46 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



'Whoever believes/ he says, 'that Poseidon causes 

 earthquakes and rents in the earth will recognise his 

 handiwork in the vale of Tempe. It certainly appeared 

 to me to be quite evident that the mountains had 

 been there torn asunder by an earthquake.' 1 



Coming down some four centuries later we find 

 that in Strabo, while all allusion to the supernatural 

 has disappeared, the formation of the topography by 

 natural causes is described with as much confidence 

 as if the events were vouched for by documentary 

 evidence. ' When the present chasm of Tempe,' he 

 remarks, c was opened by the shocks of an earth- 

 quake, and Ossa was torn away from Olympus, the 

 Peneius flowed out through this passage to the sea, 

 and thereby drained the interior of the country. 7 2 

 He speaks also of the two lakes Nessonis and Bcebeis 

 as remnants of the large sheet of water which had 

 originally covered the lowlands of Thessaly. 



The myths and legends of the Teutonic races supply 

 many illustrations of primitive attempts to account for 

 some of the more striking external phenomena of 

 nature. In comparing these interpretations with those 

 of the Greeks, we cannot fail to perceive the influence 

 of the different scenery and climate amid which they 

 took their birth. The dwellers in the west of 

 Scandinavia spent their lives under the shadow of 

 lofty, rugged fjelds, surmounted by vast plains of 

 snow. They were familiar with the gleam of glaciers, 

 the crash of ice-falls, the tumult of avalanches. 

 Cloud and mist enshrouded them for weeks together. 

 Heavy rains from the broad Atlantic swelled their 



1 Book vii. 129, see ante p. 37. 2 Book ix. 429. 



