From an examination of the coasts, as well as from the traditions of the people inhabiting them, we learn that the Mediterranean has varied frequently in its contours and extent. The straits which connect its waters with those of the ocean have frequently changed their position. At a time when peninsulas like Greece, and even islands like Malta, formed part of continental masses—and that they did so in a comparatively recent geological epoch is proved by their fossil fauna—the waters of the Mediterranean covered large portions of Africa, of Southern Russia, and even of Asia. The researches of Spratt, Fuchs, and others have satisfactorily proved that towards the close of the miocene age a vast {24} fresh-water lake stretched from the banks of the Aral, across Russia, the plains of the Danube and the Archipelago, as far as Syracuse in Sicily. Then came the briny waters of the ocean. There was a time when the Black Sea and the Caspian connected the Archipelago with the Gulf of the Obi. At another epoch the gulfs of the Syrtes penetrated far inland, and a large portion of what is now the Libyan and Saharan desert was then covered with water. The Strait of Gibraltar, which was torn asunder by Hercules according to the traditions of the ancients, is in reality but of recent origin, and has taken the place of a more ancient strait which joined the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean: this strait has been restored by human hands, and is known now as the Suez Canal. The coast-lines of the Mediterranean are undergoing perpetual change, owing to the upheaval or subsidence of the countries surrounding it. The Nile, the Po, the Rhone, and other rivers incessantly enlarge the alluvial plains at their mouths, and still further encroach upon the sea. Actually the Mediterranean, with its subordinate seas from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azof, covers an area about thirty times that of the British Islands. This area is small if we compare it with the immense development of the coasts and the wealth in peninsulas, which impart an aspect of life and independence to at least one-third of the ancient world. The Mediterranean, though it takes precedence of all the oceans, in consequence of the part it has played in history, nevertheless only covers an area one-seventieth that of the Pacific.[6] It is broken up, moreover, into several separate seas, some of them so small in extent that the navigator hardly ever loses sight of the land. In the {25} east we have the Black Sea, with its two dependencies, the Seas of Azof and of Marmara. The Ægean Sea, or Archipelago, with its numerous islands, extends between the deeply indented coasts of Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete. The Adriatic stretches towards the north-west, between the Balkan peninsula and Italy; and the Mediterranean proper is divided into two separate basins, which might appropriately be called the Phœnician and Carthaginian Seas, or the Greek and Roman Mediterraneans.