Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/161

140 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Thera is crescent-shaped, and the southernmost of the Cyclades. Its arc IS continued by the island of Therasia and the islet of Aspronisi (Fig. 28). Several other islets, Palaea, Nea, and Milkra Kaimeni, dot the bosom of these waters, whose mean depth is over 300 metres. There is no safe anchorage for ships, except over the submerged volcanic cone, whose summit is seen a few yards below the liquid surface. All these islands, great and small, are made up of volcanic rocks, with the single exception of Mount Elia, commanding the principal island from a height of 800 metres. Mount Elia consists of marble and metamorphic rocks ; the peak itself is the relic of a continent which in the beginning of the tertiary period was joined to Greece and Africa. Its mammifers were the same as those whose remains have been exhumed by M. Gaudry at Pakermi, situated at the foot of Pentelicus. Towards the bay, the hills of Thera have been cut into almost perpendicular walls, which opposite Therasia rise to about 400 metres ; but on the other sides they descend in gentle acclivities towards the sea. The lofty coasts fronting the bay, both at Thera and Therasia, exhibit horizontal beds of lava, intersected by vertical bands representing the chimneys through which the volcanic fluid was belched out. The commence- ment of the pliocene tertiary epoch witnessed the subsidence of the ground which fashioned the coasts of the Mediterranean pretty much as we have them at the present day. This change was not effected without deep dislocations and rendings of the soil, through which igneous matter escaped, thus giving birth to Greek volcanoes. The main crater of the mightiest, perhaps, lay towards the centre of the basin now parting Thera from Therasia. Its fiery streams produced a gradual rising of the ground ; new masses came to solder themselves to the small island of St. Elia, the sole relic of a great land now disappeared ; whilst slowly but steadily the volcanic peak emerged out of the waters, and surrounded itself with lowlier fellows. Thus, out of elements differing in age and composition, was formed a great should the chapter which Dumont devotes to these discoveries in Vol. I. of his Ceramigues de la Grhce propre, chap, ii., Type de Santorin^ be left out of account. He had under his eyes, when he wrote it, the whole Santorin collection, consisting of vases and other antiquities picked up by MM. Gorceix and Mamet, classified and preserved by the care of M. E. Burnouf in one of the rooms of the School at Athens.