ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN CRETE. 233 



significant exception, when fully understood, will prove extremely 

 instructive in the study of prehistoric migrations. 



The Dorian migration into Crete has historical authority, and it is 

 probable enough, apart from the anthopological evidence, that a stream 

 of these people reached this south-western part of the island, since ships 

 driven by a strong wind southward would find it dangerous to land on 

 the northern coast, as archaeologists know to their cost. There is no 

 harbour on the south coast to compare with Loutro, the port of Sphakia, 

 where St. Paul's companions advised wintering; it possesses a double 

 harbour and gives shelter not only from the north-west and north-east, 

 but also from the south-west winds. Modern travellers commonly 

 report the absence of ports on the south coast of Crete, unaware that 

 native Sphakiot ships ply to Odessa with their great cheeses, hides, and 

 charcoal, and that Sphakiot vessels were reported in the Black Sea 

 during the Venetian occupation of the island, and at Constanza in 1821. 

 To-day there are more harbour-men employed at Sphakia City and its 

 port, Loutro, than in any other Cretan towns, excepting Canea, Candia, 

 and Rethymo. Immigrants landing at Loutro had no choice but to settle 

 on the southern slopes of the White Mountains, sterile, and therefore 

 sparsely inhabited, where to-day we find a majority of broad-heads. 



I referred above to one exception to the rule that Turkish occupation 

 stopped short at the foot of the mountains. This example is found on 

 the southern slopes of Mount Ida. The longest line of communications 

 of the Turkish occupation was the one which, leaving Candia, passed 

 along the eastern slopes of Mount Ida, swung round to the south vid 

 that ancient shrine of the Minoans, Kamdres, and, doubling the southern 

 slopes of the mountain, crossed by a rich valley the eparchy of Amarion, 

 and ended in the northern port of Rethymo. The northern slope of 

 Mount Ida is a stronghold of the old race; the southern is not, because 

 it was crossed by a high-road of immigration from one base to another. 

 In all this I would not be misunderstood. I do not attribute the 

 brachycephalic increase to the Turks, but, taking them as guides, I 

 have attempted to show how similar and earlier lines of settlement and 

 communication, pursued by numerous invaders, all broad-headed, with 

 the exception of the Saracens, would account for the present hedging in 

 of the dolichocephalic element. 



Before I pass to comparisons of stature let me add some evidence 

 from modern skulls. In the garden of the famous monastery of Arkadhi, 

 besieged by the Turks in 1866, is a memorial tower, the bottom of 

 which is filled with, some hundreds of skulls of fallen heroes of the 

 revolutions of 1821 and 1866. Dropping through the floor into the 

 gruesome depths below, I selected 26 crania, which, on examination, 

 yielded an average cranial index of 742. Of these, 54 per cent, were 

 dolichocephalic, and only 12 per cent, brachycephalic. These figures 

 are almost identical with those of the Minoan skulls. Arkadhi is on 

 the north-western slopes of Mount Ida, a few miles from the Mylo- 

 p6tamo border. Although not all the fighters came from the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood, yet they probably hailed in the main from the 

 mountains. 



