sky is dull and sad to-day, and so the Mediterranean is grey. Even where the low-lying horizon clouds have parted a little to let through a far-away memory of sunlight, it is only a whiter grey light that outlines the margin of water and sky, and where the sea’s surface is broken into ripples by the softest of stirring breezes, the harmonies of shadows and relief are still in faint and faded colour-scales. ”

“ How comes it that all the civilizations of the Old World radiate from the shores of the Mediterranean? The Mediterranean is a cul de sac, with Atlantis opposite its mouth. Every civilization on its shores possesses traditions that point to Atlantis. We hear of no civilization coming to the Mediterranean from Asia, Africa, or Europe—from north, south, or west; but north, south, east, and west we find civilization radiating from the Mediterranean to other lands. ”

“ No part of the earth’s surface can offer so marvellous an intellectual feast. Land where he may, the traveller is almost invariably struck with the beauty of the scenery, the richness of the vegetation, and the wealth of historical memories. For three thousand years the Mediterranean was the theatre of all history, the cradle of all culture, to which the whole of humanity more or less directly owes its modern civilization. ”

“ Compared to the vast liquid plains of the Pacific, the Mediterranean is a mere lake, but it’s an unpredictable lake with fickle waves, today kindly and affectionate to those frail single-masters drifting between a double ultramarine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest ships beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop. ”

“ As it is with elevations of the earth's surface, so it is with bodies of water; they may be connected together without being the same thing. The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are connected together at the Straits of Gibraltar ”

“ Every one has heard tell of how cross and treacherous a sea the Mediterranean is in winter, and my own belief is, that he who has merely been sea-sick on the Atlantic should give the Mediterranean a trial before professing to have suffered every thing of which human nature is capable. Our steamer was clean enough and staunch enough, but she was not large—no bigger, I thought, than a gondola, that night as the waves tossed her to and fro, till unwinged things took flight all through her cabins and over her decks. ”

“ The Mediterranean is a much puffed-up yachtsman's cruising ground, but during the best time of year, which is winter, it is as nasty and treacherous an expanse of water as it is possible to meet with in any part of the world. ”

“ The Mediterranean sea, opening directly into the Atlantic ocean at the straits of Gibraltar, and washing the shores of many countries of different sovereigns, has, excepting such portions thereof as the gulf of Venice or the straits of Messina, been recognized and considered by all nations, for centuries, as part of the high seas, free to all mankind. ”

“ A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly the perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river, and cities of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the lee, I can conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not be delightful. A company of pleasure, in a private vessel, would see all Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense than is common on a trip to the lakes. ”

“ The Mediterranean held its place as an inland sea, as one might well expect, since it was sea during the Permian times when most of the world was high, but all through the Triassic—which is the first Period of the Mesozoic Era—the land began to fall, and before it was over, the Mediterranean joined the Atlantic once again. ”

“ The Mediterranean has given rise to so many great and powerful nations, only from the superior advantages which it afforded for commerce during the long infancy of navigation. The number and fertility of its islands, the serenity of its climate, the smoothness of its waters, the smallness of its entrance, which although of itself sufficient to indicate to the skilful pilot the proximity of the ocean, is still more clearly defined by the Pillars of Hercules, towering on each side of it, and forming land-marks not to be mistaken by the timid, the inexperienced, or the bewildered. ”

“ The steep shores of the Mediterranean favoured the beginners in one of humanity's most daring enterprises, and the enchanting inland sea of classic adventure has led mankind gently from headland to headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out into the promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules. ”