Macedonia and Northern Greece Geography.

Macedonia and Northern Greece Geography

Albania and Illyria are nothing but a crowd of rocky ridges following one another in close succession, and of narrow denies, with scarcely sufficient space left for roads to bo constructed through them; their coasts are savage and inhospitable. Notwithstanding, then, that in ancient times caravans crossed the mountains, in order to exchange, in the central land between the two seas, the produce of the Ionian Islands and of the Archipelago ; notwithstanding that subsequently the Romans constructed a main road from Dyrrhachium straight across the country ;

Illyria has, through a long whole course of time, remained a land of barbarians. Curtius Ernst

Which meets us on crossing to the eastern side over the Scardus Pass! Here numerous springs at the base of the central chain swell into mighty rivers, which flow into broad lowlands, arid these lowlands are embraced in great circlets by the mountain ranges which belt the plain, and leave only a narrow egress into the sea for the rivers of the country. Inner Macedonia consists of a succession of three such encircled plains, the waters of which unite and force themselves into the recess of the deeply indented gulf of Thessalonica.

For Macedonia is favored above Illyria, not only by the great arable plains of its interior, but also by an accessible, hospitable coast. Instead of monotonously savage lines of coast, a broad mass of mountains here springs out between the mouths of the Axius and the Strymon, and extends far into the sea with three rocky projections, abounding in bays, of which the easternmost terminates in Mount Athos.

More than 6,400 feet it rises above the sea, with its pre cipitous walls of marble ; equidistant from the entrance of the Hellespont and from that of the Pagassean gulf, it casts its shadow as far as the market-place of Lemnos, and offers a guiding point for navigation, visible many miles off, and commanding the whole northern Archipelago.

By this Greek formation of their coasts, Macedonia and Thrace are connected with the Greek world, while the territorial condition of their interior is totally different from that of Hellas proper. They are highland countries, where the population, cut off from the sea, is, asit were, held enchained in secluded circles of valleys.

Mountains of Northern Greece

The 40th degree of latitude cuts the knot of mountain Northern ranges, which announces a new formation to Greece. Wards the south. The country loses the character of Alpine land; the mountains, besides becoming lower, tamer, and more capable of cultivation, arrange themselves more and more into a discernible system of hilly chains, surrounding the cultivated plains, and dividing and protecting the country, without making it in accessible, savage, and barren. This advance in the organization of the country, however, again prevails only on the eastern side, where the fertile basin of the valley of the Peneus spreads out amidst its hills ; on the side of the sea, too, it is shut out by the Ossa range, which, under the name of Pelion, parallel to Athos, extends into the sea like a rocky mole.

Twice, however, the mountains are broken through, and Thessaly at the same time emptied of its waters and opened to external intercourse towards the east, viz. At the water-gate of the Vale of Tempe, and again to the south, where, between Pelion and Othrys, the Pagassean Gulf stretches deep and broad into the land. Central And now towards the south the formation of country continues to increase in multiplicity ; and to the ramification of the mountains cor respond the bays of the sea, opening into the land from the east and west.

By this means the whole body of the country is so manifoldly broken up, that it becomes a succession of peninsulas, connected with one another by isthmuses. And at the same point, under the 39th degree of latitude, begins Central Greece (Hellas, in the stricter sense of the name), where, between the Ambracian and Malian Gulfs, the conical height of Tymphrestus rises to a height of more than 7,000 feet, and once again binds together in the centre the eastern and western halves of Greece.

Towards the west Tymphrestus towers over the regions watered by the Achelous, which, with the districts contiguous to them, remain excluded from the more broken-up formation of the eastern half. Towards the east the Ceta chain extends, and at the southern border of the Malian Gulf forms the Pass of Thermopylae, where, betwixt morass and precipitous rock, the mere breadth of a road is left for reaching the southern districts. From Thermopylae straight across to the Corinthian Gulf the distance is less than six miles. * This is the isthmus, com mencing from which the peninsula of Eastern Central Greece extends as far as the Promontory of Sunium.

The main mountain range of this peninsula is the Parnassus, whose crest, 7,500 feet in height, was held sacred by the generations of men dwelling around it, as the starting-point of a new human race. From its northern base the Cephissus flows into the great basin of the Breo tian valley, bounded by the Helicon with its ramifications. Helicon is closely followed by Cithseron, another cross range from sea to sea, separating Attica from Boeotia. It would be difficult to find two countries contiguous to and at the same time more different from one another than these. BcEotia is an inland territory, complete and secluded in itself, where the superabundant water stagnates in the depths of the valleys a land of damp fogs and luxuriant vegetation on a rich soil. The whole of Attica is projected into the sea, which it admits into its bays ; its soil is dry and rocky, and covered with a thin coating of earth, and it is surrounded by the clear transparent atmosphere of the island-world to which, by situation and climate, it belongs. Its mountain-ranges carry themselves on in the sea, and form the inner group of the Cyclades, just as the outer group consists of the continuations of Euboea. Once upon a time Attica was the southernmost member of the continent of Greece, till out of the waters emerged the > low narrow bridge of land which was to add the island of Pelops, as the completest of peninsulas, as last and conj eluding member to the body of the mainland. Thus, without severing the continuous cohesion of the country, in the midst of it two broad inland seas, abounding in harbors, meet one another, the one opening towards Italy the other towards Asia.

---