and electric light and the service of three railroads. It is situated on Eel River and Humboldt Bay, and has a fine harbor, which the U. S. government has improved. Population, 11,845.
Euripides (ū-rĭp′ĭ-dēz), a famous Greek poet, was born in Salamis in 480 B. C. He was the last of the three great tragic poets of Greece. He was a pupil of Anaxagoras and a friend of Socrates. His first play was written when he was 18. He is said to have written from 75 to 90 dramas, of which we have 18 complete. Alcestis, Medea, Hecuba, Andromache, Ion, Orestes, Iphigenia, Electra and The Bacchæ are some of his works. Socrates admired his tragedies so much that he always went to the theater if a play of Euripides was performed, but Aristophanes made fun of him and charged him with degrading tragedy by introducing in it scenes from every-day life. He left Athens for the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, where he died in 406 B. C. When the news of his death reached Athens, the whole city was plunged in mourning. Sophocles, then 90 years old, made his actors wear mourning on the stage. The Athenians asked for the body of Euripides for burial, and when refused built a magnificent tomb to his memory on the road to the Piræus, with the inscription: “All Greece is the monument of Euripides. Macedonian earth covers but his bones.” Archelaus also built a monument, and inscribed upon it: “Never, O Euripides, will thy memory be forgotten.” His popularity increased after his death. His plays were much oftener revived on the stage than those of Sophocles or Æschylus. His works were favorites of Aristotle, Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Milton and Browning.
Europe is, historically and politically, the most important of the five great divisions of the world, though, next to Australia, the smallest in size, and is also the most densely populated. There have been several theories as to the origin of the name Europe. The old mythological one was that it was from Europa, who was carried off by Zeus; another that it came from Eurus, the southwest wind; and still another, that it means Broad Land. The latest suggestion is that the name was first given by the Phoenician traders from the word Erebh, meaning darkness, and applied to the country as the land of sunset or the west.
Geography. Europe has a total length, from Cape St. Vincent on the southwest to the mouth of Kara River on the northeast, of 3,400 miles, and is 2,400 miles broad from North Cape in Norway to Cape Matapan, the most southern point of Greece. Not including islands, the area of the continent is 3,800,000 square miles, being about one third that of Africa, a fourth of America and a fifth of Asia—not much exceeding the total area of the United States. Its indented coast-line, caused by its great irregularity and the number of deep inlets and gulfs, is more extensive, in proportion to its size, than that of either of the other great natural divisions of the globe, being about 40,000 miles. It is divided physically into two great portions—the great plain in the northeast and the highlands from near the center toward the southwest; the mountainous peninsula of Scandinavia lying apart from both. The plain occupies about two thirds (2,500,000 square miles) of the entire continent, reaching from the eastern boundary north to the Arctic Ocean, south to the Caucasus and Black Sea and westward over the whole extent of the continent, gradually narrowing as it approaches its western limit. Its shape is triangular, the base resting on the eastern boundary and the apex on the shores of Holland. It separates the two mountain systems of Europe—the Scandinavian on the north (highest summit 7,566 feet) and the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathian, Balkan and Caucasus ranges on the south. The mass of the Alps, with an area of nearly 100,000 square miles, forms the center of the mountain system of southern and western Europe, stretching down on the four sides toward France, Germany, Hungary and Italy, the highest summit being 15,732 feet. The other mountain ranges are the Pyrenees, 11,170 feet; Carpathians, 8,343; Balkans, 9,750; Apennines, 9,574; and the Sierra Nevada, 11,660; and in Sicily, Etna, 10,850 feet. The observatory on Etna (9,075 feet) is, since 1882, the highest inhabited spot in Europe, being nearly 1,000 feet higher than the celebrated hospice on the Great St. Bernard. Europe is surrounded by water on three sides. The White Sea enters from the Arctic Ocean; the German Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea enter from the Atlantic. Scandinavia in the north and Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Crimea in the south are the most important peninsulas. Excepting Iceland, the islands closely cluster around the mainland, the chief being Great Britain and Ireland, Nova Zembla, Sardinia, Corsica and Crete (Candia). The lakes are small as compared with America or Africa. The largest rivers are the Volga, 1,977 miles; Danube, 1,740; Ural, 1,450; Don, 1,125; Kama, 1,055; Petchora, 975; and the Rhine, 765.
| Countries of Europe | Area in sq. miles |
Population | |
| Andorra | 175 | 5,231 | |
| Austria-Hungary | 241,333 | 49,418,598 | |
| Belgium | 11,373 | 6,693,548 | |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | 19,800 | 1,895,673 | |
| Britain, United Kingdom | 121,391 | 45,469,564 | |
| Bulgaria | 38,080 | 4,284,844 | |
| Crete | 3,330 | 310,403 | |
| Denmark (with the Färoes) | 15,592 | 2,605,268 | |
| France | 207,054 | 39,376,000 | |
| German Empire | 208,780 | (1910) | 64,903,423 |
