The island is one of those paradisiacal isolations which facilitate civilization in its early stages, and preserve it from the encroachments of progress in the later. Its low latitude secures it against cold in winter, and its insular position against extreme heat, while the range of high mountains running longitudinally through it gives its climate a salubrity possessed by no section of the world's surface so near the sun. The standard summer temperature is from 82° to 86° Fahr., and once only in a residence of nearly four years I saw it as high as 92°. The minimum was 52°. Wild flowers never are wanting except in midsummer. The almond blooms in February (I have seen it in blossom on Christmas), and all the known fruits follow it in succession, each finding some locality and climate suited to it. The fertility of the plains, and the inaccessibility of its mountain fastnesses, made prosperity easy and conquest difficult, while its remoteness from the shore of either continent made ancient invasion not easy, and preserved the type of the composite Greek race from the barbaric innovations of Greece proper, so that we have the Greek race of B.C. 700 undoubtedly more purely preserved than anywhere else. Only in prosperity and weight in mundane matters, in comparative consideration, they have passed to the other end of the scale from that in which Homer could say of their land: "There is a country, Crete, in the midst of the black sea, beautiful and fertile, wave-washed roundabout, with a population infinite in number, and ninety cities. The races are different, and with different languages--there are Achæans, there are the huger Eteocretans,[A] the Cydonians, the crest-waving Dorians, and the divine Pelasgi. Theirs is Gnossus, a great city, and theirs is King Minos, who talked nine years with great Jove." [A] Aboriginal or true Cretans, of whose distinctive characteristic, great stature, make note in considering the Sphakiotes, who even to-day are remarkable for their size, and always assert themselves to be the most ancient Cretans. This enumeration has evidently no relation to chronological order, and unfortunately we have no intelligible traditions as to the order of settlement in Crete. Diodorus Siculus says that "the first inhabitants of Crete dwelt in the neighborhood of Mount Ida, and were called the Idæan Dactyls." But Scylax says that, according to early Greek tradition, Cydonia (in the western end of the island) was known as "the mother of cities." Its position and character of site indicate rather a settlement of Pelasgi coming from the west.