el el-Amarna tablets.

In its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a
gentle slope towards the Black Sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex
trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of Pontus,
and on the south by the tortuous chain of the Taurus. A line of low
hills fringes the country on the west, from the Olympus of Mysia to the
Taurus of Pisidia. Towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of
mountains of unequal height, to which the name Anti-Taurus is not very
appropriately applied. An immense volcanic cone, Mount Argseus, looks
down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which
connects the country with the lands of the Euphrates. This volcano
is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its
languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred
forests which clothed its slopes. The rivers having their sources in the
region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles
which separate them from the sea, but the Pyramus and the Sarus find
their way into the Mediterranean and the Iris, Halys and Sangarios into
the Euxine. The others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes,
and lakes of fluctuating extent. The largest of these lakes, called
Tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. In
brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the
highlands of Central Asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and
climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the
same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. The maritime
portions are of an entirely different aspect.

[Illustration: 146.jpg Map]

The western coast which stretches into the AEgean is furrowed by deep
valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers--the Caicus,
the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander--which flow through them are
effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a
continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes
the land to encroach there upon the sea. The littoral is penetrated here
and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands--Lesbos,
Chios, Samos, Cos, Rhodes--of which the majority are near enough to the
continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of
the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects
of any violent disturbances which might a