614 MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE. 
deserve some notice, though their importance is of a com- 
mercial rather than a geographical character. The first of 
th@se is the cut made by Xerxes through the rock which 
connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the mainland; 
the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. 
In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the 
Romans classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of “ men- 
dacious Greece,” and yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at 
the present day through its whole extent, except at a single 
point where, after it had become so choked as to be no longer 
navigable, it was probably filled up to facilitate communica- 
tion by land between the promontory and the country in the 
rear of it. 
The emperor Nero commenced the construction of a canal 
across the Isthmus of Corinth, solely to facilitate the importa- 
tion of grain from the Kast for distribution among the citizens 
of Rome—for the encouragement of general commerce was no 
part of the policy either of the republic or the empire, and 
though the avidity of traders, chiefly foreigners, secured to the 
luxury of the imperial city an abundant supply of far-fetched 
wares, yet Rome had nothing to export in return. The line of 
Nero’s excavations is still traceable for three-quarters of a mile, 
or more than a fifth of the total distance between gulf and gulf. 
If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober 
reality, escape from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as 
well as political status that its own capitalists—who now pre- 
fer to establish themselves and employ their funds anywhere 
else rather than in their native land—have any confidence in 
the permanency of its institutions, a navigable channel may be 
opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and Aigina. The annex- 
ation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work 
almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish 
valuable facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an im- 
portant channel of communication between the Levant and the 
countries bordering on the Adriatic, or conducting their trade 
through that sea. 
