The zone occupied by the Greeks grows narrower as we go west of the Maritza, where the Rhodope Mountains form a kind of international barrier. Only the coast is occupied there by Greek mariners and fishermen, whilst the hills in sight of it are held almost exclusively by Turkish and Bulgarian peasants and herdsmen. The marshy littoral districts, the small valleys on the southern slopes of the mountains, and a few isolated hills of volcanic or crystalline formation constitute a narrow band which connects the Greeks of Thracia with their compatriots of Chalcidice and Thessaly. The Yuruks, or “Wanderers,” a Turkish tribe which has retained its nomadic habits down to the present day, sometimes even extend their excursions to the sea-coast. Their principal seat is in the Pilav Tepe, a mountain mass to the north-west of Thasos, famous in the time of the Macedonian kings for its mines of gold and silver. A wide plain extends immediately to the west of these mountains, watered by the Strymon, or Karasu, and is of marvellous fertility. Seres, a considerable city, occupies its centre, and hundreds of villages, surrounded by orchards, rice, and cotton fields are scattered over it. Looked at from the heights of the Rhodope, this plain assumes the appearance of a huge garden-city. Unfortunately many parts of it are very insalubrious. The triple peninsula of Chalcidice has no connection whatever with the Rhodope, and is attached to the mainland by an isthmus covered with lakes, swamps, and alluvial plains. It extends far into the sea like a huge hand spread out upon the waters. Chalcidice is a Greece in miniature, with coasts of fantastic contours, deep bays, bold promontories, and mountains rising in the midst of plains, like islands in an archipelago. One of these mountain masses rises in the trunk of the peninsula, and culminates in Mount Kortach, whilst each of its three {108} ramifications possesses its own system of scarped hills. Greek in aspect, this curious appendage to the continent is Greek, too, in its population; and, a rare thing in Turkey, all its inhabitants are of the same race, if we except the Turks in the town of Nisvoro and the Slav monks of Mount Athos. [Illustration: Fig. 33.—THE PENINSULA OF MOUNT ATHOS. Scale 1 : 1,020,000.]