The rivers that threw themselves impetuously into its bosom in order to renew it were few and scanty.

The Rhone and the Nile appeared to be pitiful little rivulets compared with the river courses of other continents that empty into the oceans.
Losing by evaporation three times more liquid than the rivers bring to it, this sunburnt sea would soon have been converted into a great salt desert were not the Atlantic sending it a rapid current of renewal that was precipitated through the Straits of Gibraltar.

Under this superficial current existed still another, flowing in an opposite direction, that returned a part of the Mediterranean to the ocean, because the Mediterranean waters were more salt and dense than those of the Atlantic.

The tide scarcely made itself felt on its strands.

Its basin was mined by subterranean fires that were always seeking extraordinary outlets through Vesuvius and Aetna and breathed continually through the mouth of Stromboli.