Longman's School Geography for South Africa (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...with the Atlantic Ocean by means of the Garonne and other canals parallel to the Garonne. In the same old province, near the coast, is Hpntpellier. with a celebrated school of medicine founded by Arabs.9 The still important seaports of the Mediterranean coast are confined to the east, and among these is the greatest and oldest of all French seaports, MARSEILLES (3S0), the ancient Massilia, a town which was founded by a Greek colony in the eighth century B.c., on a fine bay as near as possible to the delta of the Rhone,9 and speedily developed into a great seaport on account of its situation at the end of the only convenient route connecting north Europe4 with the western half of the Mediterranean. Farther east is the almost impregnable fortress of Toulon, with a naval station; and under the shelter of the spurs of the Alps are the mild health resorts of Cannes, Nice, and Uentone, and between the two latter Monaco, the capital of a nominally independent principality less than ten square miles in extent. The unsheltered parts of this coast are exposed to a hateful scourge in the form of a bitterly cold wind, known as the mistral, which sweeps down from the cold plateau on the north-west, or the icy summits of the Alps in the north and northeast. At Marseilles it blows on an average for nearly half the number of days in the year. The highly mountainous island of Corsica (about eleven times the size of Anglesey) has several summits between S,000 and 9,000 feet in height, and is thinly peopled by an Italian-speaking population. It has two small coast towns, Bastia in the north-east, and Ajaccio in the west, the latter celebrated as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. BELGIUM AND HOLLAND OR THE NETHERLANDS. Approximate latitudes: (Birmingham), ..