Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/64

 The Country. 43 summer's storm. Often, under pelting rain, ditches are dug to regulate the precipitous course of the waters, now turned into veritable water-falls ; and breastworks are hastily thrown up to stem in the flood and save the ground-plot. As will be easily guessed, the husbandman of this land must be furnished with great tenacity of purpose, a quick eye and cool head, so as to seize the right moment when to act in unlooked-for danger ; never relaxing his watchfulness in the struggle he has waged against a poor soil, and the violence and disagreeable surprises which Nature may have in store for him. The battle he fights is never won. True, he has the better in every encounter, but only on the condition that he never lays down his arms ; a passing downheartedness, a moment of forgetfulness, would lose him all the fruit of his precious toils. In the out-lying valleys of Bcaeotia, Arcadia, and Crete, the struggle, though assuming another shape, has always water for its cause ; water, for which parched mother-earth vainly sighs for long months, and which in its superabundance, when at last it comes, is fraught with a new danger. Plains are of mediocre extent ; a mountain belt encircles them on every side, leaving no apparent egress for melted snow and rain. Lakes of considerable size and depth would thus be formed, did not the waters work their way through subterraneous passages which they have opened for themselves, carrying them to the sea or low grounds. These whirlpools are known in modern Greece under the name of xara^oOqa} The plain may be partially or entirely brought under culture, according as the mouth of this kind of gutter is found in the rocky wall or in the hollow. All would be well if the over-plus water were drained with anything like regularity. This however is not the case. Broken branches and loose coarse grasses often collect around the orifice of these conduits, obstructing them more or less completely ; the news is soon spread abroad, and the inhabitants are seen flying to the scene of the disaster, where the waters now rise rapidly. I once saw in Crete, Sphakiote highlanders standing up to their necks in water, and striving, hooks in hand, to clear the mouth of one of these channels, whose outflow was stopped Les Katavothres du PkloponksCy 8vo, Delagrave 1892, extracted from Reime de Gkographie de Dapeyron,
 * The KUTCL^oBpa of Morea have been described by M. Martel under the title,