SKETCH OF MGINA AND M ETHAN A. 793 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



Algiua. — This island, whose culminating point, the summit of 

 Mt. Oros, lies in Lon. 23°3o' E., and Lat. 37°42' N., has almost 

 the shape of an equilateral triangle, the north coast running east 

 and west. The length of each of the sides is about 13 kilometres, 

 and the total area about 85 sq. kilometres. The view presented 

 by the island from the sea is striking, the dark gray bare slopes 

 rising steeply from the low northern shore to the central heights, 

 which in turn are joined by a fine curve with the sharp dominant 

 peak of Mt. Oros, the last falling away in a long regular slope 

 to the sea at Cape Pyrgos. The chief port and only town, like- 

 wise called /Egina, lies near the northern end of the western 

 shore, the small harbor, formed by two jetties, being crowded with 

 the gaily painted feluccas and other craft of the sponge fishers. 

 It is a picturesque, prosperous little town of some 2500 inhabi- 

 tants, one of the chief seats of the sponge fisheries of the yEgean 

 Sea, and the centre of quite an extensive native trade in pottery, 

 the ^Egina jugs and vases being highly esteemed throughout 

 Greece. 



Geologically the island is divisible into five distinct dis- 

 tricts, the first being the low fringing shore land on the north 

 and northwest, the latest in point of geological time. The second 

 is the mountainous region of the north and northeast, made up 

 of Mts. Kokkalaki, Baro, the Temple Ridge, and Mt. Paliango, 

 which are all of hard crystalline limestone of undoubted Creta- 

 ceous age. The next district is that comprising Mts. Stavro, 

 Palaeochora, and Spasmeno Vouno, and may be called for con- 

 venience the Stavro District. It is entirely composed of eruptive 

 material, the characteristic rock being a light gray hornblende- 

 andesite. The fourth district is the most complex, both topo- 

 graphically and lithologically. It embraces the ridges of Mts. 

 Chondos, Dendros, Pagoni and Gaiapha,with some outlying spurs, 

 as well as perhaps the north and south running line of hills called 

 Mt. Kouragio. This district, which includes all the central part 

 of the island, may be called the Monastery District (from the 

 Monastery of the Panagia or Virgin in the centre). Litholog- 



