2i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



through branch canals into the several katabothra along the 

 east shore. Indeed, the details of the system are much more com- 

 plicated than are indicated by this brief description, and com- 

 prise, in addition to the main canals, many smaller subsidiary 

 ones both for feeding and for draining them. When we take into 

 consideration the difficulties attending excavation in so marshy a 

 soil, and of transporting across it the heavy stones for the em- 

 bankments, and note the immensity of the plan and the thorough- 

 ness and solidity of its execution, we are moved to admiration for 

 the engineers who conceived and built the great works which 

 rendered this part of Boeotia habitable before the dawn of history. 



The system involved, too, the clearing and the keeping open of 

 the katabothra, which were liable to become obstructed and some- 

 times to be entirely closed by the caving of the soil and rocks, 

 and there are many evidences of ancient efforts to enlarge and 

 deepen them. That these efforts were not always successful is 

 proved by the traditions of early inundations, referred to before, 

 caused probably by earthquakes, but which were attributed to 

 the efforts of Hercules when he espoused the cause of his native 

 Thebes against Orchomenus. To guard against the recurrence of 

 a similar catastrophe, the ancient engineers planned several cut- 

 tings and tunnels through the hills, which, if they had been car- 

 ried to completion, would have rounded out the original design 

 and accomplished what the Greek Government is to-day trying 

 to effect the thorough reclamation of the basin and its protec- 

 tion from any contingency of flood. On the southeast shore of 

 the lake are vestiges of an immense cutting, thirty metres deep, 

 through the Hill of Carditza toward Lake Hylicus, and beyond 

 that traces of works to connect Hylicus with Paralimni, and the 

 latter with the sea. Across the Hill of Carditza, too, are a series 

 of excavated shafts marking the line of a tunnel through the hill 

 constructed with an object similar to that of the cutting to con- 

 vey the waters to the sea through the smaller lakes ; but the shafts 

 are now filled up and there are no indications that the work was 

 ever completed. 



This route is the one adopted by the modern engineers, who, 

 by a tunnel through the Hill of Carditza, not far from the line of 

 the ancient tunnel, seek to carry the waters into Lake Hylicus, 

 thence into Paralimni, and finally through another tunnel into 

 the sea. There is also a plan to deflect a portion of the waters for 

 use in irrigating the plain of Thebes. 



A still more ambitious undertaking of the ancient engineers 

 was an attempt to penetrate the Hill of Kephalari at the north- 

 east end of the lake by a tunnel more than a mile and a quarter 

 long. This hill, a depression on the flank of Mount Ptoum, has a 

 maximum height of one hundred and forty-seven metres above 



