Respecting the plains comprised in the ancient Pelagonia, see
also the Journal of the younger Pouqueville, in his progress from
Travnik in Bosnia to Janina. He remarks, in the two days’ march
from Prelepe (Prilip) through Bitolia to Florina, “Dans cette
route on parcourt des plaines luxuriantes couvertes de moissons,
de vastes prairies remplies de trèfle, des plateaux abondans en
pâturages inépuisables, où paissent d’innombrables troupeaux de
bœufs, de chèvres, et de menu bétail.... Le blé, le maïs, et
les autres grains sont toujours à très bas prix, à cause de la
difficulté des débouchés, d’où l’on exporte une grande quantité
de laines, de cotons, de peaux d’agneaux, de buffles, et de
chevaux, qui passent par le moyen des caravanes en Hongrie.”
(Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Grèce, tom. ii, ch. 62, p. 495.)
Again, M. Boué remarks upon this same plain, in his Critique des
Cartes de la Turquie, Voyage, vol. iv, p. 483, “La plaine immense
de Prilip, de Bitolia, et de Florina, n’est pas représentée (sur
les cartes) de manière à ce qu’on ait une idée de son étendue,
et surtout de sa largeur.... La plaine de Sarigoul est changée
en vallée,” etc. The basin of the Haliakmôn he remarks to be
represented equally imperfectly on the maps: compare also his
Voyage, i, pp. 211, 299, 300.
I notice the more particularly the large proportion of fertile
plain and valley in the ancient Macedonia, because it is often
represented (and even by O. Müller, in his Dissertation on the
ancient Macedonians, attached to his History of the Dorians) as
a cold and rugged land, pursuant to the statement of Livy (xlv,
29), who says, respecting the fourth region of Macedonia as
distributed by the Romans, “Frigida hæc omnis, duraque cultu, et
aspera plaga est: cultorum quoque ingenia terræ similia habet:
ferociores eos et accolæ barbari faciunt, nunc bello exercentes,
nunc in pace miscentes ritus suos.”
This is probably true of the mountaineers included in the region,
but it is too much generalized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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