There are few countries in the world more favoured by nature. Its climate is mild, though sometimes too dry in summer; its soil fertile in spite of the waters being swallowed up by the limestone rocks; its harbours spacious and well sheltered; and its scenery exhibits both grandeur and quiet beauty. The position of Crete, at the mouth of the Archipelago, between Europe, Asia, and Africa, seems to have destined that island to become the great commercial emporium of that part of the world. Aristotle already observed this, and, if tradition can be trusted, Crete actually held that position for more than three thousand years. During that time it “ruled the waves;” the Cyclades acknowledged the sway of Minos, its king; Cretan colonists established themselves in Sicily; and Cretan vessels found their way to every part of the Mediterranean. But the island unfortunately became divided into innumerable small republics jealous of each other, and was therefore unable to maintain this commercial supremacy in the face of Dorian and other Greeks. At a subsequent period the Romans subjected the island, and it never recovered its independence. Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, and Turks have held it in turn, and by each of them it has been laid waste and impoverished. The elongated shape of the island, and the range of mountains which runs through it from one extremity to the other, enable us to understand how it was that at a time when most Greeks looked upon the walls of their cities as synonymous with the limits of their fatherland, Crete became divided into a multitude of small republics, and how every attempt at federation (“syncretism”) miserably failed. The inhabitants, in fact, were more effectually separated from each other than if they had inhabited a number of small islands forming an archipelago. Most of the coast valleys are enclosed by high mountains, the only easy access to them being from the sea, and communications between the towns occupying their centres are possible only by crossing difficult mountain paths easily defended. In all Crete there exists but one plain deserving the name, viz. that of Messara, to the south of the central mass of mountains. It is the granary of the island, and the Ieropotamo, or “holy river,” which traverses it, has a little water even in the middle of summer. {91}