14: INLAND SEA-CLIFFS [Ch. VI 



only on the present shore, but at the base of the ancient cliffs far in the 

 interior. Lastly, it remains only to speak of the terraces, which extend 

 with a gentle slope from the base of almost all the inland cliffs, and are 

 for the most part narrow where the rock is hard, but sometimes half a 

 mile or more in breadth where it is soft. They are the effects of the 

 encroachment of the ancient sea upon the shore at those levels at which 

 the land remained for a long time stationary. The justness of this view 

 is apparent on examining the shape of the modern shore wherever the 

 sea is advancing upon the land, and removing annually small portions 

 of undermined rock. By this agency a submarine platform is produced 

 on which we may walk . for some distance from the beach in shallow 

 water, the increase of depth being very gradual, until we reach a point 

 where the bottom plunges down suddenly. This platform is widened 

 with more or less rapidity according to the hardness of the rocks, and 

 when upraised it constitutes an inland terrace. 



But the four principal lines of cliff observed in the Morea do not 

 imply, as some have imagined, four great eras of sudden upheaval ; they 

 simply indicate the intermittance of the upheaving force. Had the rise 

 of the land been continuous and uninterrupted, there would have been 

 no one prominent line of cliff ; for every portion of the surface having 

 been, in its turn, and for an equal period of time, a sea-shore, would 

 have presented a nearly similar aspect. But if pauses occur in the pro- 

 cess of upheaval, the waves and currents have time to sap, throw down, 

 and clear away considerable masses of rock, and to shape out at several . 

 successive levels lofty ranges of cliffs with broad terraces at their base. 



There are some levelled spaces, however, both ancient and modern, in 

 the Morea, which are not due to denudation, although resembling in 

 outline the terraces above described. They may be called Terraces of 

 Deposition, since they have resulted from the gain of land, upon the sea 

 where rivers and torrents have produced deltas. If the sedimentary 

 matter has filled up a bay or gulf surrounded by steep mountains, a flat 

 plain is formed skirting the inland precipices ; and if these deposits are 

 upraised, they form a feature in the landscape very similar to the areas 

 of denudation before described. 



I have seen on the northern coast of Sicily one of these terraces 

 of deposition in the environs of Palermo, where, as in Greece, a line 

 of limestone cliffs with caverns at their base bounds a seaward- 

 sloping plain. * Proceeding from the shore inland, we find the plat- 

 form, c, fig. 93, a mile wide, composed of marine calcareous strata, the 

 majority of the embedded shells and corals being of living species. 

 "We next arrive at a precipitous cliff of hippurite limestone, a, in 

 which the well-known, cave of San Ciro, 6, occurs, 130 feet long, 50 

 high, and 30 wide. Its entrance is now 180 feet above the sea; but 

 the salt water must at one time have entered it, for the walls are 

 drilled for a height of several yards by perforating molluscs, and the 

 bottom of the cave is strewed over with a thin layer of sand, in which 

 more than forty species of sea-shells, nearly all of species now living 



