Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/801

 EUROPE 781 sea from Phoenicia to Crete. Hegesippus says there were three Europas : one a daughter of Oceanus, another a Phoenician princess, the daughter of Agenor, and the third a Thracian, in search of whom Cadmus left Asia. He derives the name of Europe from the last, Hippias and Andron from the first, and He- rodotus from the second. EUROPE^ one of the five principal divisions of the globe, the smallest except Australia, but the most important in the history of civiliza- tion. Geographically considered, it is merely a N. W. peninsula of the Asiatic continent, but from the earliest times it has been distinguished as a separate division. The Greeks first ap- plied the name to that portion of the continent nearest to them, and traced it to the myth of Europa. But there have been many other theories, none of which has remained un- contested. Ancient ^writers derive the name from Eurus, south wind, or from eiipbg and airia (a Scythic word, quoted by the Greeks), the broad land, or from evpvg and WT/>, the broad -look- ing (land). Modern scholars have sought for the origin of the name in the Semitic languages. Thus Bochart derives it from the Hebrew word ereb (west), while others hold that it is a corrupt form of the words 'havra appa (white- faced). If the name be Semitic, it must have been introduced by the Phoenicians, who were early familiar with almost all the shores of Europe. Their neighbors, the Hebrews, how- ever, had no general name for the countries F. of the Mediterranean, though they were well known to them. The name of Europe does not appear in Homer's catalogue of coun- tries, though it occurs, and so far as we know for the first time, in the Homeric hymn^ to Apollo. It is here applied to a region especial- ly distinguished from the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands, but to exactly what portion of the then known world it is impossible to deter- mine. Greece, the islands of the ^Egean and Ionian seas, Sicily, Thrace, and a part of south- ern Italy, seem to have been all the territories now included under the designation of which the contemporaries of Homer had any definite knowledge. In the time of the historian Heca- taBus (about 500 B. C.) some acquaintance had been made with the general features of Spain, southern Gaul, the region near the source of the Rhine, the borders of the lower Danube, and the shores of the Euxine and of the Palus Mseo- tis (sea of Azov) ; Italy, all the Mediterranean islands, and Thrace were now perfectly known. Herodotus, though in his day exploration had been carried much further to the north, placed the northern boundary of Europe (which he like his predecessors believed to be formed by the great river Oceanus) at a considerable dis- tance south of the coast of the Baltic ; but in his time the eastern and southeastern boundary afterward accepted as the limit of Europe by all the ancient nations, and formed by the Tanais river (Don), the Palus Maeotis, and the Cimmerian Bosporus (strait of Yenikale), was already well defined ; the knowledge of north- ern and central Gaul had been largely increased, and all the south-central region was compara- tively well known ground. Even in Strabo's time, when the North and Baltic seas were considered the extreme northern boundaries, the central and north-central portions of the continent were still but little explored; the present Russian possessions were almost entire- ly unknown ; and though the great provinces conquered by Rome had now been thorough- ly surveyed, it was not till the northern cam- paigns of Drusus Nero (B. C. 12-9) and of Germanicus (A. D. 14-16) that any really ac- curate knowledge of the northern Germanic regions 'appears to have been gained. About this period, too, the existence of the Scandina- vian peninsula, northern Russia, and the Arctic ocean seerns to have become known. From this time exploration and the knowledge of European geography made rapid progress ; but it was not perfected until the political suprem- acy had passed from the Roman to the Ger- manic races. Though much smaller in size than either Asia, Africa, or America, Europe has for many centuries exerted a greater in- fluence upon the destiny of other portions of the globe than all the other divisions. For nearly 1,000 years subsequent to the downfall of the Roman empire, it is true, it slowly and laboriously struggled through barbarism at a time when the Mongolian race in eastern Asia had already attained a more perfect state of society and culture. It is only within the last four centuries that European civilization has matured so far as to be able to wield a control- ling influence over distant regions and to stamp its seal upon their political state. According to Ritter, Europe, with all islands belonging to it, has a superficies of 3,700,000 sq. m., and 20,780 m. of coast line, including 790 on the Caspian sea. Behm and Wagner (Bewlkerung der Erde, 1872) estimate the total area at 3,787,000 sq. m. ; while the Almanack de Gotha and several other eminent statistical authorities agree in stating it at about 3,627,000 sq. m. Regarding the length of the coast line there is a much greater diiference in the estimates, but Ritter's is probably nearly correct. The ex- treme points of the European continent are : North: Cape North, lat. 71 10' N Ion. 25 46' E. South: Cape Tarifa, 36' 00 N., 5 8b W. West: CapeKoca, " 88 46 N, 9 31 W. East: Sea of Kara, " 68" 00' N., " The length of Europe from Cape St. Vincent in the southwest to the sea of Kara in the northeast is about 3,450 m. ; the width from Cape North to Cape Matapan (the southern- most point of the Greek peninsula), 2,420 m. Europe is bounded N. by the Arctic ocean, E. by the Ural mountains and river and the Cas- pian sea, S. by the ridge of the Caucasus moun- tains, the Black sea, and the Mediterranean, and W. by the Atlantic ocean. The boundary line between Europe and Asia is somewhat un-