Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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From The 36th To 40th Degrees Of Latitude, The
Medium Temperature Of This Zone Is From 17 To 20 Degrees; And By A
Concurrence Of Circumstances, Which It Would Be Too Long To
Explain, This Favoured Region Has Become The Principal Seat Of
Industry And Intellectual Improvement.
When, in the kingdom of Valencia, we ascend from the shore of the
Mediterranean towards the lofty plains of La Mancha and the
Castiles, we seem to discern, far inland, from the lengthened
declivities, the ancient coast of the Peninsula.
This curious
phenomenon recalls the traditions of the Samothracians, and other
historical testimonies, according to which it is supposed that the
irruption of the waters through the Dardanelles, augmenting the
basin of the Mediterranean, rent and overflowed the southern part
of Europe. If we admit that these traditions owe their origin, not
to mere geological reveries, but to the remembrance of some ancient
catastrophe, we may conceive the central elevated plain of Spain
resisting the efforts of these great inundations, till the draining
of the waters, by the straits formed between the pillars of
Hercules, brought the Mediterranean progressively to its present
level, lower Egypt emerging above its surface on the one side, and
the fertile plains of Tarragona, Valencia, and Murcia, on the
other. Everything that relates to the formation of that sea,* (*
Some of the ancient geographers believed that the Mediterranean,
swelled by the waters of the Euxine, the Palus Maeotis, the Caspian
Sea, and the Sea of Aral, had broken the pillars of Hercules;
others admitted that the irruption was made by the waters of the
ocean.
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