118 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 



the, Peloponnesus not far from Cape Malea. More to the 

 west we have the Ionian Sea, or the Syrtic basin, in which 

 Malta is situated : the western point of Sicily approaches to 

 within forty-eight geographical miles of the African shore ; 

 and we might almost regard the sudden but transient eleva- 

 tion of the burning island of Ferdinandea (1831), to the 

 southwest of the limestone rocks of Sciacca, as an effort of 

 nature to reclose the Syrtic basin, by connecting together Cape 

 Grantola, the Adventure bank (examined by Captain Smith), 

 the island of Pantellaria, and the African Cape Bon, and thus 

 to divide it from the third, the westernmost, or Tyrrhenian 

 basin. ( 152 ) This last receives the influx from the western ocean 

 through the passage opened between the Pillars of Hercules, 

 and contains Sardinia and Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and 

 the small volcanic group of the Spanish Columbratse. 



The peculiar form of the Mediterranean was very in- 

 fluential on the early limitation and later extension of 

 Phoenician and Grecian voyages of discovery, of which the 

 atter were long restricted to the JSgean and Syrtic basins. 

 In the Homeric times, continental Italy was still an 

 " unknown land/' The Phocseans first opened the Tyrrhenian 

 basin west of Sicily, and navigators to Tartessus reached 

 the Pillars of Hercules. It should not be forgotten that 

 Carthage was founded near the limits of the Tyrrhenian and 

 Syrtic basins. The march of events, the direction of nautical 

 undertakings, and changes in the possession of the empire 

 of the sea, reacting on the enlargement of the sphere of 

 ideas, have all been influenced by the physical configuration 

 of coasts. 



A more richly varied and broken outline gives to the 

 northern shore of the Mediterranean an advantage over the 



