Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTUEE III. SECONDARY FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY: RIVERS, SPRINGS, LAKES, CAVERNS, GORGES. The Elvers of Greece?Perennial Streams and Torrents?Features of the Larger Eivers?Homeric Descriptions of the Torrents? Character of the Water?Etymologies of Greek Biver-names? Legends suggested by Eivers?Sacredness of Fountains?Their Appearance in Antiquity?Warm Springs?Legends connected with Fountains?Lakes with no Outlet?Drainage of the Plains ?Subterranean Passages or Catavothras?Famous Caverns? Waterfall of the Styx?Gorges?The Acheron?Vale of Tempe. ? N describing the geography of an extensive inland country, it would be necessary to- give the rivers equal prominence with the mountains, since, while the latter represent the barriers that defend a territory, and separate one tribe from another, the rivers are means of transit and arteriesjff communication. But in a narrow country like Greece the courses of the streams are not of sufficient length to allow of their attaining any considerable volume, so that none of them are navigable except for boats, and very few even for these. In Thrace and Macedonia, where there is an extensive tract to be drained, we find rivers of greater size?the Hebrus, the Nestus, the Strymon, and the Axius?which last river in particularHomer celebrates for its fertilising water, as "the fairest stream that flows in all the earth "? 'A]ioC, oS Kaurrov USup irud5aT!u alavJ but even these, though barges are floated down them at the present day, could not be made permanently serviceable without a large outlay of money and labour, owing to the violence of their current. It was rather from the value of their water that the Greek rivers came to be, so highly estimated. In that thirsty land, where light-soiled plains filled up the spaces between the stony ...