Such difficulties, however, in the internal transit by land, were to a great extent counteracted by the large proportion of coast, and the accessibility of the country by sea. The prominences and indentations in the line of Grecian coast, are hardly less remarkable than the multiplicity of elevations and depressions which everywhere mark the surface.[340] The shape of Peloponnesus, with its three southern gulfs, (the Argolic, Laconian, and Messenian,) was compared by the ancient geographers to the leaf of a plane-tree: the Pagasæan gulf on the eastern side of Greece, and the Ambrakian gulf on the western, with their narrow entrances and considerable area, are equivalent to internal lakes: Xenophon boasts of the double sea which embraces so large a proportion of Attica, Ephorus of the triple sea, by which Bœotia was accessible from west, north, and south,—the Eubœan strait, opening a long line of country on both sides to coasting navigation.[341] But the most important of all Grecian gulfs are the Corinthian and the Saronic, washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponnesus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, especially, lays open Ætolia, Phokis, and Bœotia, as well as the whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach. Corinth, in ancient times, served as an entrepôt for the trade between Italy and Asia Minor,—goods being unshipped at Lechæum, the port on the Corinthian gulf, and carried by land across to Cenchreæ, the port on the Saronic: indeed, even the merchant-vessels themselves, when not very large,[342] were conveyed across by the same route. It was accounted a prodigious advantage to escape the necessity of sailing round Cape Malea: and the violent winds and currents which modern experience attests to prevail around that formidable promontory, are quite sufficient to justify the apprehensions of the ancient Greek merchant, with his imperfect apparatus for navigation.[343] [340] “Universa autem (Peloponnesus), velut pensante æquorum incursus naturâ, in montes 76 extollitur.” (Plin. H. N. iv. 6.) Strabo touches, in a striking passage (ii. pp. 121-122), on the influence of the sea in determining the shape and boundaries of the land: his observations upon the great superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa, in respect of intersection and interpenetration of land by the sea-water are remarkable: ἡ μὲν οὖν Εὐρώπη πολυσχημονεστάτη πασῶν ἐστι, etc. He does not especially name the coast of Greece, though his remarks have a more exact bearing upon Greece than upon any other country. And we may copy a passage out of Tacitus (Agricol. c. 10), written in reference to Britain, which applies far more precisely to Greece: “nusquam latius dominari mare ... nec litore tenus accrescere aut resorberi, sed influere penitus et ambire, _et jugis etiam atque montibus inseri velut in suo_.”