Vast tracts of the Balkan peninsula are hardly better known to us than the wilds of Africa. Kanitz found rivers, hills, and mountains figuring upon our maps which have no existence. Another traveller, Lejean, found that a pretended low pass through the Balkans existed only in the imagination. Russian geodesists engaged upon the measurement of an arc of a meridian found that Sofia, one of the largest and best-known cities of Turkey, had been inserted upon the best maps at a distance of nearly a day’s journey from its true position. The entire chain of the Balkans had to be shifted considerably to the south, in consequence of explorations carried on within the last few years. Men of science have hardly ventured yet to explore the plateaux of Albania or Mount Pindus, and much remains yet to {89} be done before our knowledge of the topography of the Balkan peninsula can be called even moderately complete. The voyages and explorations of a host of travellers[24] have, however, made known to us its general features and its geological formations. Their task was by no means an easy one, for the mountain masses and mountain chains of the peninsula do not constitute a regular, well-defined system. There is no central range, with spurs running out on both sides, and gradually decreasing in height as they approach the plains. Nor is the centre of the peninsula its most elevated portion, for the culminating summits are dispersed over the country apparently without order. The mountain ranges run in all the directions of the compass, and we can only say, in a general way, that those of Western Turkey run parallel with the Adriatic and Ionian coasts, whilst those in the east meet the coasts of the Black Sea and the Ægean at right angles. The relief of the soil and the water-sheds make it appear almost as if Turkey turned her back upon continental Europe. Its highest mountains, its most extensive table-lands, and its most inaccessible forests lie towards the west and north-west, as if they were intended to cut it off from the shores of the Adriatic and the plains of Hungary, whilst all its rivers, whether they run to the north, east, or south, finally find their way into the Black Sea or the Ægean, whose shores face those of Asia.