An idle thought. Doesn't the geography of the Blue Hill Peninsula in Maine bear an uncanny resemblance to that of Greece? The most striking difference is that Greece is 120 miles wide and the Blue Hill Peninsula is about 12. It's as if the glacier that carved the Blue Hill Peninsula were trying to engineer the Greek landscape at 1/10 scale.

I'm sure that others have noticed these parallels before, but I don't know where to find their observations. If anyone can cite a source, I'd appreciate it. (I'd also like a small silhouette of the Blue Hill Peninsula to go with my image of Greece below.) Meantime, here are some of the major parallels.

Blue Hill Peninsula Greece Eggemoggin Reach Gulf of Corinth Naskeag Point Sunium Flye Point Rhamnus Deer Isle Peloponnese Penobscot Bay Ionian Sea Blue Hill Bay Aegean Sea Mount Desert Island Turkey Union River Bay Thermaikos Kolpos Newbury Neck Promirion, Mileai Long Island Euboea Bartlett Island Lesbos Swans Island Naxos Isle au Haut Crete Islesboro Ithaca and Cephalonia Cape Rosier Akra Skrofa Bagaduce River Amyrakikos Kolpos Verona Island Corfu Ellsworth Thessalonika East Blue Hill Volos Blue Hill Lamia Blue Hill Falls Thermopylae North Brooklin Marathon Brooklin Athens Stonington Sparta Sedgwick Boeotia Sargentville Delphi Walker Pond Lumni Trikhonis Buck's Harbor Mesolongi, Aitolikon Castine Preveza Orland Igoumenitsa

In the table above, some of my Greek placenames are Anglicized and some are not. This is due to the different usages on the different maps I had to consult. One day I hope to make the names consistent.

Here are two online maps that come close to giving the sense of this deep geographic similarity. But they don't let you make the comparison in detail. You really need a large print atlas and a cup of coffee.

Blue Hill Peninsula Map centered on latitude 44.31 N and longitude 68.63 W. Top to bottom of region mapped represents 19.32 miles. Generated by the Xerox PARC Map Viewer. See the interactive version of this map.

Greece Map centered on latitude 38.45 N and longitude 22.41 E. Top to bottom of region mapped represents 387.78 miles. Generated by the Xerox PARC Map Viewer. See the interactive version of this map.

Here are some other, less adequate online maps of the two regions.

Maps of the Blue Hill Peninsula

• From Captain D's Guide. Just the peninsula, very few outlying islands.
• From Hypernet. A local ISP. No place names.
• From The Insider's Guide to Maine's Mid-Coast. Small image, much more than the peninsula itself, cluttered with place names.
• From the Maine Resource Guide. Emphasizing roads. More on the Bangor area than the peninsula.

Maps of Greece

• From Excite. Small.
• From Hellas Map . No place names attached.
• From Hellas Online. Low-res. But also see Hellas Online's detailed geographical map.
• From the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. Clickable submaps. Skimpy on place names.

Peter Suber, Department of Philosophy, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374, U.S.A.
peters@earlham.edu. Copyright © 1998, Peter Suber.