United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Commerce with Cyprus and southern Asia Minor was especially open to the mariners of this region, who could see the shores of Cyprus without difficulty on a clear day. Next came the "world" of Aradus, reaching along the coast from the Badas to the Eleutherus, another stretch of fifty miles, and including the littoral islands, especially that of Ruad, on which Aradus was built.
One can scarcely realize that by simply crossing this range a beautiful region is entered, where the prospect is as different as is light from darkness. An entirely different climate characterizes the Province of Mazanderan, comprising the northern slopes of these mountains and the Caspian littoral.
Meanwhile, strenuous efforts were made to strengthen the littoral defences, and a very active revival of the study of the military art took place throughout the empire, though, at the same time, the number of patriots sufficiently brave and clear-sighted to condemn the policy of seclusion grew steadily. ENGRAVING: TWO DRUMS AND TSUZUMI A and D are Drums; B and C are Tsuzumi.
It may be said that all the low lands on the coast of Venezuela situated north of the littoral chain and of the Sierra Nevada de Merida belong to the submerged part of this basin. If I treat here separately of the basin of the Caribbean Sea, it is to avoid confounding what, in the present state of the globe, is partly above and partly below the ocean.
Motya, situated on a littoral island less than half a mile from the western shore, in Lat. 38º nearly, has the remains of a wall built of large stones, uncemented, in the Phoenician manner, and carried, like the western wall of Aradus, so close to the coast as to be washed by the waves. It is said by Diodorus to have been at one time a most flourishing town. The coins have Phoenician legends.
Similarly, the provinces now called Ugo and Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan.
The explanation, no doubt, is, that the littoral and sub-littoral deposits are continually worn away, as soon as they are brought up by the slow and gradual rising of the land within the grinding action of the coast-waves.
It is sometimes strong enough to upset pedestrians, and it is said that if it were not for it, there would be neither winter nor cold in the Dalmatian littoral. On the heights winter begins in November and lasts till April, with heavy snowfalls; but on the coast spring begins in February, and winter only at the beginning of December.
Besides, and this was the outer of the two forces, the East was crying out to Rome. There were pirates on the other side of the Adriatic; and for the safety of her own eastern littoral she had been dealing with them, as with Spain, during and before the terrible Hannibalic time.
In the Balkan peninsula the Slav had been expelled or assimilated to the south of a line stretching from Avlona to Salonika. East of Salonika the empire still controlled little more in Europe than the ports of the littoral, and a military highway linking them with each other and with Constantinople.
Word Of The Day