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Sir Francis Palgrave points out, with a kind of triumph, that the two Danish peninsulas, the original Jütland and this of the Côtentin, are the only two in Europe which point northward. And the Côtentin does look on the map very much as if it were inviting settlers from more northern parts. But the fact is that the land is not really so peninsular as it looks and as it feels.
It consists of two peninsulas united by a narrow isthmus, which together are about one hundred and twenty miles in circumference; towards the centre of each rise wild rocky mountains, intersected by deep ravines, from the side of which, thickly wooded almost to their summits, flow numerous streamlets of pure transparent water, forming the most picturesque cascades as they descend from every direction into the sea.
On the south coast, between the two peninsulas in which the Apennines terminate, extensive lowlands, poorly provided with harbours but well watered and fertile, adjoin the hill-country of the interior.
Of course, all peninsulas and islands are warmer in temperature than inland places, and so these relics of the lost Lyonesse have survived here and there in Cornwall, Carnarvonshire, Kerry, and other very projecting headlands long after they have died out altogether from the main central mass of Britain.
Whitman says: "Facing West from California's shores, Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, A, a child, very old, over waves, toward the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar, Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled: For starting Westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere, From Asia, from the north, from God, the sage, and the hero, From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and spice islands, Long having wandered since, round the earth having wandered, Now I face home again, very pleased and joyous.
The town is very ugly and gloomy; it is scarcely possible to say that there is a single good street, or an imposing or interesting public building, shops, warehouses and factories, and mean houses run zigzagging up and down the slopes of the tongues of land, or peninsulas, that extend into the rivers, or rather streamlets, of the Porter, the Riveling, the Loxley, the Sheaf, and the Don.
Repeated sales of land narrowed their domains, and the English had artfully crowded them into the tongues of land, as "most suitable and convenient for them," where they would be more easily watched. The two chief seats of the Pokanokets were the peninsulas now called Bristol and Tiverton.
As we met with no very interesting adventures during our stay here, I will content myself with giving a brief account of the island. Otaheite was discovered in 1767, by Captain Wallis, who called it King George's Island; but it is better known by the name of Tahiti. It is of volcanic formation, and consists of two peninsulas joined by a neck of low land, about two miles across.
The island, which consists of two peninsulas connected by a low neck or isthmus covered with trees and shrubs but quite uninhabited, presents a mountainous aspect, rising high in the centre, with narrow valleys of romantic but luxuriantly pleasing scenery, and well watered, studding its verdant surface.
Beyond these peninsulas, and bounding the continent on the south, is the Mediterranean, nearly two thousand miles in length, isolating Europe from Africa socially, but uniting them commercially. The Black Sea and that of Azof are dependencies of it. It has, conjointly with them, a shore-line of 13,000 miles, and exposes a surface of nearly a million and a quarter of square miles.