Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/634

614

HE significant geography of the Balkan Peninsula may best be illustrated by comparing it with the other two south European ones, Italy and Spain. The first point to notice is that it is divided from the mainland by rivers and not by a well-defined mountain chain. Iberia begins definitely at the Pyrenees, and Italy proper is cut off from Europe by the Apennine chain. On the other hand, it is along the line of the Danube and of its western affluent, the Save (see map between pages 614 and 615), that we find the geographical limits of the Balkan Peninsula. This boundary, as will be observed, excludes the kingdom of Roumania, seeming to distinguish it from its trans-Danubian neighbor Bulgaria. This is highly proper, viewed from the standpoint of geography and topography. For Roumania is, for the most part, an extensive and rich alluvial plain; while the Balkan Peninsula, as soon as you leave the Bulgarian lowlands, is characteristically rugged, if not really mountainous.

From Adrianople west to the Adriatic, and from the Balkan Mountains and the Save River south to the plains of Epirus and Thessaly, extends an elevated region upward of two thousand feet above the sea, breaking up irregularly into peaks often rising above five thousand feet. There is no system in these mountains. The land is rudely broken up into a multitude of little "gateless amphitheaters," too isolated for union, yet not inaccessible enough for individuality. As White observes, "If the peninsula, instead of being the highly mountainous and diversified district it is, had been a plateau, a very different distribution of races would have obtained at the present day." Nor can one doubt for a moment that this disordered topography has been an important element in the racial history of the region.

In its other geographical characteristics this peninsula is seemingly more favored than either Spain or Italy. More varied than the former, especially in its union of the two flora of north and south; far richer in contour, in the possession of protected waters and good harbors than Italy; the Balkan Peninsula, nevertheless, has been, humanly speaking, unfortunate from the start. The reason is patent. It lies in its central or rather intermediate location. It is betwixt