520 
CANAL ACEOSS ISTHMUS OF COEINTH. 
of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the 
valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants 
and animals would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the 
new home which human art had prepared for them. It is 
possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 feet, or forty atmo¬ 
spheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of the basin 
might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the 
external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnor¬ 
mal configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the 
intensity of which cannot be even conjectured. 
Maritime Canals in Greece. 
A maritime canal executed and another projected in an¬ 
cient times, the latter of which is again beginning to excite 
attention, deserve some notice, though their importance is of a 
commercial rather than a geographical character. The first 
of these is the cut made by Xerxes through the rock which 
connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the mainland ; 
the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. 
In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the 
Romans classed the catial of Xerxes among the fables of “ men¬ 
dacious Greece,” and yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at 
the present day through its whole extent, except at a single 
point where, after it had become so choked as to be no longer 
navigable, it was probably filled up to facilitate communica¬ 
tion by land between the promontory and the country in the 
rear of it. 
If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober 
reality, escape from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as 
well as political status that its own capitalists—who now pre¬ 
fer to establish themselves and employ their funds anywhere 
else rather than in their native land—have any confidence in 
the permanency of its institutions, a navigable channel will no 
doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and iEgina. 
The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such 
a work almost a political necessity, and it would not only fur- 
