PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OP THE IONIAN ISLANDS. 
45 
gypsums are always accompanied by a large quantity of soft 
marl, which greatly influences the physical features of the 
country, giving it a character often highly grotesque. This is 
well seen near Lixuri in Cephalonia. There are also charac- 
teristic marks of it in the hill behind Zante and at Mount 
Scopos, in the same island. 
The natural drainage of the islands is, of course, greatly 
influenced by this peculiar condition of the rocks of which they 
are formed. The islands consisting of granite, slate, or com- 
pact sandstone, or even of clay, a very large proportion of the 
water that falls as rain from the clouds runs down the hill sides 
in brooks or rivulets, traverses the plains, collecting other 
streams as it goes, and at length forms rivers proportioned to 
the extent of the land and length of the course. These rivers 
pour a tributary stream into the ocean. Nothing of this kind 
is seen in the Ionian Islands. Notwithstanding the height and 
extent of the mountains in the larger islands, and the high hills 
in those of smaller size — notwithstanding the occasional heavy 
rain that falls, and the large quantity of water that thus comes 
upon the ground, as is indeed evident by the marks of torrents 
that seam the mountain sides, there are no streams worthy the 
name of rivers in any of the islands. In Corfu, whose area is 
227 square miles, and whose mountains are nearly 3,000 feet 
high, there are but two small streams entering the sea, and 
only one of these is large enough to require a bridge. In 
Cephalonia, whose area is 31 f square miles, there is no river 
deserving of the name, and very few places where there is any 
constant run of water into the ocean. The stream that drains 
the extensive valley between the lofty and generally snow- 
covered range of the Black Mountains and the lower but not 
inconsiderable coast range to the west, almost disappears before 
it enters the Gulf of Samos, and no other stream is worth 
mentioning. Zante, with its 160 square miles of surface and 
semicircle of mountain on the west coast, has no river at all. 
Santa Maura, of the same area, is almost equally without 
streams, although it has a central ridge and two parallel coast 
ridges, offering the most favourable conditions for streams. 
Ithaca has nothing that could not be stepped across. This total 
absence of streams, beyond the merest indications of a moun- 
tain-torrent only carrying down water immediately after heavy 
rains, is a striking feature in the physical geography of the 
Ionian Islands. It contrasts strongly with what is seen 
generally in Europe, and it has great bearing on the fertility 
of the islands, on the nature of the crops grown on them, their 
sanitary condition, and on their human inhabitants. It is 
difficult to overestimate the influence of these conditions of 
natural drainage on the various lands subject to them. 
