Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/48

 The Country. 27 overtaken by contrary winds or becalmed on the road. Whilst making for the opposite shores, the man at the tiller looked wistfully for and never failed to find on the same spot the coasts whose outlines he knew so well. If this time his heart misgave him, all he had to do was to turn her head, and ere long he would regain the anchorage which he had left but a few hours since. But at the first opportunity, with kinder skies and greater confidence, he would again venture on the voyage, and emboldened by many essayals, finally reach the goal. The Phoenicians had great merit in being even better sailors than the Greeks. Facing the Syrian coast is a broad expanse of sea, open during the greater part of the year to all the winds that blow from the west and south, agitating and swelling the waters into waves. Here are no friendly islands, seemingly placed as land-marks on the briny way for the very purpose of affording timely rest and shelter to men worn out by stress of weather. Along the whole line of coast were no havens, until they began to construct and run far out into the sea moles to keep out the surf from anchorages and roadsteads, insufficiently protected by the point of some cape or rocky islet, the remains of cliffs which wintry storms had undermined and destroyed. How widely different in outline and aspect are the coasts of Hellas, Thrace, and Asia Minor ! The Hellenic peninsula divides itself lengthwise into two masses of unequal importance, but about even in breadth. Central Greece and Peloponnesus. Either mass, the first on its eastern and western flanks, the second on the west, more especially to the southward, is further split up in secondary peninsulas, some of which. Magnesia and Argolis for example, sharply bend at right angles, somewhat after the fashion of a broken limb, or sweep round and break at the edge into indescribable irregularities, with sundry deep sink- ings between the projections of a hilly shore. No gust of wind penetrates the many windings of these straits, whose waters are ever tranquil ; in fact the whole extent of coast is but a con- tinuous line of shelters and natural havens ; now consisting of indentations and inlets of the sea, which run far inland on this rocky shore ; now they are mere bends and curves affording little shelter, but whose sandy beach, with gentle upward slope, seems to invite the mariner to run in his boat, that he may stretch himself on the soft, warm bed. At other times the coast is