They were eager to gain possession of the country where the sacred olive alternates its stiff old age with the joyous vineyard; where the pine rears its cupola and the cypress erects its minaret.

They longed to dream under the perfumed snow of the interminable orange groves; to be masters of the sheltered valleys where the myrtle and the jasmine spice the salty air; where the aloe and the cactus grow between the stones of extinct volcanoes; where the mountains of marble extend their white veins down even into the depths of the sea and refract the African heat emitted by the opposite coast.
The South had replied to the invasion from the North with defensive wars that had extended even into the center of Europe.

And thus history had gone on repeating itself with the same flux and reflux of human waves--mankind struggling for thousands of years to gain or hold the blue vault of Amphitrite.
The Mediterranean peoples were to Ferragut the aristocracy of humanity.
Its potent climate had tempered mankind as in no other part of the planet, giving him a dry and resilient power.

Tanned and bronzed by the profound absorption of the sun and the energy of the atmosphere, its navigators were transmuted into pure metal.

The men from the North were stronger, but less robust, less acclimitable than the Catalan sailor, the Provencal, the Genoese or the Greek.