No. ii. [From the Encyclopaedia Britannica, gth edition.] 



THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA 1 



THE southern shores of Europe are separated from the 

 northern shores of Africa by the Mediterranean Sea. It extends 

 in a generally east and west direction from longitude 5 21' \V. 

 to 36 10' E. Its length from Gibraltar to its eastern extremity 

 in Syria is about 2100 nautical miles. Its breadth is very various, 

 being 400 miles from the mouth of the Rhone to the Algerian 

 coast, 500 miles from the Gulf of Sidra to the entrance to the 

 Adriatic, and 250 miles from the mouth of the Nile to the 

 south coast of Asia Minor. From the very indented nature 

 of its coasts, the general mass of the water is much cut up into 

 separate seas, which have long borne distinctive names, as the 

 Adriatic, the ^Egean, the Sea of Marmora, the Black Sea, etc. 

 The area of the whole system including the Sea of Azoff is 

 given by Admiral Smythe as 1,149,287 square miles. If we 

 deduct that of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, 172,506 square 

 miles, we have for the area of the Mediterranean proper 976,781, 

 or, roughly speaking, a million of square miles. 



The Mediterranean is sharply divided into two great prin- 

 cipal basins, the western and the eastern or Levant basin. The 

 western possesses a comparatively smooth and unindented coast- 

 line. It is bounded on the south by the coast of Africa and the 

 north coast of Sicily, and it is further enclosed by the coasts of 

 Spain, France, and Italy, which form a roughly arc-shaped 

 coast-line. There are comparatively few small islands in this 

 basin, though some of the more important large ones occur in 

 it. The eastern basin is by far the larger of the two, and extends 

 from Cape Bon to the Syrian coast, including as important 

 branches the Adriatic and the ^Egean. The latter is connected 

 directly through the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmora, and the 



1 See Contents, p. xxxiv. 



