The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

CHAPTER III.
THE ALPS, THE Rh6nE, AND THE COAST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.
General Aspects.—Mountains.*
HEN the PhcEnicians first navigated the Lion Gulf and established
their factories near the mouths of the Rhone, that portion of
France which lies at the back of the mountains sloping towards
the Mediterranean was still wrapped in mystery. At a later date,
when Greek art and poetry flourished in the Hellenic settlements
on the Mediterranean, the barbarous populations in the interior still practised
human sacrifice. The Greeks sought to civilise the tribes which surrounded them,
and the youthful Euxenos married the fair daughter of a barbarian king ; but
when the Roman succeeded to the inheritance of the Greek, the work of civilisa-
tion had made but little progress. The Roman, however, was not content with
merely holding the seaboard, and Caesar, by availing himself of the almost
unbounded resources of a wealthy empire, succeeded in conquering the whole
of Gaul.
The boundaries of Mediterranean France are not as well defined as are those
of Italy and the Iberian peninsula. True it is almost entirely enclosed by moun-
tains—by the Cevennes in the east, bj' the Alps in the west ; but two huge gaps
in these barriers have enabled nations and armies to overcome these obstacles. One
of them opens out between the Pyrenees and the Cevennes, and leads into the
basin of the Garonne ; the other is reached by travelling up the Rhone, and
opens a way, on the one hand, into Burgundy and the valley of the Seine, on the
other to the Lake of Geneva and the basin of the Rhine.
The valley of the Rhone is, indeed, the great historical high-road of France.
When Rome was still the mistress of the world, it was through this valley that
her legions marched to Northern Gaul. At a subsequent date, when Rome
had fallen from her high estate, a movement in a contrary direction took place,
•Marion, " Geologie de Provence" {Sevue Scientifique, 2l8t of December, 1871); Whymper,
"Scrambles amongst the Alps," 1860—69; Ladoncette, " Hautes-Alpes ; " " Annuaire du Club Alpin-
Fran^ais;" Surell, " Iiltude eur lea torrents des Hautes-Alpes ; " Ch. Lory, "Alpes de la Savoie et du
Dauphine ; " A. Favre, " Recherches geologiques sur le Mont Blanc."