Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/226

214 these four outlets, one passes southward under Mount Sphingium into Lake Hylice or Likeri, from which there is probably a subterraneous communication with Lake Paralimni and beyond it with the sea. The three others pass eastward under Mount Ptoum and its offshoots. The principal one, called the Katabothra of Bynia, with two openings on the lake side, passes under the Hill of Kephalari in a general direction from southwest to northeast, and opens on the east side of the hill in a large grotto about fortyfive metres lower than its source, whence its waters flow through the deep ravine of the Valley of Larymna into the sea,

Strabo says that Lake Copais is three hundred and eighty stadia (about forty-seven miles) in circuit, but it differs greatly at different seasons, sometimes threatening to inundate the whole valley and sometimes forming only a series of fens overgrown with reeds—the auletic or flute reeds of the ancients, from which Pan's pipes were made. Its bottom, which is ninety-five metres above the sea, is a nearly level plain with a slight incline toward the east and a little elevation in the center. Modern travelers, from the time of Sir George Wheler upward, have noted on both its north and its south shores the remains of ancient dykes, in some parts re-enforced with masonry. These dykes, in several places still used as roads, have generally been considered as ancient causeways, means of communication in times of flood between the towns on the banks; but they are now shown to be parts of a system of drainage canals by means of which the superfluous waters of the basin were led to the katabothra under the hills.

The recession of the waters through the efforts of the present engineers has shown that there were three main canals through the entire length of the lake, branching at their western ends into subsidiary canals or feeders for collecting the various tributary waters. These main channels, which for convenience' sake we will call the north, middle, and south canals, are constructed partly of excavations and partly of a series of dykes or causeways, strengthened where necessary by walls of cyclopean masonry. The north canal, the most carefully and solidly constructed of the three, receives the waters of the Cephissus and conducts them into a common channel with those of the Melas, a stream which, rising near Orchomenus, is navigable almost from its source. After their junction the waters flow through a bed, formed on the north by the rocky shore of the lake and on the south by a massive embankment re-enforced by masonry, behind the island of Topolias, the site of ancient Copæ. Thence the canal leaves the shore and, embanked on both sides, crosses the Bay of Kephalari and conducts its waters into the natural fissures under the mountain. This double embankment, though partly ruinous, is still plainly traceable.