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France is a Catholic country, so is Belgium, so are the peninsulas of Italy and Spain; and how is it possible to suppose that, unless the Pope has enough temporal authority to keep him independent of the other European Courts, jealousies and intrigues will not arise which must reduce him to a state of dependency, and so enable any one country wielding the enormous influence of his spiritual authority to foster intrigues, faction, even rebellion, in the dominions of her rivals?

For several centuries the harbors of Denmark and Norway became the storehouses of all the riches of Europe, and a large trade was carried on between those northern peninsulas and the various islands of the Northern and Arctic Seas, even with the coast of America, of which Greenland seems to form a part.

Were they hanging there still? the man wondered. Were they still patiently leading the way through a wilderness of islands and peninsulas, capes and continents, rivers, lakes, and sounds? Or had they, in the years that had gone since he looked upon their learned faces, been sunk to oblivion in the depths of their own oceans by the weight of their own mountain ranges?

The Northern Europe, until some parts of it were subdued by the progress of the Roman arms, remained almost equally covered with all the ruggedness of primitive barbarism. The southern part was differently circumstanced. Divided, as we have said, from the northern by great mountains, it is further divided within itself by considerable seas. Spain, Greece, and Italy are peninsulas.

From the Abruzzi the chain continues in a southern direction, at first undivided and of considerable height; after a depression which formsa hill-country, it splits into a somewhat flattened succession of heights towards the south-east and a more rugged chain towards the south, and in both directions terminates in the formation of narrow peninsulas.

The horizontal plane of the sea now intersects an old land surface roughened by subaerial denudation. The shore line is irregular and indented in proportion to the relief of the land and the amount of the submergence which the land has suffered. It follows up partially submerged valleys, forming bays, and bends round the divides, leaving them to project as promontories and peninsulas.

The remainder is fabricated at home, both in factories and as domestic industries. The main industries not only move eastward, they are spreading also to the southern peninsulas.

In the lowest of the vertebrates, Petromyzon, the two parts are distinct, the cells of the cortex-to-be are situated in the walls of the kidney blood vessels, projecting as peninsulas in the blood stream, the blood sweeping over and past them. The medulla-to-be consists of cells accompanying the vegetative nerves.

The Venetians, who foresaw the ruin of their oriental commerce in the success of the Portuguese, in vain endeavoured to stop the progress of their rivals in the middle of the sixteenth century: the latter, masters of the east coast of Africa, of the coasts of Arabia and Persia, of the two peninsulas of India, of the Molucca islands, and of the trade to China and Japan, supplied every part of Europe with the productions of the east, by the Cape of Good Hope; nor was their power and commerce subverted, till Portugal became a province of Spain.

Before long we found ourselves close to Taravao, the narrow strip of land connecting the two peninsulas into which Tahiti is divided, and commenced to ascend the hills that form the backbone of the island. We climbed up and up, reaching the summit at last, to behold a magnificent prospect on all sides. Then a short sharp descent, a long drive over grass roads through a rich forest, and again a brief ascent, brought us to our sleeping-quarters for the night, the Hotel de l'Isthme, situated in a valley in the midst of a dense grove of cocoa-nuts and bananas, kept by two retired French sailors, who came out to meet us, and conducted us up a flight of steps on the side of a mud bank to the four rooms forming the hotel. These were two sleeping apartments, a salon, and a salle