244 THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 



nine miles (not half the width of the Straits of Dover), might 

 well suggest such a conception. And though the depth of 

 the mid-channel at the narrowest point is fully 900 feet, this 

 must nevertheless be regarded as a sort of bar or submarine 

 ridge, between the ocean and sea. The waters in fact deepen 

 rapidly on each side; so suddenly even in the Strait itself, 

 that between Gibraltar and Ceuta where the width is twelve 

 miles, nearly 6,000 feet of sounding line have been run out ; 

 while somewhat further to the eastward no soundings have 

 yet been obtained. Let any one look on a map, and mark the 

 general trending of the European and African coasts, and 

 their peculiar apposition and opposition in the Strait itself, 

 and he will at once surmise that this place must have been 

 the scene of great movements and changes, involving both 

 sea and land; and due to the subterranean forces, which 

 have everywhere been active, in one form or another, in 

 altering the configuration of the earth's surface. 



We must speak more cursorily of those inner Straits, the 

 Dardanelles and Bosphorus, which give access to the vast 

 interior basin of the Black Sea a name once obscure and 

 fearful in report, but now become as familiar to us as the 

 Baltic or German Ocean. These two Straits are among the 

 marvels of the Mediterranean : rivers they might not 

 inaptly be called, since they afford egress by the rapid and 

 profound current flowing through them, to the waters from 

 nearly one-third of the surface of Europe. The Danube, the 

 Don, and the Dnieper all empty themselves through this 

 channel into the greater basin below. Their waters, in pass- 

 ing the Straits, flow between shores every point of which has 

 the history or poetry of former ages inscribed upon it. No 

 passage between seas elsewhere on the globe can compare 

 with these, either in living scenery or past recollections. 

 Classical legends of the most remote antiquity are here 

 blended with the record of those more real events of con- 



