ART. V.- CRETE AND THE CRETANS.

Kreta. Ein Versuch zur Aufhellung der Mythologie und Geschichte, der Religion und Verfassung dieser Insel, von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Römer-Herrschaft. Von KARL HOECK, Dr. Professor der Universität Göttingen und Secretär der Königl. Bibliothek. [Three volumes.] Göttingen: Bei Carl Eduard Rosenbusch. 1823-1829. Reise nach der Insel Kreta im griechischen Archipelagus im Jahre 1817. Von F. W. SIEBER. [Two volumes.) Leipzig und Sorau: Bei Friedrich Fleischer.

1823.

Travels in Crete. By ROBERT PASHLEY, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. [Two volumes.] Cambridge, Pitt Press; and London, John Murray. 1837.

Travels and Researches in Crete. By Captain T. A. B. Spratt, R.N., C.B., F.R.S., Honorary Member of the Archæological Institutes at Berlin and Rome. (Two volumes.] London: John Van Voorst. 1865.

CRETE may be regarded in many respects as the garden of Greece; for it is capable, if civilized and cultivated, of producing, in vast abundance, corn, wine, silk, oil, honey, and wool. "The land is stocked with game," says Gordon, "the sea with fine fish; fruit is plentiful, and of a delicious flavor." The southernmost land in Europe, with an extreme length of one hundred and sixty miles and a breadth varying from six to forty-five miles, it contains an area of about four thousand square miles. Its northern coast is deeply indented, and affords numerous roadsteads; but the mountain chain that runs the whole length of the island fronts the sea, on its southern side, bleak and precipitous; and its southern coast is therefore almost inaccessible.

The climate on the uplands, which are rapidly drained of the rain, has always been famous for its excellence; the heats of summer being tempered by the north wind, while the warmer breezes that reach the island from Africa, meeting and driving back the cold air that draws down from Europe, soften the harshness of winter. One of the names, indeed, the an

cients gave the island was Æria, by reason of its balmy air and splendid climate. Moreover, if a spot were to be sought for with the mildest, and therefore the best, climate, it would naturally be found in Crete. Excluding the polar circle, such a spot would be midway between the first and sixty sixth or seventh degree of latitude; that is, about latitude 331°; and Crete lies between 34° and 35° north latitude. Its northern coast, indeed, being washed by the Ægean, and its southern by the Libyan Sea, Crete lies just where the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa meet; and it possesses, therefore, all the climatic advantages of those continents without being subjected to any of their disadvantages. In the winter, there is only rain; while the summer, by reason of the lofty snowy summits of its mountains and the cool sea-breezes, is a perpetual spring. As early as December, you find hyacinths and narcissuses and jasmines. Orange-blossoms perfume the air the whole year; and, with no north wind and no sirocco to strip the trees of their leaves or blast the freshness of their verdure, the lemon, olive, palm, laurel, cyprus, pomegranate, oleander, and myrtle never lose their foliage or their fragrance. Well might the ancients term the mountain from which they looked down upon this laughing landscape of forest, meadow, green glen, and sparkling rill, with the lower mountain-sides all golden with the broom or blood-red with the ilex, - well might they call it Ida, I have seen!

The summer vegetables, being such as are peculiar to hot climates, rest in the winter; when the hardier vegetables of Northern Europe grow all through the island in perfection, ripening in May, and resting in turn until revived by the autumnal rains. The quince-tree, so common in our own rougher climate, received its name from Cydonia, the district in Crete where it was indigenous. According to Pliny, every thing grew better in Crete than elsewhere. Homer praises its Pramnian wine: and it was famous for aromatic shrubs and medicinal herbs; among others, the dictammon, so celebrated among physicians, naturalists, and poets. The island, moreover, was free from all wild beasts and all noxious animals; though the Cretan dogs could vie with the hounds of Sparta, and Sieber states that there are still wild horses on Mount Ida, who can only be caught by being driven into the gorges, and there arrested by the lasso; while the Cretan agrimi, or wild goat, is supposed to be the origin of all our domestic varieties.

There is no month in the year without its green leaves, and brilliant flowers, and esculent fruits, and fragrant shrubs. By every wayside fountain you will find a great plane-tree overshadowing the crystal water, - such a plane-tree as that under which, as the legend was, Zeus first embraced Europa with his love, in memory of which event the tree never afterwards lost its leaves. No wonder that the ancients called it Macaronesos, or the "fortunate isle;" or that Hippocrates sent his patients there to be cured.

