DECAY OF MKDITERKANEAN NATIONS. 137 



details, if examined with a critical eye, is not intended to be maintained. 

 The countries on the north side of the Mediterranean, for instance, although 

 no longer able to dominate the civilized world, are not without some partici- 

 pation in its intellectual progress. Italy and Spain have kept pace to a 

 considerable extent with modei-n civilization, neither of these countries 

 exhibitino' that stage of decadence which Greece does ; while the latter coun- 

 try is far in advance of the region to the south and east. 



The reasons for the mighty changes which have taken place in successive 

 ages among the nations which have had to do with the intellectual develop- 

 ment of the world and the spread of civilization are usually sought for in 

 something connected with an inherent property of decay belonging to the 

 various races, or to the human race in general — something not dependent 

 on the physical conditions by which the races in question have come to be 

 surrounded as the ages rolled by. When, however, we observe, that not 

 only in those regions of High Asia from which migrations are usually sup- 

 posed to have begun, but all through the countries bordering on the Medi- 

 terranean, we are everywhere confronted by evidences of a change of climate, 

 and the entering in of conditions evidently unfavorable to mental vigor and 

 national welfare, we are justified, as the writer believes, in asking the ques- 

 tions, Is it not in consequence of these changes in the physical conditions 

 that the races themselves have changed, and has not the climate of a con- 

 siderable portion of the I'egion in question become such that we can saj 

 Avith truth that it is incompatible with a maintenance of those modes and 

 habits of life which accompany high civilization ? 



The evidences of a diminution of the amount of water standing and flow- 

 ing upon the surface in the various countries bordering on the Mediterra- 

 nean, especially those on the east and south, are most ample and of varied 

 character. But it is especially the conformation of the surface which leads 

 us to infer a most decided desiccation during the latest geological periods. 

 There are everywhere not only depressions which have all the appearance 

 of once having been occupied by lakes, as evidenced by the terrace-marks 

 and other indications of the former presence of water, but there are also 

 numerous long, continuous valleys, — canons, as they would be called in 

 California, — which show by their form and position that they can only have 

 been formed by running streams ; and these valleys are now, almost without 

 exception, either entirely dry the whole year round, or onlj' occupied by 

 water here and there at very irregular intervals of time. 



