East,” or “country of the rising sun.” It is thus that Italy first, and then Spain, bore the name of Hesperia; that Western Africa received the name of El Maghreb from the Mohammedans, and the plains beyond the Mississippi became known in our own times as the “Far West.” But, whatever may be the original meaning of its name, Europe, in all the myths of the ancients, is described as a Daughter of Asia. The Phœnicians were the first to explore the shores of Europe, and to bring its inhabitants into contact with those of the East. When the Daughter had become the superior of her {7} Mother in civilisation, and Greek voyagers were following up the explorations begun by the mariners of Tyre, all the known countries to the north of the Mediterranean were looked upon as dependencies of Europe, and that name, which was originally confined to the Thraco-Hellenic peninsula, was made to include, in course of time, Italy, Spain, the countries of the Gauls, and the hyperborean regions beyond the Alps and the Danube. Strabo, to whom were known already the most varied and fruitful portions of Europe, extends it eastward as far as the Palus Mæotis and the Tanais.[2] [Illustration: Fig. 1.—THE NATURAL BOUNDARY OF EUROPE. Scale 1 : 21,800,000. Erhard. The zone of depression extending from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Obi is shaded. The darker shading to the north of the Caspian shows the area depressed below the level of the Mediterranean.] {8} Since that epoch the limits between Europe and Asia have been shifted by geographers still further to the east. They are, however, more or less conventional, for Europe, though bounded on three sides by the ocean, is in reality but a peninsula of Asia. At the same time, the contrasts between these two parts of the world fully justify scientific men in dividing them into two continental masses. But where is the true line of separation between them? Map-makers generally adopt the political boundaries which it has pleased the Russian Government to draw between its vast European and Asiatic territories, and others adopt the summits of the Ural Mountains and of the Caucasus as the boundary between the two continents; and although, at the first glance, this delineation appears more reasonable than the former, it is in reality no less absurd. The two slopes of a mountain chain can never be assigned to different formations, and they are generally inhabited by men of the same race. The true line of separation between Europe and Asia does not consist of mountains at all, but, on the contrary, of a series of depressions, in former times covered by a channel of the sea which united the Mediterranean with the Arctic Ocean. The steppes of the Manych, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and to the north of the Caucasus, are still covered in part with salt swamps. The Caspian itself, as well as Lake Aral and the other lakes which we meet with in the direction of the Gulf of Obi, are the remains of this ancient