The hill-sides and the mountains are fragrant with red and white and blue thyme flowers; and, along the streams in the valleys, you may pluck at any time a myrtle blossom or the laurel. In every field you will find a shady bosquet of orange, citron, and almond trees, interrupting with their bright tints the running gray of the olive groves that make the background of the landscape. The hollows of the rocks you lie in are carpeted with the dictammon, whose blossoms perfume the air; and here and there, among the roses and myrtles and sweet-smelling thyme, rises the tall palm far above the garlanded trees at its feet, its stately crown swaying in the air with the zephyrs that glide forth from the thickets where bubbling fountains have cooled them; while everywhere you hear the hum of bees busy at their work of making the choicest honey of the Old World, and now and then, clear and sweet, above the notes of countless songsters, the voice of the kaja-bulbul, so famous in Turkey for its melody and plumage as to command a price of a hundred dollars.

It was perhaps because they found in Crete alone a nectar worthy of them, that the gods chose to be born there. The water of Crete, too, seems to have obtained the reputation of being of the best; and it is still the custom to set before the stranger, on his arrival, in gracious token of their hospitality, - first honey to eat, and then water to drink.

But, above all things, it is the olive-tree, with its silver leaves glittering in the sunlight, that most impresses one in the landscape. On every hill-side and plain spread countless groves of them, with gray old trunks, twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter, that have withstood the desolations of a thousand years, but are falling now before the torch and axe of a foe more barbarous even than the Mongol who called himself the scourge of God, and boasted of having butchered two-thirds of the inhabitants of the countries he had traversed: for the Turk slays all human beings, man, woman, child, sparing neither age nor sex; and, as if with a fanaticism that would take its revenge on nature for having furnished sustenance to the accursed Ghiaour, lays his profane hand on the very bosom of Mother Earth, and would smite her with impotence, if his power but equalled his rage.

With such natural advantages, it is obvious that, in the movement of civilization westward from Asia, the island of Crete, from its geographical position, must have played a considerable part; and, though there is a good deal of controversy as to the character of the service it rendered, there can be none as to the fact of its participation in the original creation of the Greek myths: for at the very threshold of the gorgeous temple of fiction that enshrines them, stands the majestic form of Ζεὺς κρηταγενής, the Cretan-born Jove.

The island of Cythera, says Curtius, as the southernmost prolongation of the mountain chain of the Peloponnesus, together with Crete, bounds the Ægean Sea, and forms the beginning of the Mediterranean for voyagers from the East. Crete was, therefore, in the most ancient times the point of departure for those adventurous navigators who struck out boldly into the waste of waters that rolled on, unbroken and with scanty harbors for refuge, up to the shores of Sicily, waters that were swept by quite other winds from those the timorous mariner was familiar with, as he ran from isle to isle in the Ægean. For a long period, however, it is probable that the rocky promontory of Malea formed the limit beyond which the Phoenician navigator did not venture into the unknown West; for there was an ancient proverb, which could have been applicable only to those coming from the East, "Beyond Malea, forget your home." But there can be little probability, that, as some writers have affirmed, Crete was the isle of Kaphthor mentioned in the Old Testament, from which the Kaphthorim migrated into the southern part of Canaan; for the course of migration was all the other way.

The very name, indeed, of Crete seems to have been derived from the glittering whiteness of its mountains, as seen afar from the sea; for Creta, though doubtless an original word, was afterwards applied not merely to chalk, but to a sort of argillaceous earth; whence our word cretaceous, though, in point of fact, there is not a particle of chalk, Sieber states, in the geological formations of the island. The name also of Candia, by which the island was known among the Italians, though never at any time used by the inhabitants, who have uniformly adhered to the name of Crete, which has come down to them from the days of Minos, - may perhaps have had a similar origin, from candida, "white," shortened by the Venetians into Candia, and by the English merchants into Candy; from which latter word imaginative etymologists have derived the common designation for the sweet products of the confectioner's art. The true derivation, however, of the name Candia is probably quite different, and goes back perhaps to the time of the Saracen invasion of the island, during the reign of the Emperor Michael, in the ninth century. The word khandax signified a fortified place or camp, megalokastron, such as was established where the town of Candia now stands; and when, as was often the case, the camp changed into a town, the appellation par excellence of Khandax, or the camp, went along with it, and became Candia with the Venetians, when they took possession of the island, early in the thirteenth century.

It is difficult, if not quite impossible, to construct a theory wholly satisfactory as to the period or extent of the relation between Crete and other Hellenic countries; though no one can so much as take up the handbooks of ancient mythology without perceiving, that, very early in the history of both, there was an important influence exercised by the one upon