Nearer East / [D.G. Hogarth].

  • David George Hogarth
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nearer East / [D.G. Hogarth]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sea at Scala Nuova washed in the third century of our era up to the walls of Ephesus which now stand high and dry five miles inland ; and all the new tract has been formed by the Kuchuk Menderes, the little reedy Cayster of antiquity. The next stream on the north, the Gediz Chai, the famous Hermus stream of Lydian history, has filled up all the vast bay between Phokia and Mount Sipylus,and until a newout- flow was cut in 1886 it was reducing the depth of the navi- gable entrance to Smyrna by about three centimetres a year. The Nearer East is still imperfectly and unequally known to the West. The inhabitants have produced no first-rate surveys of any of their territories,not even Greece; and only certain districts of special interest to enterprising European Powers have been thoroughly mapped (Fig. 1). Such are the Mediterranean, Euxine, and Persian coasts surveyed and re-surveyed by the British Admiralty ; Cyprus, Palestine, and Sinai mapped by British engineers; the Nile flats, originally triangled by the French, and re- surveyed with part of the northern deserts by the present occupying Power ; the Morea, whose lines were laid down by the French ; the Caspian coast surveyed by the Rus- sians; Eastern Rumelia by Russo-Bulgarians ; and various isolated strips on either hand of lines of railway, such as the Vardar and Porsuk valleys by Austrians; the Menderes and Lycus valleys by Britons; the southern Lebanon by French- men ; or the route from Resht to Teheran by Russians. All the rest of the map, within the outlines fixed by the British Admiralty Survey (not over accurate on the Red Sea and South Arabian coasts), and by the limits of Austrian and Russian surveys on the north, is a sketch of greater or less fulness and accuracy in the several locali- ties, according as fewer or more points are fixed astrono- mically, as European military consuls have or have not been stationed and able to survey, and as European trav- ellers have been many, unhampered, well-provided with instruments, and capable of using them, or, on the other hand, few, jealously watched, compelled to journey empty-handed, or unable to use instruments profitably.
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