PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OP THE IONIAN ISLANDS. 
51 
would certainly have been no lagoon at all, but a plain gently 
sloping to the water’s edge, and the margin need not, and 
could not; have been composed of a marine alluvium cemented 
together. It would, on the contrary, have presented a low 
cliff to the sea, and the remains of this cliff must have existed 
somewhere. There are no marks of it ; while, on the contrary, 
all, without exception of the margin, is an evident drift of 
pebbles, the result of occasional high winds from the north 
bringing up the water and moving the shingle with it. This 
margin, also, is not always narrow. In one part it bulges 
inland and forms a kind of island, on which is a farm and 
chapel. Another similar land-tract is occupied by the fort of 
Santa Maura, built many centuries ago, and still occupied. 
If, indeed, there has been any change in the level of this 
part of the Mediterranean, it has more probably been that of 
elevation than depression. A very slow elevation, accompanied 
by atmospheric action, would better account for the phe- 
nomena presented by the margin and the gradual filling up 
of the lagoon. 
Marks of elevation on a much larger scale are sufficiently 
common along the whole eastern coast of Santa Maura, but 
they belong to a pre-historic period. Marine alluvia, of com- 
paratively modern date, have there been formed, of great thick- 
ness, and have been brought up to the height of many hundred 
feet, at an angle of 60°, the beds dipping towards the sea. 
The thickness of these beds is very great, and they are 
repeated in various forms in some of the other islands. 
One of the peculiarities of most of the Ionian Islands is 
the existence of a surface deposit of pebbles or angular stones, 
in some places small and in others large, and of various thick- 
nesses, cemented into a pudding-stone, and covering the surface. 
These might sometimes be thought a marine formation ; but 
they consist only of the stones at the surface weathered and 
broken by exposure, and worked into a solid mass by the 
infiltration of rain-water. It is a condition only possible to 
such an extent in a limestone district where weathering goes 
on rapidly. It is necessary to remind the .reader of this, as 
he might easily fall into the error of supposing that these 
breccias were also proofs of elevation. 
Although there is no probability that the separation of Santa 
Maura from the mainland of Greece is a modern event, there 
are not wanting in all the islands abundant proofs of recent 
volcanic disturbance. Earthquakes are exceedingly common, 
and in Santa Maura, Cephalonia, and Zante, they have been 
extremely injurious within the last few centuries. There are 
however, some interesting peculiarities connected with them, 
amongst which may be mentioned that, although all the islands 
