rise in the mainland. The
Cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard
between Asia and Europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the
piers of a broken bridge. The passage from one to the other is an easy
matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the
two continents than to divide them. Two groups of heights, imperfectly
connected with the central plateau, tower above the AEgean slope--wooded
Ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon
its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the
volcanic bastions of Lycia, where tradition was wont to place the
fire-breathing Chimaera. A rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches
to the west of Lycia, in a line almost parallel with the Taurus, through
which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way
into the sea. At the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the
angle where the Cilician littoral meets that of Syria, the Pyramus and
the Sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an
alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name
of the Level Cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the
interior, Gilicia Trachea.

The populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races.
On the south and south-west certain Semites had found an abode--the
mysterious inhabitants of Solyma, and especially the Phoenicians in
their scattered trading-stations. On the north-east, beside the Khati,
distributed throughout the valleys of the Anti-Taurus, between
the Euphrates and Mount Argseus, there were tribes allied to the
Khati*--possibly at this time the Tabal and the Mushka--and, on the
shores of the Black Sea, those workers in metal, which, following the
Greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the Chalybes.

* A certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to
be found in the list contained in the treaty of Ramses II.
with the Khati.

We are at a loss to know the distribution of tribes in the centre and
in the north-west, but the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, we may rest
assured, never formed an ethnographical frontier. The continents on
either side of them appear at this point to form the banks of a river,
or the two slopes of a single valley, whose bottom lies buried beneath
the waters. The barbarians of the Balkans had forced their way across at
several poin