The Population Is Composed
Almost Entirely Of Greeks.
There is a monastery and a large school.
I rode to the bay, about four miles and a half distant, passing many
villages, which, as we neared the sea, were in the midst of magnificent
crops of barley and wheat, resulting from artificial irrigation by the
water that percolates beneath the sandy bed of the dry river at a
certain level, which has been led into numerous channels before it can
reach the natural exit at its mouth. It must be exceedingly unhealthy,
as, for several square miles upon the sea margin, the country is an
expanse of marsh and bulrushes, abounding with snipe during the winter
months. On 13th April I walked over the greater portion of this locality
with my three spaniels, but the snipe had departed, and we did not move
a bird.
On the right side of Morphu Bay to the east, by Kormachiti, there are
extensive sand-dunes, forming deep drifts, which extend for several
miles inland at the foot of the hill-range that we had descended. These
exhibit the prevailing wind (north). Many people upon observing
sand-dunes attribute the most distant limit of the sand to the extreme
violence of the wind; but this is not the case. It is the steady
prevalence of moderately strong winds that causes the extension of
sand-drifts. The wind of to-day deposits the sand at a certain distance
from the shore. The wind to-morrow starts the accumulated sand from that
depot to form a new deposit about equidistant; and thus by slow degrees
the dunes are formed by a succession of mounds, conveyed onwards by an
unchanging force; but the maximum power of a gale would be unable to
carry thousands of tons of heavy sand to form a hill-range at the
extreme distance from the original base of the material.
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