volcanic cone, Mount Argseus, looks down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which connects the country with the lands of the Euphrates.  This volcano is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred forests which clothed its slopes.  The rivers having their sources in the region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles which separate them from the sea, but the Pyramus and the Sarus find their way into the Mediterranean and the Iris, Halys and Sangarios into the Euxine.  The others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes, and lakes of fluctuating extent.  The largest of these lakes, called Tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season.  In brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the highlands of Central Asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter.  The maritime portions are of an entirely different aspect.

[Illustration:  146.jpg Map]

The western coast which stretches into the AEgean is furrowed by deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers—­the Caicus, the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander—­which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea.  The littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands—­Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Cos, Rhodes—­of which the majority are near enough to the continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland.  The Cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard between Asia and Europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the piers of a broken bridge.  The passage from one to the other is an easy matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the two continents than to divide them.  Two groups of heights, imperfectly connected with the central plateau, tower above the AEgean slope—­wooded Ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the volcanic bastions of Lycia, where tradition was wont to place the fire-breathing Chimaera.  A rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches to the west of Lycia, in a line almost parallel with the Taurus, through which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way into the sea.  At the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the angle where the Cilician littoral meets that of Syria, the Pyramus and the Sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name of the Level Cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the interior, Gilicia Trachea.